The British Home Front and the First World War 1316515494, 9781316515495
The First World War required the mobilisation of entire societies, regardless of age or gender. The phrase 'home fr
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THE BRITISH HOME FRONT AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR
The First World War required the mobilisation of entire societies, regardless of age or gender. The phrase ‘home front’ was itself a product of the war with parts of Britain literally a war front, coming under enemy attack from the sea and increasingly the air. However, the home front also conveyed the war’s impact on almost every aspect of British life, economic, social and domestic. In the fullest account to-date, leading historians show how the war blurred the division between what was military and what not, and how it made many conscious of their national identities for the first time. They reveal how its impact changed Britain forever, transforming the monarchy, promoting systematic cabinet government, and prompting state intervention in a country which prided itself on its liberalism and its support for free trade. In many respects we still live with the consequences. is Wardlaw Professor of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, Life Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. His publications include To Arms (2001), the first of a three-volume history of the First World War, and The First World War (2003) which accompanied a 10-part television series.
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Published online by Cambridge University Press
THE BRITISH HOME FRONT AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR Edited by HEW STRACHAN University of St Andrews
Published online by Cambridge University Press
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781316515495 DOI: 10.1017/9781009025874 © Cambridge University Press 2023 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2023 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Strachan, Hew, editor. Title: The British home front and the First World War / edited by Hew Strachan, University of St Andrews. Description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021063061 (print) | LCCN 2021063062 (ebook) | ISBN 9781316515495 (hardback) | ISBN 9781009012324 (paperback) | ISBN 9781009025874 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1914-1918–Great Britain. | World War, 1914-1918–Social aspects– Great Britain. | World War, 1914-1918–Economic aspects–Great Britain. | Nationalism–Great Britain–History–20th century. | Great Britain–Social conditions–20th century. Classification: LCC D524.7.G7 B74 2022 (print) | LCC D524.7.G7 (ebook) | DDC 941.083–dc23/eng/20220103 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021063061 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021063062 ISBN 978-1-316-51549-5 Hardback ISBN 978-1-009-01232-4 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
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CONTENTS
List of Figures viii List of Tables and Charts List of Contributors xiv Acknowledgements xvii A Note on the Illustrations
xii
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Introduction 1 1
28
The United Kingdom in 1914
47
Government
2
The Monarchy
3
The Growth of Cabinet Government
4
The Defence of the Realm Act and Other Emergency Laws . .
5
Local Government and the Great War: The Experience in Essex 95
6
The Clergy and Cultural Mobilisation
7
49
Resources
135
Iron and Steel 137
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112
78
vi 8
Timber 153
9
Fishing 183
10
Agriculture 202
11
Coal 221
12
War Finance 241
259
People
13
Labour, the Labour Party and the Trade Unions
14
Nations in Arms: Enlistment and Conscription . .
15
Charitable Work
16
Refugees 314
17
Prisoners of War and Internees
261 280
296
Production
333
357
18
Munitions 359
19
Clothing and Uniforms
20
Britain’s Private Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Industries
21
Railways 425
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381 399
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22
Seaborne Trade and Merchant Shipping 446 .
23
Food 469
Social Impacts
24
Press and Propaganda
25
Pacifism 510
26
Homes and Families in Wartime
27
Crime and Policing .
28
Children 564
29
The ‘Home Front’ as War Front . Conclusion
30
489
634
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543
583
599
The United Kingdom in 1919 Index
487
601
FI GURES
I.1 Mars appeals to Vulcan, autolithograph for The Daily Chronicle, by Frank Brangwyn, 1916. Private collection: photo Abbott and Holder. 2 I.2 Female workers feeding the charcoal kilns for refining sugar in the Glebe Sugar Refinery, Greenock. Photo by George P. Lewis for the Ministry of Information, November 1918. Imperial War Museum Q 28350. 21 I.3 On munitions: dangerous work (packing TNT), lithograph by Archibald Standish Hartrick, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 59, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917. National Museum of Wales. 26 2.1 Queen Mary and Sir Eric Geddes, the First Lord of the Admiralty, at the private view of an exhibition of naval photographs at Princes Galleries, Piccadilly, London, 21 July 1918. Photograph by George P. Lewis for the Ministry of Information. Imperial War Museum Q 19628. 54 4.1 ‘Dora’ discomfited. ‘Dora’ – ‘What, no censorship?’ Cartoon by Bernard Partridge for Punch, or the London Charivari, 22 January 1919. 92 5.1 Snowed up (it is reported that appeals are coming in in their hundreds), published in Southend and Westcliff Graphic, 9 June 1916. British Library. 108 7.1 Transporter, with integral excavator – or navvy – to reduce the manpower required, used in the Midlands ironstone quarries. From A. E. L. Chorlton, ‘The mechanical quarrying of ironstone’, in the Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 1917. 142 7.2 Workers unloading pig iron at Pontardawe, Glamorgan, 1918. The pigs, which weighed around 50 kg each, came from an iron producer in north Lincolnshire and were handled primarily by women. National Museum of Wales. 151 8.1 Miss S. I. Broderick, daughter of Dr Broderick of Taunton, and Jenner Clarke, both of the Women’s Land Army, sawing a log. Sport and General Press Agency. Imperial War Museum Q54598. 171 8.2 Women’s Forestry Service measuring and cutting props for dugouts. Photo by Horace Nicholls for the Ministry of Information. Imperial War Museum Q 30698. 179
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9.1 9.2 10.1
10.2
11.1
12.1
14.1
15.1
15.2 16.1 17.1 18.1
18.2
20.1
20.2
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Discharging fish at Grimsby. Ministry of Information official photograph. Imperial War Museum Q 19025. 188 Fishermen carrying baskets of fish to the sheds at Grimsby. Ministry of Information official photograph. Imperial War Museum Q 19029. 196 On the land: ploughing, lithograph by Archibald Standish Hartrick, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 55, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917. 214 His dream realised, lithograph by Winifred Russell Roberts, 1918, for the Vanguard Farm for our severely disabled soldiers and sailors. Imperial War Museum PST 10831. 219 Female pit brow workers at a Lancashire coal mine, September 1918. Photograph by George P. Lewis for the Ministry of Information. Imperial War Museum Q28302. 229 Pupils at Gibbons Road School, Willesden, pay their weekly contribution into the War Savings Association, 1916. Photograph by Horace Nicholls. Imperial War Museum Q 30245. 254 Bucks boys come over here: you’re wanted. Poster produced in 1914 for the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee and adapted for local use. From the collection of the Buckinghamshire County Recruiting Officer, Captain Leonard Green of Chetwode Priory. Bucks Military Museum Trust. 283 Labour’s view of the National Relief Fund, from the weekly journal of the National Union of Railwaymen, the Railway Review, 11 September 1914. Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. 299 Jennie Jackson or ‘Little Kitchener’, the most notable child fundraiser of the war. Courtesy of Andrew Gill, ‘Burnley in the Great War’ website. 305 Refugees No. 4: the station, lithograph by John Copley, 1915. Private collection: photo by Abbott and Holder. 325 German prisoners of war (in the back row) employed in limestone quarrying at Landybie, Carmarthenshire. National Library of Wales. 344 Making guns: lifting an inner tube, lithograph by George Clausen, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 30, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917. National Museum of Wales. 364 Building aircraft: making the engine, lithograph by Christopher Wynne Nevinson, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 37, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917. National Museum of Wales. 372 A ship yard, lithograph by Muirhead Bone, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 31, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917. National Museum of Wales. 420 Men at work on an almost completed Standard ship. Ministry of Information official photograph. Imperial War Museum Q 18351. 421
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21.1 On the railways: engine and carriage cleaners, lithograph by Archibald Standish Hartrick, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 56, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917. National Museum of Wales. 431 21.2 A signal woman signalling to railway shunters. Photograph by Horace Nicholls. Imperial War Museum Q 31021. 432 22.1 Maintaining food supplies: the arrival of the grain ship. She has been mined and is awash but reaches port, lithograph by Charles Pears, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 61, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917. 450 22.2 Maintaining forces overseas: transport loading at night, lithograph by Charles Pears, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 65, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917. 458 23.1 Don’t waste bread! Save two slices every day and defeat the ‘U’ boat, poster issued by the Ministry of Food and printed by Clarke and Sherwill Ltd., 1917. Getty Images. 472 24.1 Your king and country need you to maintain the honour and glory of the British empire, by Lawson Wood. Poster no. 17 for the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, printed by Dobson Molle and Co Ltd, 1914. Imperial War Museum PST 11415. 498 24.2 Female worker carrying on her father’s job as official bill poster and town crier in Thetford, while he is at the front. Photography by Horace Nicholls. Imperial War Museum Q 31027. 500 24.3 4,000 women wanted for fruit picking from the end of July to mid-September in the Blairgowrie and Auchterarder districts, poster, no date but presumed to be 1917. The National Archives, PRO/NATS1/109. 501 26.1 Queuing for food, Victoria Street, Blackburn. The shop window facing the policeman says ‘England expects economy’. Home Office photograph. Imperial War Museum Q 56276. 532 28.1 Girl Guides with a stretcher and other equipment training to help after an air raid. A Ministry of Information official photograph. Imperial War Museum Q 27922. 571 28.2 A Transport Girl in France, by Bessie Marchant, published by Blackie and Son, Ltd, London, 1918. British Library 12801.cc. 1. 574 29.1 The Zeppelin raids: the vow of vengeance, autolithograph for The Daily Chronicle by Frank Brangwyn, 1916. Private Collection: photo Abbott and Holder. 590 29.2 Girls suffering from ‘air-raid shock’ cultivating their own gardens at the Kitchener Heritage home of the Llangattock School of Arts and Crafts for airraid shocked children and educative convalescence for disabled soldiers. Photograph by Horace Nicholls. Imperial War Museum Q 30542. 594
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30.1 Snowed under: the St Bernard pup (to his master): ‘This situation appeals to my hereditary instincts. Shall I come to the rescue?’ Punch, or the London Charivari, 15 September 1920. 602 30.2 ‘You cannot expect an A1 population out of C3 homes’, the cover of Richard Reiss, The home I want (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1919). 627
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TABLES AND CHARTS
7.1 8.1 12.1 15.1 15.2 15.3 17.1 17.2 20.1 21.1 21.2 22.1 22.2 22.3 22.4 23.1 23.2 23.3 23.4 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 27.1 27.2
Resources required for iron and steel production 140 Timber imports and home-grown timber, 1913–18 161 Treasury account in New York in millions of dollars, 1915–19 255 Wartime fund raising 301 Comparison between charity trustees 1918 and 2017 302 Typology of First World War charities 303 Number of internees in Britain, 1914–19 335 Major internment camps in Britain, 1914–19 339 Great Britain mercantile, Allied and neutral tonnage lost, August 1914– November 1918, and tonnage completed to 1918 402 Railway equipment possessed by the European powers, 1914 438 Passenger journeys carried by the Caledonian Railway to and from Gretna station, 1913–18 442 British imports, 1910–20 449 British exports, 1910–20 451 Allied shipping losses, 1914–18 455 Number of tramp firms and tramp vessels owned on the Clyde, 1914 and 1918 465 Percentage of total supplies of principal foodstuffs in Britain that were imported before and during the First World War 473 Production, net imports (+), net exports ( ) and supply of cereals and potatoes in continental Europe, 1914–18 476 Production, net imports (+), net exports ( ) and supply of cereals and potatoes in the British Isles (United Kingdom and Ireland), 1914–18 477 Retail food prices at the beginning of each month from July 1914 to December 1918 as percentages of prices at July 1914 480 Frequency of key themes in Press Bureau D Notices from a database constructed by the author from the draft notices in TNA:PRO HO139/43–47 493 Average D Notices issued per month 495 D Notices issued per month 495 D Notices with Ireland as the key theme 496 Number of persons for trial in superior courts, 1913–18 545 Juvenile courts: number of children and young persons proceeded against 548
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27.3 27.4 27.5
30.1 30.2 30.3 30.4 30.5 30.6 30.7 30.8 30.9 30.10
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Courts of summary justice: number of persons dealt with for indictable offences, 1912–18 550 Courts of summary justice: number of persons apprehended or summoned for non-indictable offences, 1912–18 551 Courts of summary justice, England and Wales: persons proceeded against under Defence of the Realm Acts and other emergency regulations, 1914–18 552 Results of the coupon election, December 1918 606 Factor shares as a percentage of GNP at current prices, Britain 1913 and 1924 611 Time rate of unskilled workers as a percentage of the time rate of skilled workers 612 Women’s wages as a percentage of men’s wages 613 Female employment by marital status, percentage 613 Inflation in the United Kingdom, 1910–40: annual percentage change 614 Growth of trade and GDP, United Kingdom 1873–1937, annual percentage growth rates 616 Public sector net debt: United Kingdom since 1700, percentage of GDP 621 Interest as a percent of GDP: United Kingdom 1800–1940 622 United Kingdom spending on defence, interest and other items, 1900–40, percent 625
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CONTRIBUTORS
is Emeritus Professor of Cultural History, University of Worcester and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham . . is Honorary Professor of Military History at the University of Kent is Reader in Modern History, University of Birmingham is an Emeritus Fellow of New College, Oxford and Professor of Politics is a freelance author is an Honorary University Fellow, Department of History, University of Exeter is Assistant Professor of International Relations, the Central European University, Vienna is Emeritus Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge and was Master of Trinity Hall is Director of the Charities Masters Programme, City University Business School, London . is Professor of History at Utah State University was a Professor in the School of Education, Kingston University is a British civil servant, currently working in the Office for National Statistics xiv
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is Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of York . is Professor of Modern Social History, University of Edinburgh is Professor in Modern and Contemporary European History at University College London is Lecturer in the Department of History, Goldsmiths, University of London is Senior Lecturer in Public History, Royal Holloway, University of London is Senior Lecturer in European History at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand is Visiting Reader in Maritime History at the National Maritime Museum and Honorary Professor in Business History, University of Glasgow is a Research and Innovation Coordinator at the University of Kent is Professor of European History, De Montfort University is Emeritus Professor of History, University of Stirling is Professor of Modern History and Memory Studies, University of Exeter is Lecturer in International Security, Aberystwyth University is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of Warwick is a Senior Lecturer in Modern History in the School of Humanities, University of Roehampton is Honorary Research Fellow, Blaydes Maritime Centre, University of Hull
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. . is Emeritus Professor, School of Law, University of Kent . is Emeritus Professor of Maritime History, University of Hull is Wardlaw Professor of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College. Oxford, and Life Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge is a Lecturer in History, University of Hull is Emeritus Professor of History, Nottingham University
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
During the planning of the First World War centenary commemorations in the United Kingdom, in which I was involved from 2011 onwards, three features gave me pause. First, they tended to be set in national narratives; second, they focused overwhelmingly on the military events, and particularly battles which could be linked to specific days one hundred years on; and, third, governments, which enthusiastically embraced the educational opportunity which the centenary provided, failed to recognise that teaching is linked to research – and that there are still many areas of the war’s history about which we know too little or where public understanding is still locked in the propaganda of the day or the debates of decades ago. This book has not escaped the national narrative, nor should it, given that it was in the nation’s name that the state went to war in 1914. That does not mean that the impacts which the war precipitated were all uniquely British; many were not, and we can understand them better if we look at them comparatively. More immediately, however, at least in the context of this book, an entity as apparently homogenous as the United Kingdom was in 1914 must be disaggregated the better to understand it, especially from the perspective of 2014–18. At Oxford, where I was teaching at the beginning of the centenary period, we set up a research programme (so addressing my third worry) called ‘Globalising and Localising the Great War’. Both elements in that title are important when considering the British home front in 1914–18. First, Britain possessed a worldwide empire and depended on global trade for its livelihood. How Britain fought this war cannot be understood without that dimension. Secondly, Britain was – for all that it was the most heavily urbanised country in the world in 1914 – a place of strong local and regional identities, divided in religious practice and in some areas by language. It was divided too by nationalism, most obviously but not only in Ireland; it is worth remembering that the Scottish National Party was founded in the war’s aftermath and in part by veterans. Central government departments were still small, and local government and civic pride were strong. In 1908–9, before David Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’, central government receipts totalled £125.5 million xvii
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and expenditure £142.5 million; local government receipts in 1904–5 stood at £143.5 million and expenditure at £139 million. The second problem, the tendency of the centenary commemorations to focus on battles, was understandable but misleading. The initial thinking was that the United Kingdom would mark the entry to the war in 2014, the opening day of the battle of the Somme in 2016, and the armistice with Germany in 2018. This created an evenly spaced and manageable calendar, but one which left far too much out of account; it also failed to anticipate the public’s appetite. In due course Gallipoli in 2015, Jutland in 2016, the battle of Ypres (or Passchendaele) in 2017, and Amiens in 2018 (to separate Allied victory in the First World War from Remembrance Sunday) were added. WW100 Scotland, the Scottish centenary commemorations, also marked Loos in 2015 and Arras in 2017. None of this reflected the societal impact of the war. It was not waged solely by soldiers and sailors, but by clerks in government departments, by mothers who went out to work while caring for their children, by sailors on merchant ships, as well as by those whom we do more conventionally remember, such as munitions workers or women in the Land Army. Britain’s mobilisation was economic and social, not just military. Although at the time Britain did not call this ‘total’ war, it was the experience of the First World War which gave birth to the idea. It seemed odd, therefore, to stage national commemorations which left the majority of the nation out, which validated the contribution of the armed services (and overwhelmingly those who were killed), but not that of the other services and occupations on which they and the state depended. This was where the third element came in, the contribution of fresh research to a full understanding of the war. In 2018 the state did commemorate the introduction of women’s suffrage one hundred years before, but it did so almost devoid of context. It revived a familiar refrain, that women were second-class citizens before the war; that during it they entered the workforce in massive numbers, so establishing their political credentials; and that at its conclusion they were rewarded with the vote. There is enough truth in this for it to have been the orthodoxy at the fiftieth anniversary of the war’s outbreak, in 1964; by 2014 interpretations had moved on. They recognised that during the war the overall increase in the female workforce in Britain was comparatively small, because many were in jobs before it; that instead women changed employment, seizing the opportunities which war industries created; that, after the war, working women were disappointed, because they were now caught in jobs which were either being cut as Britain demobilised or from which they were ejected to allow for the return of men from the forces. Most of them, because they were under thirty, were not even enfranchised in 1918. Only women over thirty were given the vote, partly because the government reckoned that many would be married and would behave more conservatively than would returning veterans bent on socialism as the reward for their service
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to the state. Most of the women who served the country lost out politically as well as economically; most of the men were at least given the vote. The introduction of universal male suffrage for those aged over twenty-one, except for the temporary exclusion of conscientious objectors, and the immediate inclusion of servicemen who had not reached the age of twenty-one, went almost entirely unnoticed in 2018. My tendency to return to these three themes on the committees on which I served was tolerated by my colleagues, and even listened to by one, Professor the Reverend Norman Drummond, who chaired the WW100 Scotland Commemorations Panel. He proposed that Scotland should support an academic conference on the home front as part of its contribution to the centenary commemorations, thus directly addressing two out of my three worries. My first debt is to him, even if I was immediately hoisted on a petard of my own making: the need to respond by organising the conference and to leave a lasting academic contribution by editing this volume. As I was due to retire from my Oxford professorship in 2015, to return to my native Scotland and to take up a post at the University of St Andrews, Norman Drummond raised the idea with the Dr Louise Richardson, the university’s Principal. She served, as I did, on the WW100 Scotland Commemorations Panel, and embraced the idea with enthusiasm. As I moved from Oxford to St Andrews, Louise Richardson moved in the other direction. Her successor, Professor Sally Mapstone (another migrant from Oxford), also gave it her full support. Fiona Hyslop MSP, the Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs throughout the period of the centenary, committed the Scottish government to the project. Most importantly she promised the core funding that ensured the conference would go ahead. The United Kingdom government matched the Scottish funding, and I am grateful to the Rt Hon Dr Andrew Murrison MP, the Prime Minister’s Special Representative for the Centenary of the First World War. I must thank the Scottish government team, Ann Wells and Marion Morris, for all their help, and the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (as it now is), especially Clare Pillman, Dave Thompson and Anne Kennedy. At St Andrews, Maura Petrie proved a tower of administrative strength: I could not have done it without her. I should thank Lynne McMillan and Jenny Halley from the School of International Relations, and two doctoral students, Christopher Flaherty, who helped identify potential speakers, and Sneha Reddy Tumu, who with Maura saw that they were all in the right place on the right day with the right equipment. Steve Bargeton of the Press Office helped to promote the event. In contacting, prodding and thanking the contributors to the conference and to this volume I had the support of Ruth Kirby and Lina Mangen. Part of both governments’ expectations in return for their funding was that we should deliver wider educational benefits. Before the conference proper
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opened, we mounted a day-long programme specifically designed for school pupils. Sir Michael Morpurgo addressed an audience of about 600 in the university’s Younger Hall, to their obvious delight and amusement. I am enormously grateful to him for his time and commitment. Never Such Innocence, the educational programme set up by Lady Lucy French, to enable school pupils to express their responses in poetry and art to the experience of the First World War, mounted workshops led by her and Lucy Kentish. That same evening, Magnus Linklater, who writes for The Times and also served on the WW100 Scotland panel, chaired an evening discussion on ‘What does Remembrance mean for us today?’ Contributors included: Oliver Emanuel, the playwright responsible for three productions mounted by the National Theatre of Scotland on the theme of the First World War and supported by 14–18 NOW; Sebastian Faulks, the author – not least of Birdsong – and a member of the United Kingdom’s centenary advisory panel; Chloe Dewe Mathews, whose photographs of some of the war’s execution sites, Shot at dawn, were commissioned by 14–18 NOW; and Jenny Waldman, director of 14–18 NOW, the First World War Centenary Arts Commissions. I thank them all for making the journey to St Andrews and for promoting a lively debate. During the conference another photographer, Michael St Maur Sheil, mounted an exhibition of his images of the war’s battlefields today, Fields of Battle – Lands of Peace. We were privileged to have them, even if only for a few days; they have now gone to the National World War I Memorial and Museum in Kansas City. On the second night, Matthew Lee of the Imperial War Museum showed a selection of films of the British home front from the museum’s collection. His choice of footage was extraordinarily appropriate, and Stephen Horne’s live piano accompaniment recreated the atmosphere of an early twentieth-century cinema. In reality, we were in the Byre Theatre thanks to the enthusiastic support of its artistic director, Liam Sinclair. We had designated the final day, a Saturday, ‘families’ day’. It began with the last of three plenary lectures, open to the public but also designed to be part of the conference, this one being delivered by Susan Grayzel (the others were given by Catriona Pennell and Martin Daunton). In the second half of the morning, the university’s Special Collections presented an exhibition of their First World War holdings and invited the public to ‘show and tell’ material in their own families’ possession. Patricia Keppie of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission was on hand to explain the work of the Commission, to help identify the locations of graves, and to draw attention to those in Fife. At the end of the day, on a beautiful mid-summer’s evening, the pipes and drums of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards beat the retreat, by kind permission of their commanding officer, in St Salvator’s Quad and the Lord Lieutenant of Fife, Robert Balfour, took the salute. Much of this was recorded by Catriona Oliphant of Chrome Radio. She also interviewed all the speakers at the conference for a series of podcasts on the
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British home front, specifically designed to be an aid for schools and freely available for downloading from Soundcloud (link https://soundcloud.com/ chromeradio/sets/British-home-front-1914-1918). Andrew Murrison recommended I form a committee to advise on the conference’s planning, and that they should represent the four home nations and the Republic of Ireland. They were Adrian Gregory of Pembroke College, Oxford for England, Lar Joye of the National Museum of Ireland for the Republic, Ferghal McGarry of Queen’s University Belfast for Northern Ireland, and Christopher Williams, originally of Cardiff University but since 2017 at Cork, for Wales. I am most grateful to them for their advice and for chairing the conference sessions. They also contributed to the podcast series by discussing the experience of the war for each of their nations. As I was the committee representative for Scotland, I thought it sensible to put the discussion of its experience in the capable hands of Dr William Kenefick, of the University of Dundee, and Derek Patrick of St Andrews. The recordings were made possible through the 1926 Foundation, and we owe a debt of gratitude to John Cawthorn, also a major donor to the University Library’s collections on the war through the Russell Cawthorn Foundation. The First World War demanded the mobilisation not just of Britain’s armed forces but of the nation as a whole. Industries, hitherto focused on other forms of production, were converted to the output of war-related goods. Land, given over to grazing, was brought back under the plough. Areas of neglect, from chemicals to forestry, attracted fresh investment. War forced the pace of innovation, and many of the changes – accepted as temporarily necessary – proved more permanent. The state acquired the means to control the lives of individuals, deciding where and how they worked, regulating their leisure and consumption, and taxing them on their inflated earnings. It would never withdraw to its pre-war position, and it would utilise the experience of the First World War both when it confronted economic crisis in 1929 and when it once again found itself at war in 1939. Nonetheless, those who fought the Second World War came to see the First World War as a lost opportunity. They harnessed that second mobilisation to create a welfare state, and in doing so highlighted what Britain had not consolidated after 1918. After the First World War, the British scheme of official histories, in common with those of other belligerents, largely ignored the war’s economic and social history. The government sponsored multi-volume histories of the Ministry of Munitions and of its seaborne trade, both central to its war effort, but ignored everything else. In 1924, however, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published its plan for an Economic and Social History of the World War. The British series eventually reached twenty-four volumes. Many of them were written by individuals who had themselves held positions of responsibility, and so were not disinterested parties, but the Carnegie series – which embraced neutrals as well as belligerents, and ultimately resulted in
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132 books (with others left in draft but unpublished) – established the foundation on which subsequent historians have built. By the 1970s, academic historians had begun to do their own numbercrunching as the public archives were opened for examination. For Britain, agriculture, food, coal, manpower, propaganda, and demography became the subjects of what are now standard works, by P. E. Dewey, L. M. Barnett, Barry Supple, Keith Grieves, Michael Sanders, Philip Taylor and Jay Winter, and social historians, with Arthur Marwick, Christopher Wrigley and Gail Braybon to the fore, examined labour relations and the employment of women. Since then, however, academic attention has increasingly turned to the role of memory and memorialisation, to cultural history and the construction of narratives. The chapters of this book, all but one of which were presented at the conference, seek to build on all this earlier work. They take the view that women should not be addressed as a specific topic in their own right, since that only perpetuates a form of marginalisation. Instead, they see the contribution of women manifested in almost every aspect of the nation’s war effort. Moreover, that process has been helped by the opportunity which the book presents to fuse the economic history of the 1970s with the subsequent trends in social and cultural history, and so surmount the somewhat artificial division which has emerged between them. Discussed here are issues which either have been largely neglected of late or have never been properly studied hitherto. This book therefore uses the centenary to make a scholarly contribution to the commemoration’s legacy.
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A NOTE O N THE ILLUSTRATIONS
The illustrations in this book are in many cases integral to the text, adding another dimension to our understanding of the British home front in the First World War. Because it was the first war to be comprehensively captured by the camera, we have come visualise it in photographic terms. Thanks to the availability of relatively cheap, pocket (or vest) cameras, many participants in the war recorded their personal experiences photographically rather than in diaries or letters. By contrast, the images in this book were created overwhelmingly by professionals for official bodies like the Ministry of Information. Taken by George Lewis, Horace Nicholls and others, many are stunning examples of technical skill, excellent lighting and careful composition. In addition they show empathy for their subjects. The war also precipitated a boom for graphic artists. Posters, cartoons and caricatures captured – as photographs often could not – sentiments and reactions, jokes and regrets. One of the first in the field was Frank Brangwyn, a Belgian-born Catholic, who came to Britain as a child in 1874. During the war Brangwyn produced posters for the newspapers and for warrelated charities and after it he undertook many commissions for war memorials. In February 1916 the official war artists scheme was set up under the auspices of Wellington House, the home of Britain’s War Propaganda Bureau, which became first in February 1917 the Department of Information and in 1918 a fully fledged ministry. The first artist on the scheme’s books, Muirhead Bone, covered not just the western front but also the fleet in its British bases, shipbuilding and munitions production. His prints were published and distributed on behalf of individual government departments by the magazine, Country Life. Possibly the scheme’s most ambitious single commission was for a series of lithographs entitled The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals. A total of eighteen artists, Brangwyn and Bone among them, were asked to produce sixty-six prints. The first twelve images in the set were single portrayals in colour of the ‘ideals’ for which the British nation was fighting. The remaining prints – in black and white – were dedicated to Britain’s ‘efforts’ to
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achieve these ideals. One set each was devoted to making soldiers and sailors, but the remaining sets were devoted to aspects of the home front, from the building of ships and the manufacture of guns to the cultivation of the land and the felling of timber, and with a separate series on the work of women. These prints form a major element in the illustrations chosen for this book.
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u Introduction
In 1912, two years before the outbreak of the First World War, the London publishers, Methuen and Co., brought out ‘a completely new edition, revised and brought up to date’, of G. R. Porter’s The Progress of the Nation in its Various Social and Economic Relations from the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Porter was a founder of the Statistical Society who, when the Board of Trade was restructured in 1834, was appointed to head its statistical section. He produced the first edition of The Progress of the Nation in 1836–8, and revised it twice, in 1846 and 1851, before his death in the following year. Porter was writing when Britain’s status as the first industrialised nation in the world enabled it to produce finished goods in greater abundance and more cheaply than other more ‘backward’ economies. Free trade paid, as it enabled Britain to secure export markets which others could not satisfy or at prices which they could not match. In 1846, the prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, divided his own party, the Conservatives, to end agricultural protection by repealing tariffs on corn. What followed, in the words of the 1912 edition of The Progress of the Nation, was that ‘we find the family budget of the ordinary well-to-do artisan in the towns now [contains] a range of items which only the rich could command in Porter’s day’. The variety of imported food was not an unalloyed benefit, because ‘the proportion of income that has to be spent on food is larger for the very poor’, probably two-thirds in total, with 21 per cent going on bread and flour, and 18 per cent on meat, bacon and fish. But the point remained, that even the poorest could now eat meat once a week, tea was universal, and ‘only in the remote agricultural districts’ did ‘the staple diet of the poor’, bread and bacon or in Scotland oatmeal, still survive.1
1
G. R. Porter, The Progress of the Nation in Its Various Social and Economic Relations from the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century, revised and brought up to date by F. W. Hirst (London: Methuen, 1912), pp. 435–6. For general accounts of the war which unite the military history with the social and economic effects, see Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell and Polity, 1986); and more succinctly John Bourne, Britain and the Great War, 1914–1918 (London: Arnold, 1989).
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Figure I.1 Mars appeals to Vulcan, autolithograph for The Daily Chronicle, by Frank Brangwyn, 1916. Private collection: photo Abbott and Holder.
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Porter’s original text was divided into seven sections, but he then added an eighth to cover Britain’s colonies. The 1912 edition abandoned coverage of the latter as requiring another volume. This book, on the British home front in the First World War, follows the same principle.2 Both are the poorer for it, because Britain’s relationship to its empire had fundamentally changed since Porter’s third edition in 1851. Its control had been formalised, not least after the Indian mutiny, when the crown replaced the East India Company as the government of India. By 1912, Britain’s trading relationship with its empire had also been cemented, partly in response to Britain’s relative economic decline as other countries industrialised and did so in new sectors and with more up-to-date plant. Although absolute growth had continued across most sectors of the economy before 1914, Britain’s gross national product had fallen behind those of the United States and Germany. Free trade was increasingly underpinned by a growing reliance on colonial markets. In 1872 British exports were valued at £315 million, of which only £66 million went to British possessions; by 1902 they were worth £343 million, £116 million of which represented exports to the empire. In 1910, India was Britain’s major customer, taking goods valued at £45 million. Exports to Germany, its biggest trading partner outside the empire, were worth £37 million and those to the United States £31 million. Two of its next three leading customers, in rank order Australia, France and Canada, were dominions.3 By 1912 many imperialists recognised that, if the empire was to have a future, it would be as a federation built round these four so-called ‘white’ dominions. Canada had become self-governing in 1867, Australia in 1901, New Zealand and South Africa in 1907. Such ideas were developed by the ‘kindergarten’ of Alfred, Lord Milner, the High Commissioner in South Africa between 1897 and 1905, and from 1909 by the Round Table, a forum for the discussion of imperial politics. As a ‘race patriot’, Milner envisaged an empire dominated by the British who had built it, but in so doing he left India, the socalled ‘jewel in the crown’, out of account. He even turned down the opportunity to be its viceroy in 1905. In 1883, J. R. Seeley’s The Expansion of England had accepted that Britain would grant India its independence, but he did not imagine it would happen in the foreseeable future. By 1917, 2
3
Charles Lucas, The Empire at War, 5 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1921–6) remains the only overall survey of colonial home fronts, but there are relevant essays in Ashley Jackson (ed.), The British Empire and the First World War (London: Routledge, 2016), and recent accounts of specific dominions include Joan Beaumont, Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2013); David Mackenzie (ed.), Canada and the First World War: Essays in Honour of Robert Craig Brown (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005); Steven Loveridge, Calls to Arms: New Zealand Society and Commitment to the Great War (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2014); Bill Nasson, WW1 and the People of South Africa (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2014). Porter, Progress, p. 527.
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however, India was represented in the Imperial War Cabinet in London, and on 20 August the Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu, announced that it was British government policy increasingly to associate Indians ‘in every branch of the administration . . . with a view to the progressive realisation of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire’.4 When the great powers met to make peace in Paris in 1919, India joined the ‘white dominions’ in sending its own delegation. It was war which helped change this narrative. The empire had no united governance and no single ministry in London, but if it had a common identity, it was in part due to defence. As Milner put it when he left Johannesburg in 1905: ‘When we, who call ourselves Imperialists, talk of the British Empire, we think of a group of states, independent of one another in their local affairs, but bound together for the defence of their common interests and the development of a common civilisation, and so bound, not in an alliance . . ., but in a permanent organic union’.5 The Committee of Imperial Defence, a subcommittee of the British cabinet, was formed in 1902; a colonial conference was held in 1907, and in 1909 was followed by another convened specifically to discuss defence; the newly created general staff of the British army was rebranded as the Imperial General Staff in time for the next imperial conference, held in 1911.6 When Britain went to war, it did so as an empire. In 1912 the revised edition of Porter highlighted not the role of empire, but the effects of free trade. Although British manufacturing, particularly of textiles, had stayed buoyant, British agriculture had not. It had suffered a steep decline from the 1870s, especially in the face of cheap corn from North America. By 1912 consumption of wheat per head of the population had grown nearly six-fold since 1840, but 84 per cent of it was imported, although domestic production of barley and oats still outstripped imports. The overall result was food whose prices were not only low but comparatively stable precisely because they drew on multiple sources of supply. ‘There is hardly a
4
5
6
George Morton-Jack, The Indian Empire at War: From Jihad to Victory, the Untold Story of the Indian Army in the First World War (London: Little Brown, 2018), pp. 432–4; Judith Brown, ‘War and the Colonial Relationship: Britain, India and the War of 1914–1918’, in DeWitt C. Ellinwood and S. D. Pradhan (eds.), India and World War I (New Delhi: Manohar, 1978), pp. 19–47. A. M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics: A Study of Lord Milner in Opposition and in Power (New York: Macmillan, 1964), p. 123. The literature on these developments includes Donald C. Gordon, The Dominion Partnership in Imperial Defense, 1870–1914 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965); Nicholas d’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Politics: Defence Administration in Peacetime Britain (London: Oxford University Press, 1975); John Gooch, The Plans of War: The General Staff and British Military Strategy c. 1900–1916 (London: Routledge, 1974); David G. Morgan-Owen, The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
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single article of common consumption for which we are not mainly dependent for supplies from abroad,’ the 1912 edition of Porter concluded.7 Nor was this a phenomenon confined to food: ‘Nearly all our principal industries . . . depend largely or entirely for their raw materials upon foreign and colonial supplies’.8 Britain’s security, both economic and social, rested therefore on a globalised trading system, which pivoted on London. Although British industry had become increasingly dependent on the colonies for its markets, and was still disproportionately reliant on textiles than on newer products such as iron, steel and chemicals, Britain’s financial services dominated world trade. British banks provided the money, British insurers covered the risks, and British shipping carried the cargo. Furthermore, the bulk of this business was done in sterling: currencies were pegged to gold, which meant in effect that, because the Bank of England stressed its gold’s convertibility, exchange rates were set against the pound. The 1912 edition of Porter reflected this growth of, and these changes in, the British economy by abandoning the book’s original seven sections and adopting a completely new organisation in thirty-eight chapters. They covered many of the same themes as those in this volume: family structures, female employment, housing, rents, crime, education, local government, agriculture, mining, iron and steel manufacture, shipbuilding, textiles, timber, food supply, shipping, currency, banking, debt and taxation. However, they contained a significant difference. The discussion of the British home front which follows rests on the ways in which each of these elements of national life and of British production responded to the challenges posed by the First World War. The war made demands of Britain as a whole, not just its navy and army. The Progress of the Nation discussed both services, but it assumed that war was an affair for them alone. In 1911, the year before its publication, the chancellor of the exchequer, David Lloyd George, had used his annual Mansion House speech on the state of the economy to warn the City of London about the possibility of a general European war precipitated by Germany. The Progress of the Nation effectively discounted such a danger. The editor of the new version of Porter, F. W. Hirst, had also been editor of the Economist since 1907, and his staff compiled most of the additional material. Hirst did much to update the Economist: he made it more international in outlook by bringing in foreign contributors, and he widened its coverage to embrace politics as well as economics. He was also (in keeping with the traditions of the Economist) a convinced free trader and a Liberal closer in thinking to W. E. Gladstone and John Morley than to the ‘new’
7 8
Porter, Progress, p. 433; see also pp. 436–9. Porter, Progress, p. 527.
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Liberals who had entered government in December 1905. He married a greatniece of Richard Cobden, who had been a Radical Member of Parliament and a prime mover of the Anti-Corn Law League in the 1840s. Hirst and his wife lived in one of Cobden’s houses, and – like Cobden – Hirst remained wedded to Liberalism as libertarianism. His bookplate carried the words, ‘Liberty above all things’. He rejected collectivism and social reform funded by redistributive taxation.9 He was not a pacifist, because he recognised the right to national self-defence against invasion, but he opposed the South African War (as Lloyd George had done), and he saw the function of the armed forces in terms which directly reflected those expressed by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. Agricultural societies could improvise mass armies after the peasants had sowed their fields, provided they were back in time to bring in the harvest. (This was a pressure that even in 1914 not all armies had escaped.) By contrast, industrial economies were not seasonally dependent, and so by taking away their workforce, war undermined productivity. They, Smith had argued, should follow the principle of the division of labour, and so maintain a professional army, small, well trained, and equipped with the sophisticated weaponry which industry could manufacture. In that way, the basic defence needs of the state could be met with minimal economic disruption.10 This was the approach to defence which underpinned the 1912 edition of Porter’s work. Hirst railed against the failure both to pay off the debt created by the South African War in 1899–1902 and to return expenditure on the army and navy to the levels of 1897–8. Instead, not least thanks to the navy and its obsession with Dreadnoughts, joint defence spending had increased in the decade up to 1909–10 by £22.8 million, a rise of roughly 50 per cent. Hirst believed that cutting armaments would enable wages and profits to rise, pauperism to decline, and ‘the health and intelligence of the nation’ to improve. All this, he contended, could be done without danger; on the contrary, the country would be better prepared for war. ‘It is positively unsafe, from the standpoint of a possible great war, to keep the instrument of taxation “at concert pitch” in ordinary times; the strength of the nation, in war as well as in peace, depends upon the soundness of its finances.’11 This was not a minority view. The Liberals, who had been in power since December 1905, albeit without a majority after the two elections of 1910, may have depended on Labour support and so more inclined to collectivist solutions than individualists like Hirst could support, but they had set out to curb 9
10 11
For biographical details, see A. C. Howe, ‘Hirst, Francis William (1873–1953)’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk:2095/ 101093/ref:odnb/3389/; Mark Brady, ‘Against the Tide: The Life of Francis W. Hirst’, The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, 49:6 (June 1999). F. W. Hirst, The Political Economy of War (London: Dent, 1915), pp. 4–11. Porter, Progress, pp. 650–1.
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defence spending. Both Jacky Fisher, when he became First Sea Lord in 1904, and the Liberal Secretary of State for War from December 1905, Richard Burdon Haldane, sought to use greater efficiency to achieve economy. In this Haldane proved more successful than Fisher. The First Sea Lord saw total spending on the navy fall from over £36 million in 1904–5 (it had been under £21 million in 1897–8) to £31 million in 1907–8, but it then rose again to approaching £36 million in 1909–10, and was estimated to exceed £44 million by 1911–12. This volatility in part reflects the point: Britain saw itself as a maritime empire, and that perception had political and popular purchase. Both Fisher and Haldane had also designed their respective armed forces on the assumption that Britain would not commit a mass army to a war on the continent of Europe. The fleet was Britain’s principal weapon in the event of major European war, and its benchmark was the so-called two-power standard, the capacity to match the next two ranking navies in the world. The British Expeditionary Force was designed in the first instance for imperial defence, most obviously – at least before Britain’s entente with Russia in 1907 – for the protection of India. The decision to send the army to support the French was only reached on 5 August, after Britain had declared war on Germany.12 When two days earlier, on 3 August 1914. Sir Edward Grey delivered his statement to the House of Commons on the situation in Europe, he deliberately left its employment open, taking pains to highlight its responsibilities in the wider world. He referred to a continental obligation, but it was the Royal Navy’s commitment, spelt out in the Anglo-French naval agreement of 1912, to defend France’s northern coastline. The strategy in the event of war which Grey outlined to the Commons was not so much continental as maritime and economic. ‘For us, with a powerful Fleet’, he said, ‘which we believe able to protect our commerce, to protect our shores, and to protect our interests, if we are engaged in war, we shall suffer but little more than we shall suffer if we stand aside.’13 Grey’s assumptions about the costs of British participation look staggeringly complacent because they are now counted in lives lost. Grey was thinking not of deaths in muddy trenches, but of the economic implications. Britain had been a neutral in every inter-state war waged since 1856, except for the South African War. Its livelihood had come to depend on Pax Britannica. When others had fought, Britain had, if possible, asserted its rights as a neutral to continue trading with both sides. By 3 August the war in Europe had already acquired a scale that made these conflicts poor precedents.14 As Grey spoke, 12
13 14
Avner Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 308. Hansard, House of Commons debates, 5th series, vol. 65, 3 August 1914, cc. 1809–32. Gabriela Frei, Great Britain, International Law, and the Evolution of Maritime Strategic Thought, 1856–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
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stock exchanges were closing and runs on national banks were creating shortages of cash. ‘We are going to suffer’, he went on. ‘Foreign trade is going to stop, not because our trade routes are closed, but because there is no trade at the other end. Continental nations engaged in war . . . cannot carry on the trade with us that they are carrying on in times of peace.’ The sources of British strength as trumpeted by free trading Liberals like Hirst, its reliance on imports of food and raw materials, and its dependence on exports to balance its trade, would become vulnerabilities. If Britain itself were a belligerent, it would have to refashion its peacetime strengths into weapons of war. Those which came readily to hand for the task were those on which Britain’s global trading system depended and on which it had relied in the past, the economy and the navy. As the chancellor of the exchequer, Lloyd George, put it on 8 September 1914, referring to the Napoleonic Wars, ‘We need all our resources, not merely the men, but the cash. We have won with the “silver bullet” before.’15 The deployment of the British Expeditionary Force to France, although of enormous importance symbolically, and ultimately of long-term strategic significance too, was not the government’s most pressing concern in early August 1914. Nor was it a ‘war plan’, beyond its implicit acceptance that the British army would fight alongside the French. A war plan had to be conceived on a grander scale, and to draw together all the levers of national power. Britain did not have such a plan in 1914, and nor did any other of the original belligerents. But Britain had some ideas about how the war might be fought which went beyond the narrowly naval or the purely military. In the aftermath of the South African War, Britain had become increasingly aware that its dependence on imported food made it critically reliant on the Royal Navy to keep open its trading routes in time of war. A royal commission on food supply, set up in 1903, was confident that the navy could protect British trade, but recommended that, in order to keep the merchant fleet at sea in the event of war, a scheme of national insurance be prepared to indemnify shipowners against losses. To call what followed a ‘war plan’ would be to dignify a more ad hoc and improvised response, but it prepared the ground for just that economic and societal mobilisation to which Grey somewhat falteringly pointed in August 1914. First, Britain realised that, if it was vulnerable to an attack on trade, so too was Germany. The latter’s growth enabled it to enter global markets at competitive prices, and its burgeoning population depended on imports not just for raw materials but also – as Germany’s population moved from the land to the cities – for food. Britain’s Naval Intelligence Division planned to
15
David Lloyd George, La victoire en marche (a translation of Through Terror to Triumph) (Paris: Henri Didier, 1916), p. 20.
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blockade Germany. That was the offensive side of economic warfare. It would take time to have effect, and in the interim Britain would need to defend itself and to sustain its allies. The blockade carried implications for defence, including the arrangements for shipping insurance. The two elements confirmed the maritime underpinnings of Britain’s strategy in the event of European war. The plan’s main driver was Charles Ottley, who in 1908 moved from the Directorship of Naval Intelligence to become the secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence. He took with him, as assistant secretary, a Royal Marine captain, Maurice Hankey, who succeeded Ottley as secretary in 1912. Hankey later described the planning in which Ottley and he were engaged as involving four principal elements, economic pressure applied by the fleet against Germany, the securing of supplies for Britain, cooperation with the dominions, and the drafting of a ‘war book’. The latter, approved by the Committee of Imperial Defence on 14 July 1914, was a compendium of instructions for government (including the insurance arrangements) to come into force on the outbreak of war. Its roots lay in a memorandum for the Committee of Imperial Defence drafted by Ottley in November 1909 and called ‘the War Organization of the British Empire’; it had pointed out that the actions to be taken on the outbreak of a major conflict were matters not just for the Admiralty and the War Office, but also involved ‘the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, India Office, Customs and Excise Department, Post Office, High Court, Home Office, and Board of Trade, and possibly other departments’.16 None of this meant that the Committee of Imperial Defence had fully anticipated the levels of economic and social mobilisation the war would require of Britain. Hankey’s biographer, Stephen Roskill, highlighted both its ‘failure to study the mobilisation of industry and scientific research for war, including the allocation of man power and scarce materials,’ and its neglect of ‘the high-level administrative machinery needed to replace conventional peace-time procedures’. His overall conclusion, albeit one written with the knowledge of two world wars, not just one, was that ‘the scale and nature of the national effort required in total war entirely escaped its attention’.17 Even if it had proved more perspicacious, the Committee of Imperial Defence had no executive powers. It was an advisory committee of cabinet, and one of three major organisations engaged in making strategy. Another was the army’s general staff, and it got some of what it sought on 5 August 1914. The third was the Admiralty.
16
17
Maurice Hankey, The Supreme Command, 1914–1918, 2 vols., vol. 1 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1961), pp. 87, 120, 122; see also Stephen Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets, 3 vols., vol. 1 (London: Collins, 1970), pp. 84–5, 89–142. Roskill, Hankey, vol. 1, p. 141.
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Neither of these two service organisations spoke with a single voice. Some soldiers thought the army should act in concert with Belgium, not France, and others (including Douglas Haig) thought Britain’s small professional army should be held at home to act as a cadre for the much bigger force a continental war would demand. The navy was far from convinced that economic warfare should take priority over fleet action, and nor did it have a coherent view of what economic warfare should target.18 Had it resolved both issues, it would still have had to persuade the Foreign Office that a blockade which sought to curtail the trading rights of neutral powers, including the United States, was in Britain’s best interests, and to convince the Board of Trade that locking wartime Britain out of lucrative markets, even those of enemy states, was the most appropriate way to fight a war, especially if Britain’s contribution to Allied strategy was to provide the ‘silver bullets’. These were issues that would be resolved – often messily and over time – in response to challenges that emerged after the outbreak of the war, not before. The theme for most Britons on 4 August was dramatic change, but the government’s public utterances stressed continuity. That, after all, had been Grey’s point to the Commons on 3 August: that Britain as a trading power would be as affected, whether it was in or out of the war. The Liberal government, however rocky its hold on power looked before the crisis, was not broken by its decision to enter the conflict. On 31 July 1914 it was about to split; by 2 August it was united. It lost only two members of the cabinet and none of the principal offices of state changed hands. H. H. Asquith remained as prime minister, and did so until December 1916. There was no Liberal opposition to the vote for war credits on 6 August. Discontented backbench Liberal MPs opposed to the war or the manner of Britain’s entry found themselves isolated, while Liberal imperialists in government now enjoyed the support not only of Irish nationalists but also of the Conservative party, whose leader, Andrew Bonar Law, pledged to back Asquith on 2 August. By the time the government did confront a crisis that threatened to bring it down, ten months had elapsed, and it was not over the decision to go to war, but over how the war should be fought. On 9 May 1915 the British contribution to an Allied offensive on the western front, an attack on Aubers Ridge, failed. The commander-in-chief in France, Sir John French, told Charles Repington, the military correspondent of The Times, that it was not his fault but that of those in charge of war production at home. He complained of a 18
Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation, part 3 is the best introduction to pre-war thinking on food and blockade. Nicholas Lambert, Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012) argues that an economic war designed to cause financial collapse was the settled pre-war option, but it was lost sight of when the war broke out; the evidence to support this proposition, and for this degree of co-ordination, is far from self-evident.
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shortage of artillery shells, so undermining the prime minister – who under pressure from the navy had reassured an audience in Newcastle on this very point the previous month. The Times published Repington’s report on 14 May. On the next day, Jacky Fisher, who had been recalled as First Sea Lord in August 1914, resigned, frustrated by his differences with the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, and having turned against the Dardanelles campaign, of which Churchill had been the major advocate. Paradoxically, the result was to strengthen Asquith, not topple him. Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives wanted the election which was due in 1915. In forming a coalition government, Asquith evaded possible defeat at the polls and sidestepped the Liberals who opposed a deal with the opposition. Although he brought both Conservatives (eight in all) and Labour (a single representative) into office, the Liberals continued to hold all the major posts. No leading Liberals canvassed Asquith’s removal in May 1915; that was left to Bonar Law, whose only reward was the Colonial Office.19 Over the next eighteen months, Asquith’s government took all the key decisions to mobilise the nation for war, and it did so with public as well as parliamentary consent. When Lloyd George became prime minister in December 1916, much of the hard work had been done.20 This was not how it seemed, especially – but not only – to Conservatives. In June 1915, F. S. Oliver, an Edinburgh-educated Liberal Radical by background, whose business interests included the London drapers, Debenham and Freebody, published Ordeal by Battle, a book which enjoyed an instantaneous success. Oliver was one of a group, including Milner, which campaigned for ‘national efficiency’. It called for a new political party and endeavoured, without much success, to draw in ministers from both Liberals (especially Lloyd George) and Conservatives. Ordeal by Battle damned the outgoing Liberal government but had nothing good to say of its replacement. In the words of the Times Literary Supplement, ‘the book is a plea for national service in its widest sense, the complete organisation of Britain with a view to victory’.21 It castigated Asquith in a phrase of his own coining, ‘wait and see’, and dismissed him as a war leader. Another phrase which entered popular debate – ‘business as usual’ – was also used to attack the government, although in this case it had not been minted by the prime minister. It first appeared on shop windows after the 19
20
21
Cameron Hazlehurst, Politicians at War July 1914 to May 1915: A Prologue to the Triumph of Lloyd George (London: Cape, 1971), p. 267. John Turner, British Politics and the Great War: Coalition and Conflict 1915–1918 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 56. F. S. Oliver, Ordeal by Battle (London: Macmillan, 1915), ‘some press opinions’, inserted at the back of the July printing. See also Stephen Gwynn (ed.), The Anvil of War: Letters between F.S. Oliver and His Brother 1914–1918 (London: Macmillan, 1935).
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outbreak of the war as a demonstration of resolve, a statement to customers that trade would continue however great the adversity. That was precisely what Grey and Lloyd George wanted if the economic and maritime foundations of British Liberalism were to contribute to the war effort. But in making ‘business as usual’ a slogan, as Lloyd George did on 4 August 1914, the government suggested that it had not adapted sufficiently to the war, was reluctant to take the radical steps which circumstances demanded, and remained too wedded to the principles of free trade when war demanded state intervention. These charges were in many respects unwarranted, but Asquith’s administration could not simply and publicly deny them without generating second-order economic and political problems.22 The government in August 1914 may have been a Liberal one, but it had moved beyond doctrinaire individualism well before the war’s outbreak and its attachment to free trade did not prevent it from interfering in the workings of the market after it. In the opening week of the war, Lloyd George stepped in to steady the banks and to restore liquidity: ‘business as usual’ was propped up by the chancellor of the exchequer, not the workings of laissez faire.23 The government also started buying up food stocks on the global market, commencing with sugar on 12 August 1914, but it had to do so covertly, both to preserve the neutrality of those countries from whom it purchased goods and so as not to force up prices, which domestically it fixed. Initially the war caused demand to fall, and so employers, especially in businesses that were not warrelated, laid off workers. But then the war (and the state with it) generated its own demand, and by November 1914 full employment put workers in a strong negotiating position. Wages did not keep pace with prices, and in February 1915 strikes on Clydeside forced the government to arbitrate between employers and unions, a role it had persistently refused to accept in the years immediately prior to the war. In order to ensure production, it settled on wage increases which averaged 10 per cent and so threatened an inflationary spiral fed by rising prices, climbing wages, and then too much money chasing too few goods. In March 1915 Lloyd George convened a meeting at the Treasury, at which employers were not present, when trade union leaders in the munitions industries accepted the principles of ‘dilution’ (the introduction of unskilled labour to the workforce), compulsory arbitration and suspension of the right to strike. Within six months, the government had intervened in
22
23
David French, British Economic and Strategic Planning 1905–1915 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982), pp. 85–119; David French, ‘The Rise and Fall of “business as usual”’, in Kathleen Burk (ed.), War and the State: The Transformation of British Government, 1914–1919 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982), pp. 7–31. Richard Roberts, Saving the City: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) is the most recent account.
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three markets, those of money, food and labour, and all before a coalition government was installed. The Treasury agreement rested on the Defence of the Realm Act, which had been passed on 8 August 1914. Initially intended to tackle espionage, in practice it gave the government ‘wide and undefined powers’ in order to ensure ‘the public safety and defence of the realm’.24 By the war’s end hundreds of regulations had been passed under its authority, including those enforcing licensing hours and introducing British summer time, but also those cracking down on dissent, protest or pacifism.25 The very fact that it was a Liberal government that behaved so illiberally was what made its actions acceptable. The fissures in British society present before the war had not disappeared, but the idea that the war was an emergency requiring extraordinary responses could command the centre ground more easily when it was presented in terms of reluctance rather than enthusiasm. ‘The fact is’, a former War Office official who became assistant secretary at the Ministry of Food later in the war, wrote in 1924, ‘that in the great majority of cases, what was lawful and what was not lawful did not so much matter; what mattered was the extent to which any measure commanded general support and was applied impartially all round . . . Similarly, many devices which were legally unsound or doubtful, were enforced without difficulty and accepted without demur, provided that they had behind them the weight of popular opinion and the patriotic support of the most influential men of the trade.’26 As prime minister, Asquith had to find this middle ground, and so angered both those who thought he was not going fast enough and those who felt that the economic and political tenets of Gladstonian liberalism were being forfeited to a British version of Prussian militarism. As leader of the Liberal party, even when he became a coalition prime minister, he could not trumpet what he was doing without offending yet further the party’s disgruntled libertarian wing. The latter was now politically powerless, but it was vocal. Charles Trevelyan and Sir Arthur Ponsonby broke with both government and party in August 1914, to join Labour and help found the Union of Democratic Control. The latter was a body dedicated not to opposing the war (it was a bit late for that), but to demanding democratic accountability for foreign policy. After the formation of the coalition, their anxieties multiplied. On 27 May 1915, Trevelyan wrote to Ponsonby, ‘When you have reached the depths of dishonesty of Asquith and Grey over the French alliance, you are capable of any immorality’. What most worried him was that the formation of the 24
25
26
E. M. H. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control at the War Office and the Ministry of Food (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), p. 50. On this, see Brock Millman, Managing Domestic Dissent in First World War Britain (London: Frank Cass, 2000). Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, p. 64.
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coalition would lead to conscription. Two days before, F. W. Hirst had asked C. P. Scott, the editor of the Manchester Guardian, ‘Do you feel as much stirred as I do about the wickedness and folly, and shame of introducing compulsory service? I feel that this, with Protection, the Censorship, and military bureaucracy would make England no place for people like me.’27 Scott did not agree, and by 1916 he would reluctantly support conscription: he saw Germany as aggressive and imperialist, and believed that, because the Royal Navy was not sufficient to defeat it, a mass army was required. Thanks to Lord Kitchener, whom Asquith had appointed secretary of state for war on the outbreak of the war (to give the job to a soldier was another illiberal but immensely popular decision), Britain had immediately set about the formation of a mass army through voluntary recruitment. Within six weeks of the war’s outbreak almost half a million men had enlisted in the army and by the end of 1915 approaching 2.5 million. The effect was to draw skilled workers from key industries in unsustainable numbers. By mid-1915, mining had lost 21.8 per cent of its workforce, iron and steel 18.8 per cent, engineering 19.5 per cent, electrical engineering 23.7 per cent, shipbuilding 16.5 per cent, small arms manufacturers 16 per cent, and chemicals and explosives 23.8 per cent.28 The coalition government therefore found itself in a triple bind. First, the loss of labour and the conversion of industries to war production had undermined the balance of trade. The concentration of the remaining labour force in war production left few to manufacture goods for export. In 1910–13 the annual average value of British imports already exceeded that of exports by £137 million; by 1915 the excess had nearly tripled to £368 million, and by 1918 it would more than double again to £784 million (at current prices).29 In his reshuffle in May 1915, Asquith had moved Lloyd George to the newly established ministry of munitions, and appointed Reginald McKenna chancellor of the exchequer. Despite being less collectivist in his economic thinking than his predecessor, McKenna introduced both import duties and a new excess profit tax in his September budget, a further blow to free trade orthodoxy. That, however, was not his only concern. To pay for its imports Britain was having to transfer gold, to control the sterling-dollar exchange rate. By November 1915 the pound had fallen to $4.56 against a pre-war par of £4.86, and Britain and its allies had so flooded the United States with their treasury bills that the market for Allied stock was satiated. Here was the second problem, and one where economic and strategic considerations overlapped. British industry supplied Russia from 1914 and Italy from 1915, and 27
28
29
Trevor Wilson (ed.), The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott 1911–1928 (London: Collins, 1970), pp. 124–5. R. J. Q. Adams, Arms and the Wizard: Lloyd George and the Ministry of Munitions, 1915–1916 (London: Cassell, 1978), p. 72. Gerd Hardach, The First World War 1914–1918 (London: Allen Lane, 1977), p. 143.
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British finance secured the foreign borrowing of all its allies, including France, by 1916. If Britain could not maintain its trade, it would fulfil its role as the arsenal and financier of the Entente. The third lock on Britain’s position arose from the supply needs of the mass army which it had opted to create. It had to balance the manpower needs of the army with those of industry, and it had – when distributing the munitions which its industry produced – to balance the requirements of its own soldiers with those of its allies, and particularly in 1915–16 those of Russia.30 Industrialised warfare depended on artillery and especially heavy guns: over the summer of 1915 the army in France planned on adding 4,240 heavy guns to its inventory, prompting the new ministry of munitions to increase its proposed output by 1,200 per cent. Meanwhile, despite Kitchener’s efforts, the British Expeditionary Force was running short of men. Voluntary recruiting slowed over the course of 1915 while what the army euphemistically called ‘wastage’ went up. By October it needed 35,000 men a week just to maintain its existing strength. By February 1916 it was 250,000 men below establishment, and it anticipated being 400,000 below by April. McKenna’s advisor at the Treasury, John Maynard Keynes, was not sympathetic to the army’s problem, arguing in August 1915 that ‘the labour forces of the United Kingdom are so fully engaged in useful occupations that any considerable further diversion of them to military uses is alternative and not additional to the other means by which the United Kingdom, is assisting the allied cause’.31 For Lloyd George, this was a false antithesis: Britain had to do both, to use its economic muscle and to generate military power [see Fig. I.1]. Although national service was in large part about getting men for the army, it was also a device for managing the demands of the fighting fronts while not undermining the productive capacity of the home front. In January 1916, after a succession of incremental steps, the Asquith coalition undertook the war’s biggest departure from liberal orthodoxy, introducing conscription for unmarried men and widowers. The legislation passed through the Commons comfortably by 403 votes to 105 (60 of whom were Irish nationalists, although the act did not apply in Ireland). Conscription for married men followed in March, without controversy. For most of the population, conscription was overdue. They wanted equality of sacrifice, the sense that nobody should shirk his obligations and that all
30
31
Keith Neilson, Strategy and Supply: The Anglo-Russian Alliance 1914–1917 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1984). Elizabeth Johnson (ed.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. 16 (London: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 10–11; see also Hew Strachan, ‘The Battle of the Somme and British Strategy’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 21 (1998), pp. 79–95; Martin Farr, Reginald McKenna: Financier among Statesmen, 1863–1916 (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 285–340.
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families should bear the risks and travails of military service.32 The reality was somewhat different. Lloyd George had talked airily of an army of 100 divisions, twice what McKenna had in mind, and significantly more than the general staff’s target of seventy. The actual result in 1916 was sixty-two, with a further five for home service. The army’s size peaked in 1917 and fell thereafter. Conscription was implemented not centrally but locally, by Military Service Tribunals. Owing to the destruction of most of their records, it is hard to form an overall picture of their behaviour, but the evidence for those we do have suggests that many gave strong support to local businesses and industries, granting exemptions from military service to up to a half of those who applied for it.33 In Scotland, with its heavy concentration of war-related industries on Clydeside, the effect of conscription was to cut the number of men of military age joining the forces from 26.9 per cent to 14.6 per cent.34 By the beginning of 1918, this had effectively become national policy. The ministry of national service, developed in September 1917 from what had been the national service department, prioritised shipbuilding, aircraft construction and munitions production over manpower for the army. Neville Chamberlain, the first head of the department, spoke in January 1917 of creating an ‘industrial army’, and his successor, Auckland Geddes, said his objectives as minister were the transfer of labour from non-essential industries to those of national importance, the provision of men to the army without detriment to that work, and the procurement of substitutes for those whom the army did take.35 F. S. Oliver, Milner and those like them were delighted, but some Conservatives were not. Although none had opposed conscription in parliament (whereas thirty-four Liberals had), some of the party’s grandees had only followed Bonar Law out of national solidarity rather than shared ideology. Asquith had given the job of First Lord of the Admiralty to Arthur Balfour, former prime minister and the effective founder of the Committee of Imperial 32
33
34 35
Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 108–11, and what follows in Chapter 4 on ‘economies of sacrifice’. James McDermott, British Military Service Tribunals 1916–1918: ‘a very much abused body of men’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011) looks particularly at Northamptonshire; David Littlewood, ‘“Willing and Eager to go in their Turn”? Appeals from Exemption from Military Service in New Zealand and Great Britain, 1916–1918’, War in History, 21 (2014), pp. 235–58; David Littlewood, The Tool and Instrument of the Military? The Operations of the Military Service Tribunals in the East Central Division of the West Riding of Yorkshire and those of the Military Service Boards of New Zealand, 1916–1918’, Unpublished PhD dissertation, Massey University, 2015; Stuart Hallifax, ‘Citizens at War: The Experience of the Great War in Essex, 1914–1918’, D. Phil, Oxford University, 2011, pp. 227–90. J. M. Winter, The Great War and the British People (London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 28. Keith Grieves, The Politics of Manpower, 1914–1918 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. 104, 149, 170.
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Defence. Balfour favoured a naval and economic strategy, and so his position was closer to McKenna’s than to Lloyd George’s. More threatening to the coalition was the position of Lord Lansdowne. As Foreign Secretary he had engineered the entente with France in 1904, and he had also served as secretary of state for war and as viceroy to India. Brought into the Asquith coalition’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, Lansdowne had doubted the feasibility of conscription before the war. In November 1916, he wrote a memorandum which argued that Britain was running out of men and resources, and he called into question the extension of national service towards which ‘national efficiency’ pointed. At one level his timing was good: externally the American president, Woodrow Wilson, was about to launch a peace initiative, which might provide a negotiated route out of the war for both sides. Internally it was deeply provocative: Lloyd George, now the secretary of state for war, had just rejected the idea of negotiation and had called for a ‘knockout blow’ to win the war. Lansdowne could not see how that could be achieved and, given the losses on the Somme, felt Britain was destroying the very civilisation it was trying to preserve.36 Lansdowne’s memorandum did not in itself bring down the Asquith coalition, but it was indicative of the splits which had been latent within it, and it infuriated Lloyd George, who ultimately was its beneficiary. He became prime minister on 7 December 1916 and could now redefine the government in terms which would brook no compromise, either with the enemy or internally with old Liberals or more traditional Conservatives. A year later, on 29 November 1917, this time in the wake of Passchendaele, Lansdowne put his views before the public, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph. Balfour, still in government but now foreign secretary, had seen a draft, and another Conservative, Lord Robert Cecil, who had become minister for the blockade in 1916, regretted the tone, but not the content. Lansdowne’s principal supporters, however, came not from his own party, but from disgruntled Liberals. McKenna, who like Lansdowne had left government on the formation of the Lloyd George coalition, argued that a negotiated peace would reunite the Liberals. Their problem was that Asquith was still the party leader.37 Those who distrusted Lloyd George included the generals, as they were to show in May 1918 when one of their number also wrote to the press to attack the prime minister, but they were not ready to turn back to a government of ‘wait and see’. The opposition to Lloyd George was an ill-assorted group who had no individual around whom they could cohere and too many discordant views to present a common programme. Lansdowne now found himself aligned with 36
37
R. J. Q. Adams and Philip Poirier, The Conscription Controversy in Great Britain, 1900–18 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987), pp. 23–4, 80–1, 101, 145–6, 182–3; Turner, British Politics and the Great War, pp. 127–30. Turner, British Politics and the Great War, pp. 248–52.
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figures like F. W. Hirst, who had been asked to resign the editorship of the Economist in July 1916 because of the depth of his opposition to the British direction of the war, but Hirst found it impossible to bring Lansdowne and Labour round the same table. Both wanted peace, but Lansdowne in order to preserve the old order, and Labour to tear it down.38 What worried traditional Liberals was the way in which the war was being used to advance not just collectivism but also protection. Asquith’s failure to appoint Bonar Law as chancellor in May 1915 was said to have been because the Conservative leader favoured tariff reform. On the evidence of the 1910 elections, neither it nor imperial preference was a vote winner. The success of the City of London in providing financial services had buttressed Britain against its relative decline in the face of American and German competition, and workers saw protection not as a device to nurture new industries like optics and chemicals, but as likely to end the availability of cheap food. The war changed these calculations. Optics and chemicals were central to the production of binoculars, range finders, explosives and munitions, and in August 1914 the government ended all patents granted to enemy subjects. By November the Board of Trade supported the opportunity which the conflict provided to put on a sound footing domestic production of goods which before the war had been imported from Germany. As the blockade tightened the regulatory framework to prevent trading with the enemy and to sequester enemy-owned businesses across the empire, it became more than an instrument to achieve victory in the war itself. Now it was also a device to establish a competitive advantage over Germany after the war was over. In January 1915 a group of Conservatives formed the Unionist Business Committee. Built on the cohort of party members who had favoured tariff reform before the war, it also drew on businessmen from outside parliament. The committee’s aims were to develop British domestic industries and to promote imperial preference. Its rhetoric fed specifically on the idea of Germany as an expansionist and economically aggressive power. Although influential, the committee did not dominate even its own party. In a Commons debate in May 1915, marginally more Conservatives voted for the government, and so for the principle of free trade, than for imperial preference. Thereafter, protectionism gained ground, but for reasons that were pragmatic rather than doctrinaire. The pressures of war made free trade less totemic both for Liberal ministers and for its principal institutional defender, the Board of Trade. McKenna’s September 1915 budget, with its import duties, can be seen in these terms. In late 1915 a Board of Trade committee, set up by its president, Walter Runciman, another Liberal free trader, and staffed by City financiers, 38
G. R. Searle, A New England? Peace and War 1886–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), p. 765; Keith Robbins, The Abolition of War: The “peace movement” in Britain 1914–1919 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1976), pp. 158–9, 161–2.
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refined its plans to delay Germany’s economic recovery after the war. A hardening of attitudes towards Germany was a more important common denominator than any overt swing to protectionism on principle.39 These trends were consolidated at an inter-Allied economic conference held in Paris in June 1916. Its immediate purpose was to bring the British and French conduct of the blockade into closer alignment, but the French minister of commerce, Etienne Clémentel, had a yet more ambitious agenda. He saw the pre-war system of international finance as enabling indirect German control of the French economy and wanted to convert wartime Allied economic cooperation into a post-war economic bloc. The British delegation included Bonar Law, to cover the interests of the colonies, and the forthright prime minister of Australia, Billy Hughes, who would put the case for imperial preference. It was headed by Runciman, who was by now both flexible on free trade and persuaded of the need to respond to Germany. Britain supported measures to stop Germany dumping goods, to deprive Germany of mostfavoured status for five years after the war, and to put in hand measures to convert the Entente into a permanent economic partnership.40 Although the Paris agreement proved to be a dead letter after 1918, the thinking behind its resolutions was indicative of the direction which the British government would take for the war’s last two years. With Lloyd George more dependent on Conservative support than Asquith had been, his government could be more overt in its direct management of the economy. One task justified the coalition’s existence, winning the war, and that aim created the consensus which kept him in power. Although some exploited the opportunity to rationalise and nationalise Britain’s domestic structures in ways which were designed to have long-term effects, strategic necessity, not economic orthodoxy, was the driving force. Despite their ideological differences, enough Conservative, Liberal and Labour supporters agreed to hold the coalition, and so most of the country, together. As a result of the war more broadly, and of economic and social mobilisation more specifically, the people of Britain came into direct contact with the state in ways that they had never done hitherto. Before the war national identity and citizenship were ill defined, fluid and – for most people – not very important. As Hirst put it: ‘You could travel almost anywhere without a passport’.41 During the war, over 6.1 million put on the state’s uniform, and by 1918, 3.1 million more were working directly for the state in war-related
39
40 41
Georges-Henri Soutou, L’Or et le sang: les buts de guerre économigues de la première guerre mondiale (Paris: Fayard, 1989), pp. 193–227. Ibid., pp. 233–71. F. W. Hirst, ‘My journal’, Common Sense, December 1914, quoted in Caroline E. Playne, Society at War 1914–1916 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1931), p. 24.
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industries.42 By the war’s end most of those in employment were subject for the first time to direct taxation.43 The combination of press censorship from 1914 and direct state propaganda after 1917 also meant that the public’s views were as much subject to state manipulation as its labour was under state direction.44 This was a process of assimilation free of gender difference. In 1912, Hirst was particularly concerned to assess levels of female employment. In 1901 just under 4.2 million women, or 31.6 per cent of all women, were employed. In some occupations, including teaching, nursing and textile production, all of which would contribute to the war effort, women already exceeded men, but the biggest single employment for women was indoor domestic service, which occupied 1.7 million.45 By July 1914, 3.3 million women were classified as employed, a noticeable increase since the figure excluded those in domestic service or who were self-employed or worked from home, but thereafter the numbers of women did not rise as significantly as the war’s popular narrative has come to suggest. By April 1918, 4.8 million women were employed. These included new entrants to the workforce, predominantly married women or women from middle-class backgrounds, but much more important was that the war enabled about 70 per cent of women to change jobs. ‘The dilution of labour’ combined with the growth of war-related industries, especially in munitions, to encourage women to move from domestic service to the factory, or from one form of factory work to another. Women were distributed across more workplaces because of the war, and so permeated every aspect of national mobilisation (including in the home as de facto single parents), but as with men they migrated towards jobs that served the state. It was this attribute that secured public recognition [see Fig. I.2].46 The war had nationalising and homogenising effects that both broke down regional difference and, as people moved in or out of tight-knit communities, made them more aware of it. Much of the country’s mobilisation was built on regional hubs, from the National Shell Factories to Military Service Tribunals, but local peculiarities were suffused with national commonalities. In late 1914, the 51st Highland Division, formed of Territorial soldiers from the north of 42 43
44
45 46
Winter, The Great War and the British People, pp. 47, 72 Martin Daunton, ‘How to Pay for the War: State, Society and Taxation in Britain, 1917–24’, English Historical Review, 111 (1996), pp. 882–919. Michael Sanders and Philip M. Taylor, British Propaganda during the First World War, 1914–18 (London: Macmillan, 1982); David Monger, Patriotism and Propaganda in First World War Britain: The National War Aims Committee and Civilian Morale (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012); Stephen Badsey, The German Corpse Factory: A Study in First World War Propaganda (Warwick: Helion, 2019). Porter, Progress, pp. 28–32. Gail Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War (first published 1981; London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 44–50.
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Figure I.2 Female workers feeding the charcoal kilns for refining sugar in the Glebe Sugar Refinery, Greenock. Photo by George P. Lewis for the Ministry of Information, November 1918. Imperial War Museum Q 28350.
Scotland, was quartered in Bedford to complete its training before moving to France. For the town’s residents, unfamiliar with the Scottish rites to see in the new year, Hogmanay ‘got somewhat confused with the tales of the St. Bartholomew Massacre’, and as a result ‘there was urgent talk as to how the wild Highlanders could be controlled during this most dangerous festivity’. More seriously, many of the Highlanders, having lived in remote rural communities, had not developed any immunity to measles and eighty-five died.47 Britain was a base in the First World War but largely for British forces only, and not – as it was to become in the Second World War after the fall of France – as a staging post or jumping off point. Forces that came to fight in Europe from overseas, the Indians in 1914, or the Australians and New Zealanders after Gallipoli in early 1916, went straight to France, landing at Marseilles. The same applied to the American Expeditionary Force after the entry of the United States in 1917; it crossed the Atlantic directly to Brest or Le Havre. The Canadian Corps spent the winter of 1914–15 on Salisbury Plain, 47
W. N. Nicholson, Behind the Lines: An Account of Administrative Staffwork in the British Army 1914–1918 (London: Cape, 1939), pp. 38, 42, 51.
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but otherwise the British population only saw the soldiers of its empire when they were convalescing from their wounds or in London on leave. The Royal Navy too, for all that Britain’s maritime industries were central to its war effort, was comparatively invisible. The reorientation of Britain’s maritime defences from the south coast facing France, to the east and the North Sea to face Germany, meant that the navy’s principal anchorage was at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. Because the battle cruisers were based at Rosyth on the Forth, dark blue uniforms were in evidence on the streets of Edinburgh, but khaki – for all Britain’s maritime pre-eminence – was the dominant colour across the British Isles. Although the fear of a German invasion peaked in the first winter of the war, it never entirely disappeared. In January 1918, there were about 1.5 million soldiers in Britain. Some were recovering from their wounds or under training, and many were there to deal not with Germans, but with domestic dissent, labour unrest or renewed Irish insurrection.48 To that number must be added the Volunteer Training Corps, a forerunner of the Home Guard in the Second World War, which most of those granted temporary exemptions from conscription were required to join. These fears of danger within, as well as the threat from without, provide a corrective to any narrative that argues that patriotism and national unity had obliterated social division and economic difference. This is not to deny that the shared hardships of war, and the principle of equality contained in the introduction of conscription in 1916 or of rationing in 1918, did not have unifying effects. Nothing in the war matched the disruption to industry of 1912, when almost 41 million working days were lost to strikes. That peak had already fallen to under 10 million by 1914, when 326,000 workers struck. But these trends were definitively reversed after 1916. In 1918, 923,000 workers struck and 5.9 million working days were lost. Trade union membership doubled between 1914 and 1920, to exceed 8 million and embrace almost half the workforce.49 With revolution in Russia in 1917, these trends reinforced the fear that social discontent could be converted into political action. As the end of the war approached, the Fabian, Beatrice Webb, was imbued with a sense of foreboding, ‘of an old order seriously threatened with dissolution without any new order being in sight’. Victory had created expectations which she felt were unlikely to be fulfilled – those of the returning soldiers and sailors, those of workers on full employment and earning high wages, and those of the new women voters. ‘The Bolsheviks
48 49
Millman, Managing Domestic Dissent, pp. 271–302. Gerard J. DeGroot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (Harlow: Longman, 1996), pp. 110, 123; John Horne, Labour at War: France and Britain 1914–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 396; Gregory, The Last Great War, pp. 288–9.
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grin at us from a ruined Russia and their creed, like the plague of influenza, seems to be spreading from one country to another.’50 The fear of the Boche was becoming the fear of the Bolshevik. In 1917–18 John Buchan wrote the third of the Richard Hannay spy stories, Mr Standfast. Although it appeared in serial form during the war, the book itself was not published until 1919.51 That Buchan found the time was extraordinary: he was appointed director of the Department of Information in 1917 and in February 1918, when it was converted into a fully-fledged propaganda ministry under Lord Beaverbrook, its director of intelligence. The concerns of his job are evident in the plot of Mr Standfast, a case of fiction matching fact. Much of the action is set in Britain itself, and its underlying message is not just the need for perseverance, as its title’s reference to Pilgrim’s Progress infers, but also unity within Britain even when appearances suggested the opposite. Andrew Amos, one of the book’s supporting cast, is a Glasgow shop steward, a representative of the unofficial trade union movement on whom the strikes were blamed. He is also an old-fashioned Gladstonian Liberal determined to defeat the Germans. Similarly, Launcelot Wake, encountered in a thinly disguised Letchworth Garden City, is both a pacifist and ultimately a patriot. Mr Standfast, with its message of cross-party respect and social solidarity, is a portrayal of the challenges facing the British home front in 1917–18. The novel’s climax is staged on the western front. Like other propagandists, Buchan knew by 1917–18 that what happened in battle and what happened at home were interdependent. During the war, soldiers wanted news of home and looked forward to the day when they would return.52 Those at home went to extraordinary lengths to discover how their loved ones, if they had been killed in action, had died, and in the process exposed themselves to harrowing revelations and grim realities.53 For both sides in these relationships, postal services were central to the maintenance of morale, and the interplay between home and the front could have mutually reinforcing effects, whether they were beneficial or disruptive. What those at home were not prepared for was how difficult those who had been in battle would find the readjustment to the routines of peace. What soldiers, who had been absent for so long, could not
50
51
52
53
Diary entry of 4 November 1918, in Margaret I. Cole (ed.), Beatrice Webb’s Diaries 1912–1924 (London: Longman, 1952), p. 134; see also 11 November 1918, p. 136. Ursula Buchan, Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), pp. 213–15. A point evidenced in their songs: John Brophy and Eric Partridge, The Long Trail: What the British Soldier Sang and Said in the Great War of 1914–1918 (revised edition, London: Andre Deutsch, 1965), pp. 19–20; on the interactions, see also Hallifax, ‘Citizens at War’, pp. 297–9. Eric F. Schneider, ‘The British Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau: A Case of Truth-Telling in the Great War’, War in History, 4 (1997), pp. 296–315.
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appreciate until they returned was how much both their families and their parent societies had also been changed by war. In particular, they too had been in the front line. On 16 December 1914 German battle cruisers had raided the Yorkshire coast, bombarding the ports of Hartlepool (which was defended), Scarborough and Whitby (both of which were not). The dead totalled 140 and the wounded about 372, and many were women and children.54 On the night of 31 May 1915, the German navy switched to airships, launching the first Zeppelin raid on London. In all there were twenty-six raids on the capital. The last was delivered on the night of 19 May 1918 by the army, using Gotha bombers. The reach of German airpower threatened the whole of the east coast, from Cromarty in the north to Essex and Kent in the south, and extended westwards into the Midlands. More than half the casualties, 1,394 killed and 3,349 wounded, were inflicted on London.55 A great many, but not all, of them were civilians. In H. G. Wells’s Mr Britling Sees it Through, another fictional portrayal of the home front, written in 1915 and published in September 1916, the aunt of the eponymous hero is injured in a Zeppelin raid on an Essex sea-side town. ‘Five minutes before, Aunt Wilshire had been sitting in the boarding-house drawing-room playing a great stern “Patience” . . . Five minutes later she was a thing of elemental terror and agony, bleeding wounds and shattered bones, plunging about in the darkness amidst a heap of wreckage.’ She suffers a protracted death in hospital, and Mr Britling, with an image of the German crown prince in his mind, rages, ‘we will teach them a lesson yet!’56 His desire for vengeance may have been fictional, but in 1915 an eleven-year old girl wrote after a night-time Zeppelin raid, ‘I felt I could fly to Germany and do the same thing to them’.57 By late 1916 boroughs in Essex were passing resolutions calling for reprisal raids.58 Nor were enemy attacks the only risk of sudden death to which the war exposed those at home. Munitions production was inherently dangerous work: 54
55
56
57
58
John Buchan, Nelson’s History of the War, vol. 5 (London: Thomas Nelson, 1915), pp. 78–86. Ian Castle, The First Blitz: Bombing London in the First World War (Oxford: Osprey, 2015), p. 191; Joseph Morris, The German Air Raids on Great Britain 1914–1918 (London: Sampson Low, nd), p. v says 1,413 were killed and 3,408 wounded, and gives a full list of localities, pp. 263–8; L. E. O. Charlton, War over England (London: Longmans, 1936), provides a map showing ‘the shadow of the airship raids’, between pp. 8, 9. Frederik C. Gerhardt, London 1916: die vergessene Luftschlacht (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2019), p. 167 uses British official returns to give much lower figures: 557 dead and 1,358 wounded. H. G. Wells, Mr Britling Sees It Through (London: Cassell, 1916), pp. 290–1; italics in the original. On the effects on attitudes, see Susan R. Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Julian Walker, Words and the First World War: Language, Memory, Vocabulary (London: Bloomsbury, 2017) p. 244. Hallifax, ‘Citizens at War’, pp. 120–1.
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106 men were killed and 66 wounded by an explosion at Faversham on 2 April 1916; 69 people were killed and 400 injured at the Brunner, Mond and Co chemical factory in Silvertown on 19 January 1917; and 134 killed and an unknown number injured at a National Shell Filling Factory at Chilwell on 1 July 1918. The chemicals used in the manufacture of TNT were poisonous. The fact that their most visible effect was jaundice led to the female munitions workers being called ‘canary girls’; 52 died from the effects in 1916, 44 in 1917, and 10 in 1918. These are all official figures, and they probably conceal significant under-reporting for reasons of public morale. ‘Certainly hundreds, perhaps upward of a thousand’ were killed in the manufacture of munitions [see Fig. I.3].59 Those in the armed forces who were killed or even died from disease at home were duly commemorated by the Imperial War Graves Commission; those who were civilians were not, and even today they tend not to be numbered in the conventional reckonings of Britain’s war dead. Their most obvious memorial is that to eighteen school pupils killed in the first daylight raid in Poplar on 13 June 1917. The war changed language, as it changed so much else, and those changes could be assimilated and become permanent. The phrase ‘home front’ is conventionally seen as one such innovation.60 However, since its first employment was not until April 1917, and even then seems to have been unique, it is doubtful how regularly it was used during the war itself.61 In any case such phrases, for all the public recognition of munitions workers or the Women’s Land Army, could also be ironic. The soldiers regarded only the slang which they coined as legitimate, thus reflecting their belief that their experience of the war was the defining one.62 The point about the ‘home front’ was in part exactly that: it was not really a front, and yet it might still rupture – as seemed increasingly likely in 1917–18. In the dominions ‘home front’ was rarely used, not least because many of their soldiers were first generation settlers for whom ‘home’ meant not the country to which they had emigrated and whose uniform they wore, but Britain.63 In other belligerent countries, whose soldiers similarly tended to lead the way in developing a new argot, and who were also
59
60
61 62 63
Angela Woollacott, On Her Their Lives Depend: Munitions Workers in the Great War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 9–10, 80–86; for Faversham, see Brian Dillon, The Great Explosion: Gunpowder, the Great War, and a Disaster on the Kent Marshes (London: Penguin, 2016). As cases in point: John Williams, The Other Battleground: The Home Fronts: Britain, France and Germany 1914–1918 (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1972), p. 1; Beaumont, Broken Nation, pp. xv, 38. The Times used it; see Walker, Words and the First World War, p. 211. Walker, Words and the First World War, pp. 236–9, 263–5. Loveridge, Calls to Arms, pp. 44, 192; however, note the title of Steven Loveridge and James Watson (eds.), The Home Front: New Zealand Society and the War Effort 1914–1919 (Auckland, 2019) in New Zealand’s Centenary History Programme. I am grateful to Ian McGibbon for discussing this point with me.
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Figure I.3 On munitions: dangerous work (packing TNT), lithograph by Archibald Standish Hartrick, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 59, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917. National Museum of Wales.
concerned about the resilience of those at home, they spoke of ‘the rear’, not the ‘home front’. The ‘rear’ was still the source of supplies and succour, but it was self-evidently not a front. In 1939, a Canadian, Frank P. Chambers, published a book which combined both thoughts. Its title was The War behind the War 1914–1918: A History of the Political and Civilian Fronts. Given the date, The War behind the War could have been read as a warning from the past for an imminent future. In 1939, unlike 1914, Britain did have a war plan. In many respects it made explicit what had been largely improvised a quarter of a century before: it proposed to blockade Germany, although this time with greater precision in the hope of quicker effects, and it intended to draw on the resources of the empire on the assumption that the war would actually be a long one. The weight was once again on sea power, and only a small army would go to Europe. Still called the British Expeditionary Force, it was made up of ten divisions (as opposed to six in 1914), and so, as in 1914, it was secondary to
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the army of France. But in other respects, there were innovations: the Royal Air Force had been created and planned direct attacks on Germany, shadow factories had been identified for the conversion of industry to war production, and conscription introduced so that the allocation of manpower could be done ‘scientifically’. That was an adverb used by Sir William Beveridge in a lecture he delivered on 29 February 1940 on the lessons he had drawn from the First World War. In 1914–18 he had managed first labour and then food, and after the war he, together with Hirst and Keynes, had served on the British editorial board of the Carnegie series, the Economic and Social History of the World War. Hirst wrote the summary volume on The Consequences of the War to Great Britain (1934) and Beveridge those on insurance (1927) and food control (1928). Beveridge’s lecture stressed the bottlenecks in the war economy and the importance of coordination in resolving them. ‘It is a waste of power’, he wrote, ‘to have more men in the firing line than one can supply with guns to fire, more guns than shells, more or fewer shells than fuses, more or fewer ships than crews to man them, more munitions or food bought abroad than one can find ships to carry, more ships waiting in port for cargoes than there are cargoes ready bought for them to bring.’ The state might apply ‘total strength’ in war but without coordination it would not extract the best advantage from that effort. He called the war on which Britain had embarked in 1939 ‘totalitarian war’, a description he also thought applied to the sort of war waged by the Lloyd George coalition. Here at least was one lesson learnt.64 Furthermore, Beveridge had learnt another lesson. Political rights, which had been granted to men and women with the extension of the franchise in 1918, were not sufficient reward for economic and social mobilisation in a democratic state. The Beveridge report, which in 1942 proposed a plan for universal social security, ‘provided’ in the verdict of A. J. P. Taylor ‘against past evils’, those of abject poverty and mass unemployment.65 Although these had been major problems after 1918, they would not be after 1945. F. W. Hirst condemned ‘the Beveridge Hoax’, but for him too the First World War remained the reference point. In 1940 he told Basil Liddell Hart that he remained ‘a constant Lansdownian’.66
64
65 66
William Beveridge, Some Experiences of Economic Control in War-Time, Barnett House Papers, no. 23 (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), pp. 1, 27–8. A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), p. 565. Howe, ‘Hirst, Francis William’.
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1 The United Kingdom in 1914
Introduction The First World War was a turning point in the history of the United Kingdom. The enormous demands of the war, and its vast expenditure (of men, women, and materiel) transformed both economy and society during the war and led to major ramifications afterwards. It was a ‘total war’; one that required the mobilisation not just of the armed services but of society as a whole. This volume focuses on the ways in which the United Kingdom’s home front mobilised for war and the impact of that mobilisation. The key question is: how much did Britain’s economy and society have to change in order to support its war effort? Were there certain areas where change was more pertinent? To what extent were changes already in motion before the war that were subsequently accelerated by the outbreak of conflict? Or did the possibility of ‘total war’ arise from the ways the economy and society had begun to structure themselves before 1914? Embracing the four themes of this volume – politics, economics, society and identity – this chapter establishes what the UK looked like, and the primary issues it faced, in the immediate pre-war period. But first, what did the term ‘United Kingdom’ mean in 1914?
A Kingdom United? The state that declared war on 4 August was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Britain itself was composed of England, Scotland and Wales, and Ireland was both divided internally over Home Rule and at odds with Britain. So how united were the four countries before the outbreak of war? Although each had its own distinct identity, industrialisation and economic developments had set in train large-scale unifying and rationalising forces, and all political control stemmed from Westminster. Compulsory national education, railways, telegraph and postal services, and mass-circulation newspapers and magazines had transformed individual perceptions of the boundaries of community and national life. According to John Stevenson ‘slowly and
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inexorably a national culture was seeping into the more rural parts of Britain’.1 Local dialects and regional accents were under threat; the ‘received standard English’ of southeastern England had become the cultural norm and an indicator of social hierarchy. Acting as a magnetic core for all four nations was the ‘gigantic hinge’ of London, now the undisputed capital market of the world.2 This impacted upon the national social structure. Investments and businessmen moved to London, London ‘society’ flourished, and the city became the centre of British fashionable and artistic life. As Jose Harris outlines: ‘Older, regional, variegated, and customary society’ was being restructured ‘along more uniform, national and horizontal lines’.3 In her study of British national identity between 1707 and 1837, Linda Colley argues that England, Scotland and Wales were united primarily by conflict, a sense of the external ‘other’, and religion.4 Keith Robbins also supports the argument that there was a growing sense of Britishness in the nineteenth century. A sense of common identity existed in Britain not because of an integration or homogenisation of disparate cultures but rather because it was superimposed over an array of internal differences in response to contact with the ‘other’, particularly in response to conflict with it. In some respects, this feeling penetrated deeper in the period immediately before the First World War, assisted by travel, railways, education, migration, sport, commerce and literature. The extension of the franchise and the broadening of political participation in the nineteenth century also increased a sense of being part of a single political society. This is what Robbins has summarised as ‘integrated Britain’.5 This process of integration, not Anglicisation, in his view, ‘makes it not inappropriate to speak of the making of a British nation whose sense of common identity and purpose outweighed in importance the still abiding consciousness of difference’.6 Nevertheless, throughout the early and mid-Victorian period Britain had remained a society that in numerous ways was fiercely variegated and local. The different linguistic, cultural, religious and (in the case of Scotland) legal traditions; the widely varying occupational and manufacturing specialisations of the new industrial centres; the municipal culture and civic pride of 1 2
3 4
5
6
John Stevenson, British Society, 1914–45 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 29. Jose Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit: A Social History of Britain 1870–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 19. Ibid., pp. 20–3. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (London: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 367–8. Keith Robbins, Nineteenth-Century Britain: Integration and Diversity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). Keith Robbins, ‘An Imperial and Multinational Polity: The “Scene from the Centre”, 1832–1922’, in A. Grant and K. J. Stringer (eds.), Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 251.
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provincial cities; all combined to produce a society that in certain respects was less unified and metropolitan than a hundred years before. The north, for example, constructed a distinct image of itself that was composed of progress, industry, manufacturing, civic pride, and municipal enterprise, which were contrasted to the values of the southern aristocracy and financial middle class.7 The preservation of local autonomy and culture was seen as a quintessential feature of British national character in marked contrast to the centralisation and legalistic uniformity imposed on continental countries.8 Professional football, county cricket, and the county-organised Territorial Volunteer Force all propped up local patriotism and civic pride.9 At times, regional identity was constructed in contrast to the centre, e.g. north versus south. At other times, and more often, regional and other local identities were seen as part of a wider national identity; local and regional identities provided the building blocks for national identity, foreshadowing perhaps the successful mobilisation of local identity for the national cause in the formation of the ‘Pals’ battalions of the First World War.10 In many ways, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1914 was unified but not uniform. In areas, regional differences between the four nations outweighed the similarities.11 There could not be a more convincing demonstration of the fact that Britain was both a multinational and national country than the question of Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom, which came to a head in the month before the outbreak of war. In the early 1900s tensions were developing between the defence of the ‘British Isles’ and the preservation of the ‘British Empire’; between the unity of the British Isles and the accommodation of their diversity. Although such pressures were by no means entirely new, by 1914 they were proving more difficult to reconcile.12
Political Challenges The last pre-war election, held in December 1910, had brought the Liberals, with the cooperation of Labour and the Irish nationalists, to power. In 1914, they were led by Herbert Henry Asquith who had been in office since 1908, 7 8 9 10
11
12
Paul Ward, Britishness since 1870 (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 67. Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit, pp. 18–19. Ibid., pp. 17–18. Ward, Britishness since 1870, p. 68. See also Helen B. McCartney, Citizen Soldiers: The Liverpool Territorials in the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Joanna Bourke, Working-Class Cultures in Britain, 1890–1960 (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 190. Keith Robbins, ‘Introduction: Halfway House-Isles and Empire over Half a Century’, in Keith Robbins (ed.), The British Isles: 1901–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 3–4.
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while Sir Edward Grey had been Foreign Secretary for nine years. In the months prior to the outbreak of a foreign war, Asquith’s government faced violent challenges at home from the Labour movement, suffragettes, Ulstermen and Irish nationalists. Since the turn of the twentieth century, Labour had emerged as a serious politicised force nationally, with the founding of the Labour Party (1900) which returned forty-two MPs at the December 1910 general election. On the eve of the First World War, it still heavily depended on the trade unions for funds and parliamentary candidates. The rise of trade unions was one of the most striking industrial and social changes in the pre-war years. Between 1900 and 1913, the number of trade unionists rose from 2 million to 4.1 million.13 With the organisation of unskilled and general labourers, and with increased cost of living before the war, industrial unrest became particularly widespread and militant, peaking in 1912–13. Several serious clashes took place between strikers, the police and troops. The worst year for disputes was 1912 when over 40 million working days were lost, compared to the previous peak of 15 million in 1898. There were national strikes on the railways in 1911 and in the coal mines the following year. In 1913, a sudden outbreak of strikes in Midlands engineering boosted union membership considerably.14 Yet to upper-class Edwardian men, the campaigns of the suffragettes were as alarming as those of Labour in pre-war British society. Although by 1909 most suffragettes were members of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (N.U.W.S.S.)15 – the constitutional movement led by Millicent Fawcett – it was the militant organisation, the Women’s Social and Political Union (W.S.P.U.) founded by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, that was attracting the most attention. To keep the cause in the public eye and to attract new members, the tactics of the W.S.P.U. had become increasingly shocking. Rough treatment of suffragettes by both the police and the public led them to resort to attacks on property, including smashing the windows of West End clubs, and acts of arson.16 However, the most serious challenge to parliamentary government in the period prior to the outbreak of war came from Ireland. In April 1912, the third Home Rule Bill began its passage through Westminster, and its ultimate aim was to establish a Dublin parliament for the whole of Ireland. By May 1914 it had been passed three times as required by the recently ratified Parliament Act 13 14 15
16
Peter Dewey, War and Progress: Britain 1914–1945 (London: Longman, 1997), p. 11. Ibid., p. 12. Martin Pugh, State and Society: British Political and Social History 1870–1992 (London: Arnold, 1994), p. 135. Harold L. Smith, The British Women’s Suffrage Campaign, 1866–1928, 2nd ed. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013).
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of 1911. However, both the Unionists and the Conservatives used this twoyear hiatus to build-up resistance in Ireland. The dominant elite in Ulster – the Protestant minority led by Captain James Craig and Sir Edward Carson – feared a loss of power and status. Supported by the leader of the opposition Conservative Party, Andrew Bonar Law, they established the Ulster Volunteer Force (U.V.F.) of some 90,000 men and embarked upon a series of illegal gun importations. As a response to the establishment of the U.V.F., the Irish Nationalists formed their own Volunteer army, the Irish Nationalist Volunteers (I.N.V.). The emergence of these private armies raised the prospect that civil war would erupt if a Dublin parliament was set up. The situation was compounded by the Curragh incident in March 1914 when around fifty-seven British officers, stationed in Ireland, pledged they would resign rather than enforce the Home Rule policy in Ireland. This sent the ominous message that Westminster could not rely on the army to carry out its orders. King George V warned on 21 July 1914 that ‘the cry of civil war is on the lips of the most responsible and sober-minded of my people’.17 On 26 July, a detachment of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers fired on a crowd of Dublin civilians on Bachelors Walk – suspected of being I.N.V. gun-runners – killing four and wounding many others. This sparked outrage in Ireland and was relayed to people in Britain under frightening headlines, like ‘Slaughter in Ireland’18 and ‘Fighting in Dublin’.19 Retrospectively, the summer of 1914 was portrayed as the culmination of the long Edwardian idyll that stood in contrast to the rupture and disharmony brought by the war. In reality, the pre-war period was one of domestic unrest and mounting anxiety for the authorities.20 But was it a specifically Liberal problem? According to George Dangerfield between 1910 and 1913, Liberal England was ‘reduced to ashes’ by the challenges mounted by the rise of labour and increasing militancy from suffragettes and in Ireland.21 Certainly, the Liberal Party was under considerable strain in this period. The Conservative Party, defeated in 1906, had recovered by 1910 and was returning as a major political force. Two general elections, the death of Edward VII and the battle with the House of Lords to halt Conservative dominance, had taken their toll on the Liberals, who also struggled to coordinate their strategy over industrial relations. However, defining this period as simply a liberal problem risks 17
18 19 20
21
Quoted in J. F. V. Keiger, ‘Britain’s “Union Sacrée” in 1914’, in Jean-Jacques Becker and Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau (eds.), Les societes europeennes et la guerre de 1914–1918 (Nanterre: Universite de Paris X, 1990), p. 40. Manchester Evening News, 27 July 1914, p. 3. Devon and Exeter Gazette, 27 July 1914, p. 6. Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London: Bodley Head, 1965), p. 26. George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England, 1910–1914 (New York: Capricorn Books, 1935; 1961).
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missing the point. Both parties were the products of an older, rigidly hierarchical and patriarchal political and social order; both were going to struggle in the face of protest from representative groups, especially organised labour and women. It was a British political problem, rather than solely the problem of a weakened Liberal Party. Whoever was in power would have to deal with what has been described as ‘domestic anarchy’.22 They would need to navigate demands for increased representation and better working and living conditions, while simultaneously facing resistance from elite figures who understood how increased state intervention would restrict their freedoms and cost them money. Thus, for many ‘continuity was a stronger element than discontinuity’, with much of the activity at national and local government during the interwar years, being based on the values still recognisable as those of the late Victorian period.23
A Complex Economy Although Britain’s relative position in the world economy had declined rapidly after 1880, it was still the largest exporter of manufactured goods in 1913, accounting for 30 per cent of the world total. In terms of total exports (not just manufactures), Britain remained the world’s biggest exporter (by a short lead). The decline was, in part, the inevitable result of the rest of the world becoming more industrialised; being the first to industrialise was an advantage to competitors who could learn from earlier mistakes. But it was also the result of a decline in relative economic efficiency. Britain’s export structure was biased towards old-fashioned and slowly growing trades, reliant on staple exports of the mid-nineteenth century (textiles, iron, steam engines, coal) and less dependent on newer technologies, such as electricity and chemistry.24 As has been discussed by Hew Strachan, Britain was the functional centre of the global economy in 1913.25 As the largest importer of food and raw materials, Britain provided a market for the world. With no backstop to the business model of relying on imports, Britain was always going to be particularly vulnerable if circumstances evolved to reduce the interdependence of the major world economies. But Britain’s role was more pivotal than this; it was also the largest source of long-term capital. Sterling was the world’s major trading currency, since its value was stable, and, since Britain was on the gold standard, sterling could readily be exchanged for gold at any time and in any 22
23 24 25
Elie Halévy, A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century, vol. VI, The Rule of Democracy 1905–1914 (London: Ernest Benn, 1932), p. 441. Stevenson, British Society, p. 44. Dewey, War and Progress, pp. 15–16. Hew Strachan, ‘The First World War as a Global War’, First World War Studies 1:1 (2010), pp. 3–14.
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place at an official, fixed exchange rate. London remained the major discount centre, clearing-house and capital market of the international economy. London institutions provided much of the world’s short-term finance. The hiring out of British ships, the insurance of cargoes by British insurers, and the provision of financial services by British banks, helped considerably in the efficient and smooth workings of the international trading and financial system. In 1913, therefore, the British economy, as well as being the largest exporter of goods and of investment funds in the world, was the financier of the bulk of daily international trade, and supplied the means of exchange.26 The British financial position was, on the whole, strong before the war. Since the South African War, national debt had been steadily reduced. Taxation was low and relied on an income tax that was levied progressively, supplemented by a Super Tax, estate taxes and indirect taxation such as custom duties.27 Income tax had been first adopted in Britain in 1799, specifically as a war tax. Almost half a century later, Sir Robert Peel had employed the tax in peacetime – on a temporary basis – to stimulate the expansion of commerce and consumption through free trade. The reality and burdens of colonial defence had increasingly blurred the financial distinction between war and peace and Gladstone’s desire to abolish income tax became an ever more distant reality. The rebuilding of the Royal Navy, under the pressure of competition with France, raised the basic rate from 5d to 8d in the £ in 1885. The South African War pushed it up further, but in the five years before 1914 it had stabilised at 1s. 2d. In 1913, income tax was only paid by 2 per cent of the population (this would increase to 8 per cent by 1918); but what mattered was that, in 1914, Britain possessed – as no other nation did – the basis for a system of war finance. As Hew Strachan summarises, ‘it had developed the machinery which enabled it to draw on the nation’s liquid assets.’28 By the early twentieth century, the ongoing changes of industrialisation had produced an economy and society in Great Britain of great complexity. Since the eighteenth century, the first stages of industrialisation had made a profound impact on the structure of the economy as agriculture shrank and the industry and service sectors expanded. According to the 1911 census, on the eve of the First World War 18.3 million British people were employed. The largest sector was manufacturing, which (together with construction) provided work for 50 per cent of the total employed population (male and 26 27
28
Dewey, War and Progress, p. 20. Martin Horn, ‘War Finance (Great Britain and Ireland)’, in Ute Daniel et al. (eds.), 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2016-10-24. DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.10986. Hew Strachan, Financing the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 67–8.
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female) in 1911. The second largest was the service sector, which (including transport) employed 35 per cent. Agriculture employed 8 per cent (falling from 36 per cent in 1801) and mining 6 per cent. In 1911, over a million men worked in five broad groups of occupations: metals, transport, agriculture (including horticulture and forestry), building and mining. The other major occupations were commerce (0.74 million) and textiles (0.64 million). These jobs accounted for 8.6 million males, out of a total British male labour force of 12.9 million. For females, out of a total labour force of 5.3 million, there was only one outstanding employment, which was domestic and personal service (2.1 million). Apart from this, the two major female occupations were in textiles (0.9 million) and clothing (0.8 million), although 0.3 million were employed in the manufacture of food, drink and tobacco.29 These occupations varied considerably in importance from region to region and broad classifications only serve to conceal local diversity. For example, the West Midlands was most reliant on manufacturing, with 56 per cent of its population thus employed; South Wales was the most reliant on mining (32 per cent); textiles accounted for almost one-quarter of employment in the northern regions of Lancashire/Cheshire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. Agriculture was of greatest importance in the eastern counties of England, north Wales, Ireland and north Scotland, where it accounted for about onequarter of the employed population. Overall, on the eve of the First World War, the British economy was founded upon a strong industrial base, drawing from a large skills pool, and supported by an excellent railway network.30 Scotland, where 10.5 per cent of the overall population produced 12.5 per cent of the economic output, was a key component.31
A Changing Society By 1911, the expanding economy produced a larger population and bigger cities. There were considerably fewer villagers and more town-dwellers. The process of urbanisation, which characterised the Victorian period, continued at strength into the Edwardian era, and by 1914 Britain was primarily an urban industrial society, although Ireland remained predominantly rural. London was still a world phenomenon with its 7.25 million inhabitants.32 Manchester had passed the half-million mark, and Birmingham and the West Midlands had a total population of 1,634,000 in 1911. By 1911 only one in four people lived in the countryside. The population as a whole had passed 29 30 31
32
Dewey, War and Progress, pp. 1, 6–7. Ibid., p. 4. Christopher Harvie, No Gods and Precious Few Heroes: Twentieth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), p. 1. Stevenson, British Society, p. 23.
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45 million by that date, an increase of 18 million in sixty years.33 Only in Ireland had the population declined. However, falling birth rates in Britain – the result of a rise in the age of marriage, compulsory national education making children a burden on families for longer, and access to contraception – sparked fears of ‘national deterioration’ and a foreign take-over.34 With economic success came failure too. A marked feature of British society in the early twentieth century was the high degree of economic inequality, in both income and ownership of wealth. Contemporary attempts at income classification (for example by MP Leo Chiozza Money in 1908) and pioneering social inquiries (by Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree) suggested that nearly a third of Britons were paupers who lacked the basic necessities of life. Cyclical and casual employment was a major contributory factor. Records for pre-1913 derive from trade unions. Between 1860 and 1913, at the troughs of trade cycles, about 8 per cent of trade unionists would be unemployed; at the peaks, about 2 per cent. Since trade unionists were more likely to be drawn from the most skilled ranks of the working class, and so less prone to unemployment than the less skilled non-unionist, the average rate of unemployment for the working class as a whole must have been much higher.35 British housing was deficient in quantity and quality before 1914. Pre-war housing in England and Wales suffered from overcrowding. In 1911, the proportion of families living at densities of more than two persons per room was approximately 5 per cent. Conditions were a lot worse in Scotland where the predominant housing form was the tenement. Most housing lacked basic amenities, e.g. a flushing toilet. Few working-class dwellings in Britain had bathrooms, and electricity was a rarity (although gas was fairly common). Nor was it unusual to find dwellings without a piped water supply, especially in rural areas. There was a growing intolerance of slum housing in which many of the working-classes lived.36 Concerns were raised by the poor physical condition of many South African War recruits and in 1904 a special inquiry was set up into ‘Physical Deterioration’ which it was feared would undermine the strength of the empire. This worry combined with an increased awareness of class tensions and the dangers in the unfair distribution of the increased wealth. As the Liberal intellectual J. A. Hobson said in an address to the National Liberal Club in 1912:
33 34 35 36
Ibid., p. 21. Alan G. V. Simmonds, Britain and World War One (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), p. 6. Dewey, War and Progress, pp. 7–9. Ibid., p. 14.
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The sentiment of severance between rich and poor, the spirit of class hostility has grown more conscious and acute. This is not a popular thing to say to a middle class audience but it is true.37
Many historians of differing persuasions have identified the last quarter of the nineteenth century as the period in which class, as an organising social category, became all-embracing.38 All other social and cultural attributes became overshadowed by class categories. Historians have tended to work with a tripolar model of upper, middle and lower or working classes, distinguished by property-ownership (or lack of it) but disagreements remain about the consistency of the different class groups and the precise location of boundaries between them.39 The Representation of the People Act, 1884 had increased the size of the electorate considerably to include all men paying an annual rent of £10 and all those holding land valued at £10; however, it did not establish universal suffrage. All women and 40 per cent of adult males were still without the vote.40 Apart from the stratifying impact of property distribution and large-scale machine-production, between 1870 and 1914 the organisation of work, schools, transport, housing, welfare, societal norms and recreation all combined to compartmentalise British society along class lines. Class distinctions were not only a question of wealth but culture and modes of behaviour; where and when one washed, where you took a vacation, and whether you ate lunch/dinner or dinner/tea.41 As the campaigns of the militant suffragettes in the months preceding the outbreak of war demonstrated, British society was also changing along gender lines.42 For those working-class members of the population whose means were insufficient to see them through difficulty there were two sources of assistance before the First World War: private charities and the Poor Law.43 Edwardian society was full of groups and communities who constituted unorganised ‘social collectivism’. By the end of the nineteenth century most communities with a mixed social make-up would have boasted working parties, mothers’ meetings, Bible societies and temperance societies. Also common were 37
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41 42 43
Quoted in Malcolm Pearce and Geoffrey Stewart, British Political History 1867–1990: Democracy and Decline (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 187. Eric J. Hobsbawn, Age of Capital, 1848–1875 (London: Phoenix, 2000); F. M. L. Thompson, The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain, 1830–1900 (London: Fontana, 1988); Bernard Waites, A Class Society at War: England, 1914–1918 (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1987). Andrew Miles, ‘Social Structure, 1900–1939’, in C. Wrigley (ed.), A Companion to Early Twentieth Century Britain (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2009), p. 340. Chris Cook, The Routledge Companion to Britain in the Nineteenth Century, 1815–1914 (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 68. Simmonds, Britain and World War One, p. 7. Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit, pp. 6–11, 23–32. Dewey, War and Progress, p. 10.
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voluntary bodies with a specific welfare function, such as lying-in and maternity charities, blanket clubs, coal clubs, and medical clubs, amongst many others. At the heart of female culture in the nineteenth century, sewing was crucial to women’s philanthropy and was a common feature of wartime solidarity efforts.44 Jay Winter believes the pre-war philanthropy to be linked to the Protestant voluntary tradition which underlay the social contract. It was the very strength of this which perhaps helps account for Britain’s endurance in the war.45 Yet charities did not have the capacity to reach everyone in need and so the Poor Law was an important safety net. The minimal levels of relief offered, often grudgingly, meant it was the last port of call for all but the most desperate. But, even so, many people fell into it. In 1912, 780,000 people in England and Wales were given relief on the Poor Law; in Scotland, some 109,000.46 However, by the 1880s the challenges posed by mass poverty could not be mitigated by charities and the Poor Law alone. The election of a reforming Liberal government in 1906 provided the opportunity for change, with broader impetus provided by the campaign for National Efficiency. The principle of ‘organisation’ and the use of ‘scientific’ methods, which would be so significant during the war, drove calls for an enlightened, apolitical bureaucracy to bring rationality and efficiency to national institutions and local authorities.47 The expanding role of the government showed in the growth of the civil service whose numbers tripled to reach 200,000. Central government was expanding and encroaching on areas previously dealt with by individuals, pressure groups, and organised classes. Collective state provision was fast becoming a citizen-entitlement.48 A major turning point in education came in the form of the 1870 Education Act which laid the foundations of English elementary education, and by the eve of war its benefits had embraced all society. By 1914 literacy in England had reached almost 99 per cent for both sexes, up from 55 per cent for women and 70 per cent for men in 1850. In 1911, 57.5 per cent of twelve to fourteen-year olds were attending schools in England and Wales.49 The Public Health Act of 1875 had been prefaced by fifty years of municipal concern for health. New ground was broken with the Old Age Pension Act of 1908 and the National Insurance Act of 1911 (against 44
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Frank Prochaska, The Voluntary Impulse: Philanthropy in Modern Britain (London: Faber and Faber, 1988), pp. 7, 17, 21, 42. Jay Winter, ‘Popular Culture in Wartime Britain’, in A. Roshwald and R. Stites (eds.), European Culture in the Great War: The Arts, Entertainment and Propaganda, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 330. Dewey, War and Progress, p. 10. Simmonds, Britain and World War One, p. 10. Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit, pp. 11–13. A. H. Halsey (ed.), Trends in British Society since 1900: A Guide to the Changing Social Structures of Britain (London: Macmillan, 1972), p. 163.
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sickness and unemployment). These Acts are often regarded as the foundations of modern social welfare in Britain and formed part of the wider reforms of the Liberal government of 1906–14. For many, a new era of state intervention and social provision was at hand, and it had begun to transform people’s lives in a positive way.50 Traditionally, it has been understood that, in the early 1900s, as the role of the state grew, the strength of the Church of England began to wane with the growth of secularism. According to this view, religion remained stronger amongst the agricultural rather than urban working-classes, and among the latter, where their religion was strong as in the northern towns or in the Welsh villages, it was the Chapel rather than the Church which dominated. By the end of the century a large proportion of urban workers and their families did not attend Church, or did so only for christenings, marriages, and funerals. The intellectual dominance of the Church was also waning. Religion was losing the battle with the scientists that followed the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of the Species in 1859, and the state was beginning to take over the provision of education.51 Where religion continued to be important, it was more as an individual than a collective force.52 However, this view has been challenged over the past thirty years. Scholars have broken free from an interpretative framework of decline that associates industrialisation and technological development with a growing religious indifference in the new urban ‘masses and classes’. Instead, they have demonstrated the vitality of late Victorian religion, which remained a pervasive and important aspect of working-class culture even in the twentieth century. Something of a consensus has emerged, among social historians of religion at least, that church attendance (and other forms of practice) actually increased throughout most of the nineteenth century to the point that they talk about the institutional revival of the churches.53 In contrast, there is little evidence to dispute the claim that the British press was growing in influence in the pre-war era. In 1914, it featured a vibrant assortment of metropolitan, provincial and specialist newspapers. The rise of the modern tabloid in the first decades of the twentieth century signalled the sustained market for a more commercialised and lucrative format for the popular press, relying on a compressed physical presence matched by more
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David Owen, English Philanthropy, 1660–1960 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965); Ian Gazeley, Poverty in Britain, 1900–1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). R. W. Breach and R. M. Hartwell (eds.), British Economy and Society, 1870–1970: Documents, Descriptions, Statistics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 33–4. Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit, pp. 177–9. Jeremy Morris, ‘Secularization and Religious Experience: Arguments in the Historiography of Modern Britain’, Historical Journal, 55:1 (2012), pp. 195–219.
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succinct reportage.54 According to Stephen Koss, London had fourteen ‘major metropolitan dailies’, ranging from establishment papers like The Times to newer, cheaper and more popular titles like the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Mirror. These were supplemented by periodicals such as the right-wing National Review, Henry William Massingham’s trenchantly critical Liberal weekly The Nation, and the Independent Labour Party’s (ILP) Labour Leader. Provincial cities also featured several titles and local papers were far more concerned with politics than they are now. The Conservatives had been increasing their influence in the national and local press, but many newspapers in 1900 still followed the Liberal tradition. Politicians used the press to ‘place’ stories in order to gauge public opinion or to bring an issue into the open. The power of the press was encouraged and exploited by proprietors like Lord Northcliffe, owner of the Times and Daily Mail, and Lord Beaverbrook, owner of the Daily Express, and by politicians eager to cultivate support.55 The relationship between politicians and the newspapers which supported them were probably closer, and less critical, than today. Lloyd George, for instance, had links with several, such as the Manchester Guardian and the News of the World.56
Understanding Nationalism, Empire and War The United Kingdom was therefore part of a world empire and the centre of a global economic system. It was an outward looking nation (or collection of nations); travel, trade and migration since the seventeenth century had led to a multitude of exchanges.57 But what did it mean to be British, or perhaps more specifically, English at this time of wealth and global power? Ideas of national identity included self-satisfaction, superiority, progress, and jingoism. Popular patriotism and a sense of national consciousness were powerful and pervasive forces, which – at the war’s outbreak in August 1914 – fuelled the country’s rallying cries of ‘honour’, ‘duty’ and sense of moral righteousness.58
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Judith Rowbotham, Kim Stevenson and Samantha Pegg, Crime News in Modern Britain: Press Reporting and Responsibility, 1820–2010 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 84. Stephen Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain, vol. 2, The Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), pp. 1, 7. See also David Monger, ‘Press/Journalism (Great Britain and Ireland)’, in Ute Daniel et al. (eds.), 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2014-10-08. DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.10280. Charles More, Britain in the Twentieth Century (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007; 2014), p. 13. Dudley Baines, Migration in a Mature Economy: Emigration and Internal Migration in England and Wales, 1861–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Stevenson, British Society, p. 45. See also Catriona Pennell, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
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As W. J. Reader has shown, patriotic ideas of national superiority had suffused popular entertainment, education, juvenile literature, the arts, and the press in the decades preceding the First World War. An entire generation had been brought up with a particular set of attitudes about war, a favourable view of the armed forces in British imperial life, a veneration of the monarchy, and a belief in the importance of the British Empire for the spread of civilisation across the globe.59 The Great Exhibition, and later the Queen’s jubilees, were genuinely popular festivals reflecting the centrality of the monarchy to British national identity – in heading the national family and overcoming internal social and geographical division – since at least the late nineteenth century.60 Arguably, so was Empire Day – an invented tradition adopted in 1902 – dismissed by some historians as unpopular and un-British, but highlighted by others, like Jim English, as a celebration that upheld a belief in racial superiority and the righteousness of the British Empire in the pre-First World War period.61 Nonetheless, there were concerns that, by the end of the century, the United Kingdom was losing its place on the world stage – economically, politically, socially and even racially. Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘Recessional’, published on the front page of The Times on 17 July 1897, expressed a sober view at the time of Victoria’s diamond jubilee by providing a reminder of the transient nature of British imperial power. While there was an attempt during the last quarter of the nineteenth century to stimulate imperial fervour (for example via Disraeli’s declaration of Victoria as Empress of India in 1876), imperial policy remained a minority interest, little reported in the press and with parliamentary debates on the subject poorly attended. Contemporary Cambridge historian John Seeley quipped that it was as if the British had ‘conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind’. The 1906 general election saw a decisive defeat for Joseph Chamberlain’s vision of an imperial federation – underpinned by the Tariff Reform League – and so could be interpreted as proof of the political weakness of imperialism, as well as evidence of the faith in free trade. Debates over tariff reform had split the Conservative Party and its coalition allies in the Liberal Unionist Party, weakening their position against the Liberals who advocated free trade. In addition, Chamberlain was associated with the setbacks of the South African War. For others, the fact that the white colonies had been given increasing selfgovernment since the 1840s provided evidence that British imperial dominance was waning.62 The white dominions themselves showed little enthusiasm 59
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W. J. Reader, At Duty’s Call: A Study in Obsolete Patriotism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988). Paul Ward, Britishness dince 1870 (London: Routledge, 2004). Jim English, ‘Empire Day in Britain, 1904–1958’, The Historical Journal, 49:1 (2006), pp. 247–76. Robert Tombs, The English and Their History (London: Penguin, 2015).
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for an imperial federation at a time when they were seeking greater political and economic independence from the ‘mother country’.63 This is not to suggest that the British people were anti-imperial in the lead-up to the First World War. There were many personal connections to empire, particularly via the approximately 6 million ‘transplanted’ Britons who sought a better life abroad between 1871 and 1911, mainly in the dominion countries of Australasia and Canada.64 Such links to the colonies created a more authentic feeling of solidarity between English society at home and the overseas British societies in the empire.65 More accurately, according to Bernard Porter, the majority of Britons treated the ‘project of empire’ (as opposed to British people living across the empire) with ambivalence or apathy.66 According to Robert Tombs, respectable workers despised soldiers and, though patriotic, their love of England stopped at Dover.67 National anxieties focused on the United Kingdom’s ability to defend the empire or repel a foreign invasion. These came to a head during the South African War of 1899–1902. A sense of a disaster narrowly averted triggered a tremendous upsurge of interest in the military in Edwardian Britain. In 1901 the National Service League (N.S.L.) was founded to campaign for universal male conscription in peacetime. Led by prominent Conservatives, such as Lord Roberts, the League claimed 200,000 members by the outbreak of war.68 Attempts to reform the army were fulfilled with the appointment of Richard Burdon Haldane as the Secretary of State for War in December 1905. Tasked with cutting the budget, Haldane reorganised the Volunteers into the Territorial Force, a ‘citizen army’ designed for home defence and as a way of heading off the N.S.L.’s call for conscription. It included the establishment of the Officers’ Training Corps in universities and schools. Haldane also created the British Expeditionary Force which could be deployed quickly to take part in an overseas conflict. Yet the consensus of opinion rejected conscription as a solution to the United Kingdom’s military problems. Despite constant attempts to entice the working-classes the League never became a true mass movement. The Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party were consistently hostile to any form of conscription, and the League remained a middle- and upper-class 63
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Anthony Webster, The Debate on the Rise of the British Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), p. 41. Simmonds, Britain and World War One, p. 6. Andrew S. Thompson, Imperial Britain: The Empire in British Politics, c. 1880–1932 (London: Longman, 2000), p. 187. Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society and Culture in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Tombs, The English, p. 588. Anne Summers, ‘Militarism in Britain before the Great War’, History Workshop Journal, 2 (1976), p. 106.
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association. Support for conscription could not take root in Britain, a largely ‘anti-militaristic’ society that believed its island status necessitated a strong navy, reflected in the pre-war rate of taxation, not an army. The avoidance of conscription was a privilege paid for in cash.69 Writers such as Norman Angell argued that militarism and expansionism did not offer any benefits because the increasingly pan-national system of economic markets made war an irrational act that would damage any combatant’s ‘great power’ status.70 Ideas made popular by the Manchester School of liberal economics, led by Richard Cobden and John Bright, won a wide hearing based on the argument that free trade would lead to a more equitable and peaceful society. Overall, popular militarism had its limits. The Territorial Force in 1914 was way below its recruiting target and declining. While the Volunteer movement had played an important role in the social and recreational life of the country – and hundreds of thousands participated, as spectators or competitors, in rifle shooting contests, ‘sham fights’ and military reviews – it is better understood as ‘the spectator sport of mid-Victorian Britain.’71 Along with organisations like the Boy Scouts, these activities were a symptom of increasing leisure time, and one to be aligned with sport as attempts to regulate working class communities, rather than as evidence of popular militarism in British prewar society. The most recent conflict Britain had been engaged in – the South African War – had caused a good deal of controversy, costing three times more than the Crimean War and using four times as many troops.72 People had watched their loved ones depart, to die abroad or to return home wounded. Public and political opposition amongst Radical Liberals had arisen over government policies during the war, including the use of concentration camps for Boer families and prisoners. David Lloyd George was a vocal, if lonely, critic of the aims, direction and management of the conflict.73 Developments in war had also led to attempts at its regulation. Like most Europeans, the British people imagined themselves at the crest of a constantly advancing civilization greater than any the world had known. One aspect of civilisation was a conscious turning away from war.74 War now came to be understood as a moral phenomenon and one in which ethical considerations
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Strachan, Financing the First World War, p. 68. Norman Angell, The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power in Nations to Their Economic and Social Advantage (London: Heinemann, 1910). Hugh Cunningham, The Volunteer Force: A Social and Political History, 1859–1908 (London: Croom Helm, 1975), pp. 33, 46, 49–50, 68. Iain Smith, The Origins of the South African War, 1899–1902 (London: Longman, 1996), p. 1. Travis L. Crosby, The Unknown Lloyd George: A Statesman in Conflict (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014), p. xi. Tombs, The English, p. 595.
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were of major importance.75 The Hague Conventions were negotiated at the First and Second Peace Conferences in 1899 and 1907 respectively and, along with the Geneva Conventions, were among the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes. There was an understanding that war could either be prevented through pacific settlement or, if it did break out, be regulated to protect the innocent. In 1914 there had been ‘no war between the Great Powers since 1871. No man in the prime of life knew what [modern] war was like. All imagined that it would be an affair of great marches and great battles quickly decided’.76 The Balkan Wars of 1912–13 introduced the idea of modern warfare encompassing mass armies, machines, high casualties, atrocities and entire civilian populations. Yet although they shocked contemporary opinion, they also seemed remote.77 Some people believed that the major battles of the next war would be at sea, and they placed their faith in the unquestioned dominance of Britain’s navy. Anyone who did contemplate a large land battle thought of it in Napoleonic terms: decisive battles, admittedly bloody, but brief.
Conclusion The United Kingdom, on the eve of the First World War, faced a number of serious challenges. Politically, it was arguably one of the most divided of all the great powers, facing threats from Labour, the women’s suffrage movement and Ireland – even before what hindsight has led us to call the July Crisis was added to the maelstrom. The question of how deep these divisions ran is of less importance than how serious they were perceived to be by contemporaries and, in particular, by the decision-makers of the time. As Adrian Gregory and I have highlighted, what is of interest is less the reasons why Britain finally entered the war (which will perhaps never cease to be debated) but how a country apparently so divided was able in the final resort to unite and to produce so quickly its own union sacrée on 4 August 1914.78 While other European belligerents, such as France and Germany, saw a similar process of domestic division and discontent suspended for the greater good of the national cause once war was declared, the United Kingdom was unique in 75
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John Gooch, ‘Attitudes to War in Late Victorian and Edwardian England’, in B. Bond and I. Roy (eds.), War and Society: A Yearbook of Military History (London: Croom Helm, 1977), p. 93. A. J. P. Taylor quoted in Stevenson, British Society, p. 49. Richard C. Hall, The Balkan Wars 1912–1913: Prelude to the First World War (London: Routledge, 2000). Keiger, ‘Britain’s “Union Sacrée” in 1914’, p. 39; Pennell, A Kingdom United; Adrian Gregory, ‘British “War Enthusiasm” in 1914: A Reassessment’, in Gail Braybon (ed.), Evidence, History and the Great War: Historians and the Impact of 1914–1918 (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2003), pp. 67–85.
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the way it faced the onset of civil war on its doorstep in the pre-war years.79 Perhaps, then, a more profitable comparison can be made between the UK and the Austro-Hungarian Empire; a multi-national entity whose differences were exacerbated and stretched to the limit by the experience of war. The economic and societal landscape was also complex. The head start in industrialisation enabled many British citizens to enjoy a high standard of living; by the mid-nineteenth century Britain was also predominant in the world economy. Thereafter, its relative lead slowed, particularly in comparison to other industrialising economies by 1914. The importance of industry and services had risen at the expense of agriculture. Industrialisation had set in motion enormous social changes, which reverberated through British industrial society.80 Socially, the British were now a nation of town-dwellers. There were substantial economic inequalities in society, although these did not emerge from the process of industrialisation alone. After 1900, these inequalities were to some extent mitigated by a greater concern for the less well-off, but the majority of the population were vulnerable to economic fluctuations and had few resources in the event of hardship. According to A. J. P. Taylor, before the war ‘a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state beyond the post office and the policeman’. Broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. The war would change all that, relying on the active participation – sometimes volunteered, sometimes coerced – of its citizens to serve the state in the pursuit of the national cause of victory over Germany. The history of the state and the people of the UK merged for the first time and the combination, while relaxed when peace returned, would never be removed entirely (and was ramped up again during the Second World War).81 The international position of Britain, although still dominant, was being challenged. Its imperial position, while not insignificant, was potentially diluted by ambivalence at home and early calls for independence abroad. The demands placed on the colonies during the war would serve to further complicate this relationship. The rise of other industrial exporters, and the lagging rate of growth in British efficiency, meant that the British position was bound to be further eroded. However, there was nothing inevitable about this
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Jean-Jacques Becker, 1914: Comment les Français sont entrés dans la guerre (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1977); John Horne, Labour at War: France and Britain, 1914–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Jeffery Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Dewey, War and Progress, p. 21. A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 1–2.
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process, and the rate of decline was gradual and long-term; ‘there was no reason to suspect before 1914 that it would be an abrupt one’.82 Britain’s geopolitical and economic position in the world meant its national interests were best protected by the maintenance of peace in Europe. According to Peter Dewey, the worst event would be the outbreak of a major war, which would disrupt Britain’s trade and force it to diversify into military production while its competitors took advantage in former British markets. This is precisely what happened after August 1914.83
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Dewey, War and Progress, p. 21. Ibid.
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PART I Government
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2 The Monarchy
During the First World War, the British royal family played a major role in national and imperial mobilisation, but one which has been significantly overlooked in the historiography of the conflict.1 Indeed as David Cannadine has pointed out, the British monarchy in the twentieth century has yet to receive its due attention from academic historians.2 This chapter argues that monarchism was an important cultural force in the British war effort and was a key element in the wartime creation of the idea of a specifically ‘British’ home front. The king and the royal family were seen as an important wartime symbol of ‘home’. They contributed to home front cohesion through wartime work, including fundraising, visiting the wounded, and defusing working-class discontent through royal visits to munitions factories, mines and shipbuilding industries. The royal family was largely successful in dealing with the challenges that waging ‘total war’ presented for the monarchy. The role of the monarch was central to both home front political and popular culture and to national morale, while the royal family’s involvement in the war effort also illustrated the wartime tensions within the United Kingdom between tradition, modernisation and innovation. Moreover, the conflict created an important longer-term legacy for the monarchy. First, it is important to set out the extent to which monarchism was one of the often ‘unspoken assumptions’ of the British war effort.3 One need only think of the ubiquitous expression ‘For King and Country’ as an example, a term so omnipresent in official and popular war culture at the time as to have become a cliché for later generations – yet one which, remarkably, no historian has actually analysed. The expression ‘for King and Country’ appeared as part
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Heather Jones, For King and Country: the British Monarchy and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021) is the first academic monograph on the subject. Biographies of George V and Queen Mary cover the war years and a valuable new popular history covers George V and the conflict: Alexandra Churchill, In the Eye of the Storm: George V and the Great War (Warwick: Helion and Co., 2018). David Cannadine, ‘From Biography to History: Writing the Modern British Monarchy’, Historical Research, lxxvii (2004), pp. 289–312. James Joll, 1914: The Unspoken Assumptions (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968).
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of the official war effort on recruiting posters and press advertisements but was also often chosen by the public as a way of expressing what the war was about, and it was selected as a text used on war memorials, on postcards and in personal letters between soldiers and their families. References to the war as waged for the king went beyond this, however: popular terms were used as vectors for monarchism and understandings of kingship – ‘Crown Forces’, ‘Soldiers of the King’,4 ‘the King’s uniform’, ‘the King’s Armies’ or ‘the King’s men’5 were also commonly used and conveyed a whole range of meanings that contemporaries understood. For example, Arthur Osborn of the 1st Birmingham Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment referred in a 1914 letter to the future ‘success of the “Birmingham Boys” as soldiers of the King’, implying their success was interpreted in relation to their identity as troops of the monarch.6 Another typical example was a letter from the Reverend Espine Monck-Mason to Holy Trinity Parish Magazine, Colchester, Essex on 29 August 1914 that stated: ‘I am anxious to have an accurate list of all those who have gone from this Parish to serve their King and Country, either abroad or at home.’7 Recruitment campaigns throughout 1914 and 1915 fully utilised a language of monarchy – placing the king at the centre of what fighting for Britain meant. The Territorial Force Association of London announced on a recruitment poster produced in April 1915: ‘Men of London, In August last, on behalf of the Association of the County, I appealed to you to give thirty thousand Territorials, in a few days, to the King.’8 Another recruitment poster for the Royal Fusiliers (London Regiment Battalions) stated: You don’t want to see that day [of compulsion] come – nor do we. But there is only one way to prevent it and that is for you, and all of us who are young and healthy, to cheerfully don the King’s uniform, and play a manly part by doing a man’s work in defence of all an Englishman holds dear – his King, Home and Country.9
When the government became desperate to increase volunteering numbers in late 1915, as Britain did not yet have conscription, the monarchy was a key motivating symbol to which they turned. In October 1915, the king issued a royal proclamation, in which he sought to encourage recruitment through a 4
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For an example of this language, see Edward Legge, King Edward: The Kaiser and the War (London: Grant Richards, 1917), p. 119. Ibid., p. 126. Imperial War Museum (IWM), 90/17/1 Arthur Guy Osborn, 1st Birmingham Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment, Letter, 10 October 14. Robert Beaken, The Church of England and the Home Front 1914–1918: Civilians, Soldiers and Religion in Wartime Colchester (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2015), p. 56. Imperial War Museum, Art. IWM PST 4465, Territorial Association of London Recruiting Poster, April 1915. The Liddle Collection, Alfred Edward Burdfield, Liddle/WW1/GS/0222 (2/3 Bn Royal Fusiliers).
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personal appeal to men to volunteer. The text appeared in newspapers on 23 October, a date chosen to coincide with the promulgation of the ‘Derby Scheme’ which called upon men to attest their willingness to serve.10 The idea that the monarch was a core element of nationhood, one that represented an embodiment of the British values for which men were fighting was powerful and it remained so in the wake of the conflict. When, in 1920, the king initially expressed reluctance to unveil the Cenotaph, one mother involved with the Cenotaph organising committee, wrote to his private secretary, Lord Stamfordham: ‘I am afraid His Majesty’s decision will be a great disappointment to many people who feel as I do, that as our sons gave their lives for their King and Country [,] we should have liked the King to be the centre figure on that memorial day.’11 King George ultimately dropped his reservations and carried out the unveiling. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to list the innumerable references in wartime culture to the conflict being ‘for King and Country.’12 For the purposes of this argument, what I will focus on is that the monarchy – and particularly the king – was seen as central to national and imperial identity and as positive, important, and to a large degree sacralised. Winston Churchill wrote after the war that: ‘The holding-ground in which the anchors of British strength were cast was the hereditary Sovereign and the function of monarchy which he so deeply comprehended.’13 There was still a widespread sense of religious awe attached to the monarch and a belief in a personal duty to serve him in wartime. Upon victory in 1918, a report in The Scotsman on 22 November by Norman Maclean crystallised these attitudes, which also appear in other newspapers after the armistice. Maclean described the attendance of the king and queen at a service of thanksgiving at St Giles’s cathedral in Edinburgh and noted that generations to come would remember that ‘the King-Emperor came hither to give thanks and pray when victory was won. It is by these things men live and in them consisteth a nation’s spirit. . . . The King kneeling in St Giles is the nation confessing its dependence on God – the only giver of victory.’14 At the core of 10
11
12
13 14
The appeal was widely published in the press. For examples, The Liverpool Daily Post, 23 October 1915; Daily Telegraph, 23 October 1915, p. 9; The Rochdale Observer, 23 October 1915, p. 7. The Royal Archives (RA), PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/30880, Armistice Day, 1920, Mrs Cazalet to Lord Stamfordham, 16 June 1920. Underlining in original. All extracts from the Royal Archives referenced in this chapter are published by kind permission of H. M. Queen Elizabeth II. I have written on this elsewhere: see Heather Jones, ‘The Nature of Kingship in First World War Britain,’ in Matthew Glencross, Michael Kandiah and Judith Rowbotham (eds.), The Windsor Dynasty, 1910 to the Present: ‘Long to Reign Over Us?’ (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 195–216. Winston Churchill, Great Contemporaries (London: Reprint Society, 1941), p. 288. The Scotsman, ‘Rendering God Thanks’, 22 November 1918, p. 4.
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how most British individuals understood their relationship to the state was a monarchist belief system: many individuals saw themselves as subjects in a direct relationship to the monarchy; the rhetoric of ‘citizenship’ is far less evident in contemporary British sources than that of royal ‘subject’. Everything, from the wartime awarding of medals to royal letters of condolence, which the Keeper of the Privy Purse sent to families who suffered particularly heavy wartime losses where several sons had fallen, helped to sustain the powerful cultural projection of the individual subject in a direct relationship with the monarch. This relationship was seen as unmediated by the trammels of bureaucracy or by the temporary careers of politicians. Indeed, at a time when many working-class men did not have the vote, the status of royal subject mattered, since for the disenfranchised it was the only tangible status that they had within the British state. It mattered for elites too. When Kitchener was drowned after his ship hit a German mine, on route to Russia in 1916, Lord Esher described his role in outrightly monarchist language: ‘I am sorry for the King,’ he wrote, ‘who has lost a great subject.’15 Sir David Beatty, upon his appointment to the command of the Grand Fleet, viewed his war role within a subject-monarch framework, writing to the king ‘I pray God grant me a right judgement in all things, to enable me at all times to prove worthy of the Trust that Your Majesty has honoured me with.’16 The monarchy was presented to the public by both the press and elites as a timeless and historic manifestation of what Britishness stood for. This, of course, raises the intriguing question as to how accurate this presentation was and whether this turn to monarchism in the face of the crisis of war was actually something new, invented in response to the shock of the outbreak of the conflict in 1914. David Cannadine in a famous contribution to The Invention of Tradition, argued that nationalism is a relatively new phenomenon, making the case that much of the purportedly timeless ceremonial of the British monarchy is of recent creation, invented in the late nineteenth century.17 To a certain degree this is also true of the Great War, with much that was supposedly traditional actually created in response to the 1914–18 conflagration. For example, the extent of the use of the term ‘for King and Country’ in the First World War appears to have been a new phenomenon with no parallel in previous wars to the scale of its use in official and everyday language during the conflict. Likewise, the particular emphasis in the wartime
15 16
17
Churchill, In the Eye of the Storm, p. 162. Harold Nicolson, King George the Fifth: His Life and Reign (London: Constable and Co., 1952), p. 280. David Cannadine, ‘The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the “invention of tradition,” c. 1820–1977’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 101–64.
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press that Britain’s monarchy was egalitarian and democratic because it treated all subjects equally was a recent development. The importance of the monarchy being seen not to discriminate on class grounds was a key wartime strategy upon which King George V constantly insisted and which proved immensely successful in bolstering support for the monarchy. It drew upon his pre-war tours of the industrial areas of northern England which, as historian Frank Mort has shown, were a central innovation of his reign.18 The monarchy – with the full support of the government – deliberately promoted social cohesion on the home front, including through an unprecedented reaching out to the Labour movement. From the start of the war the royal family promoted charitable relief. The queen was heavily involved in home front charitable mobilisation through the Queen Mary Needlework Guild, which organised and coordinated sending home sewn and knitted items to troops, as well as through her work for the Prince of Wales’s National Relief Fund launched in 1914, which helped families on the home front that had been impoverished by the war.19 Such roles brought Queen Mary into a closer working relationship with labour figures, including Mary Macarthur. Macarthur became an important source of information for Queen Mary and served on the Central Committee for Women’s Employment, which the queen established [see Fig. 2.1]. When Arthur Henderson, MP, the leader of the Labour Party and the first Labour minister to serve in cabinet, lost his son in the war, the king and queen sent a message of condolence which was read at his memorial service.20 Throughout the conflict, they constantly toured home front industrial areas, factories and shipyards. They visited the north of England and hot spots such as Glasgow (known as the ‘Red Clyde’) to ensure social cohesion and boost morale, especially important from 1917 on as war weariness, strike actions and anger with politicians spread. Lloyd George, despite his difficult relationship with the king during the war, would write in his memoirs of the king’s visits to munitions workers that ‘it was this directness of personal contact, free from pomp or any trace of arrogance and aloofness, which made the King’s visits to the munition areas such a valuable aid in the task of raising the workers’ enthusiasm and breaking through the reluctance to accept new methods and regulations.’ Here Lloyd George acknowledged how the perceived tradition of 18
19
20
Frank Mort, ‘On Tour with the Prince: Monarchy, Imperial Politics and Publicity in the Prince of Wales’ Dominion Tours, 1919–1920’, Twentieth Century British History, 29, 1 (2018), pp. 25–57. On this work, see Judith Rowbotham, ‘“How to be useful in war time”: Queen Mary’s Leadership in the War Effort, 1914–1918’, in Matthew Glencross and Judith Rowbotham (eds.), Monarchies and the Great War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 191–223. Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, ‘The Late Capt. D. Henderson: The King’s Sympathy’, 25 September 1916, p. 3.
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Figure 2.1 Queen Mary and Sir Eric Geddes, the First Lord of the Admiralty, at the private view of an exhibition of naval photographs at Princes Galleries, Piccadilly, London, 21 July 1918. Photograph by George P. Lewis for the Ministry of Information. Imperial War Museum Q 19628.
monarchy was reinvented, in order to soften the realities of wartime workplace innovation.21 Such royal efforts to reach out to the working classes at war were not only to support the war effort. By 1917 they were also designed to stave off the risk of war weariness spilling over into revolution. The increasing fears at court that revolution and republicanism were spreading among the population did not reflect reality. The royal family’s public engagement efforts remained broadly popular. Mark Hayman has noted how initially a minority on the radical left sought to mock the monarchy, only to realise that the war had led to an increase in pro-monarchy patriotism: in August 1914, George Lansbury’s antiwar Daily Herald characterized the king as ‘a leader of the war-mongers’.22
21
22
Hugo Vickers, ‘Monarchy in Wartime: King George V and King George VI’, in Peter Liddle, John Bourne and Ian Whitehead (eds.), The Great World War, 1914–1945, vol. 1, Lightning Strikes Twice (London: Harper Collins, 2000), pp. 369–82. Mark Hayman, ‘Labour and the Monarchy: Patriotism and Republicanism during the Great War’, Journal of First World War Studies, 5: 2 (2014), p. 167.
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As the war progressed, however, ‘such verbal attacks became a rarity. Patriotic sentiment and the king’s role as symbol of a nation at war made them dangerous or politically unwise.’23 But the king’s advisors remained fearful of the changes the war was bringing: one of them, Viscount Esher, wrote in 1918 of how ‘The whole order of society is under a microscope, scanned by a million eyes, to the accompaniment of the tremendous music of the guns.’24 He made the case for monarchy as ‘an antidote to political jobbery, as the flywheel of the Constitution, as a check upon the hasty judgment of harassed statesmanship,’ suggesting in particular that the monarchy was a stay upon ambitious politicians such as Lloyd George. Lloyd George’s popularity and charisma were a source of deep concern to Buckingham Palace and the establishment who feared, unjustly, that he might have authoritarian tendencies.25 For Esher: ‘By inherited tradition, by upbringing, by surroundings,’ a king’s ‘judgment is assumed to be superior and his decisions are undisputed. When he speaks ex-cathedra upon matters of social order, his word is final. He can afford to impose restraints and frame rules of conduct, that men and women are ready to obey because they believe the sovereign to be above social pressure and to be free from partisan prejudice. The King belongs to no party and to no class . . .. That the King can do no wrong is not only a convenient constitutional maxim; it is the honest opinion of the mass of the people.’26 This understanding of monarchy echoed that of British conservatism more widely in the latter years of the war. Horatio Bottomley, the editor of the right-wing newspaper John Bull, wrote in the Sunday Pictorial in April 1917: I am neither fawning courtier nor servile sycophant – but I honour the King. To say that I do so because of his personal virtues would be an impertinence. To place him on a pinnacle of individual superiority over and above his fellow men would be time-serving hypocrisy. I loved King Edward because he was just one of our selves and I doubt not that King George makes no claim to be, except by heredity, anything more. But I honour my King because he is my King. Just that.27
In contrast, the king himself and his key advisor, his private secretary Lord Stamfordham, realised relatively early in the conflict the shifting trend towards increased democracy and that this necessitated a more democratic style of monarchy – one that was seen as supportive of parliamentary government and that engaged publicly with people from all backgrounds. They were no longer
23 24 25 26 27
Ibid. Viscount Esher, After the War (London: John Murray, 1918), p. 9. Ibid., pp. 3, 14. Ibid., pp. 11–13. Horatio Bottomley, ‘Hands Off the throne!’ Sunday Pictorial, 29 April 1917, p. 4.
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prepared to rely on an assumption of public respect for the office of the king. During wartime, they realised, respect had to be earned through royal participation in war service. Both were highly sensitive during the war to any hint of revolutionary tendencies in the United Kingdom, particularly in the wake of the upheavals of the Russian revolutions of 1917, which had resulted in the overthrow of the king’s cousin Tsar Nicholas II. Stamfordham believed that, ‘We must endeavour to induce the thinking working-classes, Socialist and others, to regard the Crown, not as a mere figure-head and as an institution which, as they put it, “don’t count,” but as a living power for good, with receptive faculties welcoming information affecting the interests and social well-being of all classes, and ready, not only to sympathise with those questions, but anxious to further their solution.’28 Fritz Ponsonby, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, was also anxious, writing to the then prime minister, Herbert Asquith, that ‘I anticipate a bad time for the Monarchy after the war when the re-adjustments of the labour market must inevitably entail strikes and possibly anarchy.’29 In this context, George V made a particular effort to speak with and win over trade union leaders at the factories that he visited, including those advocating socialism.30 Palace policy was also adapted to make it more welcoming to all classes. During the war, medal investitures became open to the public; Buckingham Palace also hosted tea parties for wounded soldiers at which members of the royal family served the tea and cake.31 New honours were introduced so that more ordinary people could receive royal recognition, including the Military Medal in 1916 and the Order of the British Empire in 1917. The royal family featured in newsreels more often from 1917 onwards, as the propaganda effort shifted from focusing on overseas neutral states to the domestic home front.32 Such changes led the journalist Philip Gibbs to label George V ‘The People’s King,’ a term that also appeared in the wartime press. Another term to appear in 1917 was that he was a ‘working monarch,’ a significant allusion to the idea that the king was working for the war effort along with everyone else and an attempt to subvert any socialist rhetoric juxtaposing lazy elites with the lot of the working man.33 Even when the war had ended, the king continued to eschew any suggestion of monarchical privilege. He was averse to his sons being demobilised too quickly, writing to Queen Mary that ‘our boys ought to 28 29
30 31 32
33
Nicolson, King George the Fifth, p. 308. The Bodleian Library, Asquith Papers, MS Asquith, A1/4/180–181, Fritz Ponsonby to H. H. Asquith, 10 March 1916. Churchill, In the Eye of the Storm, pp. 228, 233, 245, 270. Ibid., pp. 148, 283. Luke McKernan, ‘“The Finest Cinema Performers that we possess”: British Royalty and the Newsreels, 1910–1937’, The Court Historian, 8 (2003) pp. 59–71, 63–4. Philip Gibbs (ed.), George the Faithful: The Life and Times of George ‘The People’s King’ 1865–1936 (London: Hutchinson and Co., [1936]).
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set the example to others in these democratic days, it will all be in their favour later on.’34 Some of this wartime egalitarianism was remarkably ruthless: Princess Beatrice, the king’s own aunt and Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter, who had lost a son, Maurice, in the war in 1914, was unable to get special leave for her surviving son, Leopold, then at the front, to act as best man at his brother’s wedding in London in 1917.35 Much of the monarchy’s wartime innovation was indeed the ‘invention of tradition,’ partly in light of growing fears of revolution but also of the sheer and unprecedented scale of the war, which necessitated new modes of operation. New practices were presented in traditional forms, such as the mid-war decision that the king should personally present medals to the next-of-kin of fallen recipients in award ceremonies.36 In 1917 the royal dynasty was renamed Windsor. This highly traditional association masked the radical nature of what was effectively an attempt to distance the monarchy from its true Germanic past. Likewise, the war saw the royal family engage with the wounded and disabled bodies of their subjects in completely new ways and to an unprecedented degree. Although this was often framed as an extension of traditional royal caring roles, such as the myth of medieval kings healing scrofula or Queen Victoria’s concern for the Crimean wounded, in reality it was far more intimate, radical and innovative, especially in the degree of attention given to other ranks and in what the royals were allowed to see. Hospital trips, which were intended to boost morale, involved encounters that often showed the wounded in raw – and disturbing – physical states. On 6 July 1917, during a visit to the troops at the front, the king noted in his diary: ‘I went to no. 46 Casualty Clearing Station, walked through most of the huts and saw a man shot in both arms being operated on.’37 In March 1918, at the height of the German spring offensive, the king, who had rushed to the front area to support his troops, saw wounded arriving directly from advanced dressing stations at a casualty clearing station, and described ‘very sad and dreadful sights.’38 On another occasion the king visited the London and St Bartholomew’s hospitals within hours of a major air raid on London in June 1917 that killed 162 and wounded 426. He saw severely wounded casualties; among the dead and wounded was a group of working class schoolchildren, mostly aged five years old, whose East End school had been 34 35
36
37 38
Churchill, In the Eye of the Storm, p. 355. M. E. Sara, The Life and Times of H.R.H. Princess Beatrice (London: Stanley Paul and Co., 1945), p. 133. On the decision to award medals to the next-of-kin of the fallen see Churchill, In the Eye of the Storm, p. 179. RA/GV/PRIV/GVD/1917, 6 July. RA/GV/PRIV/GVD/1918, 29 March.
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hit by a bomb.39 This kind of visible royal interaction with the impact of war’s horrors on the body established new norms and expectations for royal behaviour towards wounded soldiers and ordinary civilians and engendered considerable and genuine respect for the royal family, as well as, again, presenting it as treating all classes equally. This royal wartime attention also challenged traditionally negative attitudes towards the disabled body and the mentally ill. In 1915, the king’s diary recorded that he and the queen also visited officers hospitalised due to shell shock, thus again conferring respectability upon them.40 Given the stigma of shellshock during this early phase of the war – when debates still raged about whether it had biological origins or was purely psychological and so could be linked to malingering – this was a significant and radical gesture. The wartime engagement with the disabled body continued into the post-war period. From 1915, the British monarchy was called upon to support the establishment of ‘the King’s National Roll Scheme’ (KNRS) for the employment of disabled exservicemen; the scheme was eventually brought in by the government in 1919, with the monarchy’s status being used as the enticement to employers to take on disabled ex-servicemen.41 But it was not all the ‘invention of tradition.’ The importance of the monarchy to national identity which the war revealed also drew more explicitly on older traditions, some of which pre-dated the nineteenth century. The king, as supreme head of the Church of England, called or supported several National Prayer Days through his archbishops which were extremely well attended throughout the UK, a tradition dating back to Elizabethan times when the monarch invoked God’s aid for the nation in time of peril.42 What was innovative, however, was their notably ecumenical nature, which enhanced wartime cohesion across denominational divides. The royals’ status was also built upon older notions of faithful allegiance which bound them in what was seen as a sacred relationship to each individual subject of kingdom and empire, with the reciprocal obligation upon king and subject to ‘serve’ and ‘protect’ each other. This formed the core of the oath of attestation taken by recruits to the British army during the war. For example, each Territorial recruit swore ‘by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to His Majesty King George the Fifth, His Heirs and Successors, and that I will, as in duty bound, honestly and faithfully defend His Majesty, His Heirs, and
39 40 41
42
Jones, For King and Country, p. 225. RA/GV/PRIV/GVD/1915, 16 February. Meaghan Kowalsky, ‘“This Honourable Obligation.” The King’s National Roll Scheme for Disabled Ex-Servicemen, 1915–1944’, European Review of History, 14: 4 (2007), pp. 567–84. Philip Williamson, ‘National Days of Prayer: the Churches, the State and Public Worship in Britain, 1899–1957’, The English Historical Review, 128 (2013), pp. 323–66.
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Successors, in Person, Crown, and Dignity against all enemies, according to the conditions of my service.’43 In sum, the war was both a blend of invented royal traditions and genuine older ones. Ultimately, the key impact of the war was the need to create in the public mind the idea that the British monarchy was unique and different in kind from other European thrones. There were two reasons why this rebranding was perceived as necessary: first, the need to make the British monarchy appear more democratic as wartime demands for reform of the franchise spread and revolutions broke out across Europe in reaction to a lack of popular representation, the spread of socialism, Bolshevism, hunger and war weariness; and second, the paramount need to distance the British monarchy from its German relatives, who were now portrayed as the incarnation of tyranny and evil in the British press.44 In the last two years of the war and in its aftermath one finds constant emphasis placed upon the democratic instincts of King George V and the idea that Britain remained a monarchy only by popular consent. Bonar Law declared in parliament the week after the armistice that: at this time – when kings, like shadowy phantoms, are disappearing from the stage, are disappearing so quickly that we can hardly remember their names – our Sovereign is passing daily without an escort through the streets of the centre of the Empire, and is everywhere met with tributes of respect, of devotion, and of affection. These phantom kings have fallen because they base their claim on an imaginary Divine Right. Our King rests secure, because the foundation of his Throne is the will of his people.45
Former Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, echoed this in his speech: monarchies in these days are held, if they continue to be held, not by the shadowy claim of any so-called Divine Right; not, as has been the case with the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns, by the power of dividing and dominating popular forces and popular interests; not by pedigree and not by tradition: they are held, and can only be held, by the highest form of public service, by understanding, by sympathy with the common lot, by devotion to the common weal.46
43
44
45 46
Text of oath from The National Archives, Kew, TNA WO 339/35077, 3 October 1914, Territorial Force Attestation of Eric Skeffington Poole. Digital copy online at www .nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/transcripts/people/poole_attestation .htm (accessed 3/1/2018). On this portrayal of the Kaiser, see Lothar Reinermann, Der Kaiser in England: Wilhelm II. und sein Bild in der britschen Öffentlichkeit (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2001). Hansard, HC Deb, 18 November 1918, vol. 110, cc. 3204–39, 3237. Ibid., 3238.
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This idea of reign by consent, not rule, was an extension of the traditional idea of the British crown as a constitutional monarchy. However, it was also new: the consent of the subject was now presented as something earned through hard work and service. An idea of the monarchy existing only by merit was introduced. It was based on the monarch’s behaviour – not on hereditary fortune. This was, of course, something of a distortion. The monarchy was not an elected office, and there was also an echo of the debates around resistance to Charles I. But the rhetoric now radically embodied the suggestion that a king who did not earn his role through his own unimpeachable behaviour and through the hard work of service to his people might no longer achieve consent, a point which would re-emerge strongly in the later abdication crisis of Edward VIII. In this new era, kingship was portrayed as a profession – on top of its more traditional and sacred roles. Moreover, it was recognised that the dominant player in the monarch-subject relationship had been inverted: with the expansion of the franchise, sovereignty now rested much more with the mass electorate than with the sovereign. The democratic theme elucidated by Asquith and Bonar Law also related directly to the climate in the UK at the end of the war. In the 1918 general election, the party that gained the third highest number of votes in the thenUK state, which still encompassed all of Ireland, was Sinn Féin, which campaigned for Irish independence. The discussion around Ireland was framed in terms of the consent of the governed and of democratic rights to selfdetermination. The degree to which Sinn Féin openly called for an Irish republic at this point, and whether its voters identified directly with republicanism rather than just separatism, remains debated among historians.47 However, it is clear that in the 1918 election Sinn Féin publicly claimed to be the party embodying the legacy of the leaders of the 1916 rising, who had in their proclamation of independence overtly declared Ireland a republic. Certainly, many of its key figures were radical republicans. When this Irish context is added, it becomes clear that radical republican messages were being voiced in the United Kingdom of late 1918–early 1919. They emerged from the Irish Question and from more militant socialists within Britain, and so the monarchy seemed less secure and more questioned than hindsight suggests. Within court circles there were ongoing post-war fears regarding the rise of labour in 1917–18. For his part, George V fully grasped the need to emphasise his support for democracy publicly. At the opening of the Imperial War Museum in June 1920, he described how ‘we owe our success under God not to armed forces alone but to the labour and sacrifices of soldiers and
47
Fearghal McGarry, ‘1916 and Irish Republicanism: Between Myth and History,’ in John Horne and Edward Madigan (eds.), Towards Commemoration: Ireland in War and Revolution, 1912–1923 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2013), pp. 46–53.
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civilians, of men and women alike. It was a democratic victory, the work of a nation in arms organised as never before for a national struggle.’48 Overall, then, the war’s most important legacy for the British monarchy was its rebranding as a special democratic case. The conflict saw a message carefully crafted by press, court and politicians that the British monarchy, with its long history of constitutionalism, its limited political power, its purported egalitarian attitudes to all its subjects, and its role as the fulcrum of an empire that supposedly promoted the education, civilisation and economic development of its colonised peoples, was somehow unique and progressive. The extreme wartime austerity measures introduced by George V also created a sense that in its perceived thrift and eschewal of luxury the British monarchy was somehow ‘different’ from its continental counterparts. This idea of a British monarchical exceptionalism became the dominant legacy of the conflict and ultimately protected the monarchy from being tarred by association with the disenchantment with continental monarchical systems. It was of course a myth. The British monarchy was still a hereditary monarchy, of German descent, and, although curtailed by Lloyd George who tried to reduce the king’s influence, it was still immensely powerful. George V still retained far more political leverage than later British monarchs: he was instrumental in the retention of Douglas Haig as commander-in-chief on the western front in 1917–1918, for example. Even the reputation for wartime thrift – largely accurate with regard to the king himself – has to be seen in context: Queen Alexandra, the king’s mother, still lived in Sandringham Palace, although her budget for flower arrangements in every room was reduced.49 Compared with the Hohenzollerns, however, the British royals were a model of economy – during the conflict Crown Prince Wilhelm and his wife Cecilie deemed it appropriate to build a new palace with over 170 rooms – the Cecilienhof, at Potsdam – at a time when German civilians were starving. In conclusion, we must rethink what monarchy tells us about the idea of British wartime ‘modernity’. David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley long ago argued that the nineteenth-century British state was neither as structurally modern nor as different from the Kaiserreich as was sometimes claimed.50 This also holds true for the First World War. Although George V had far less direct political power than the Kaiser, his role in the war requires us to come up with a more variegated way of looking at the ways in which, and the degree to which, the British state was modernised during the conflict. The British state at war was a mixture of new innovations in response to the 48
49 50
Gloucestershire Echo, ‘Imperial War Museum: King George’s Opening Speech,’ 9 June 1920, p. 4. Georgina Battiscombe, Queen Alexandra (London: Constable, 1969), p. 293. David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
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war crisis – such as conscription, food rationing and state intervention in the distribution of industrial raw materials – and older mobilising cultural ideas such as monarchism. Moreover, the processes of innovation and tradition were never in opposition to each other but operated in symbiosis. Indeed, an examination of the wartime British monarchy forces the historian to recognise that the dichotomy between modern and backward is an ahistorical one. At the outbreak of war in 1914, monarchy was seen as both a modern and a traditional form of state organisation; virtually all of Europe’s states were monarchies, the French Third Republic being a notable exception. Monarchy was the norm, and the issues debated involved discussion of what kind of monarchy was best – with constitutional generally viewed more positively in western Europe than authoritarian or absolutist – and how monarchical systems could successfully manage the advent of mass politics and the rise of the industrial working class. It was the war itself that brought the idea that monarchy was incompatible with modernity into vogue across Europe. This was helped in no small part by the British press’s attacks on ‘Kaiserdom’. Even with this development, monarchy survived the conflict in Scandinavia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy, and was adopted in post-war Yugoslavia. In this context the British monarchy was neither unique nor exceptional, but it was most definitely a wartime success: it found its way to the heart of British identity and became a powerful promoter of home front cohesion. It succeeded in embracing and projecting a new image of a democratic monarchy serving its people.
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3 The Growth of Cabinet Government
Introduction Changes in the way the Cabinet worked during the First World War can be seen as marking the beginnings of modern government in Britain.1 The leisurely methods inherited from the eighteenth century proved to be inadequate in a world where communication by telegraph and telephone encouraged centralised decision-making in London. However, changes necessary for efficient waging of war were not easily reconciled with the Cabinet’s traditional responsibility for the unity and coherence of government, and ministers’ collective responsibility for policy. Moreover, modern warfare required unprecedented mobilisation of national resources, and therefore a greater role for the state in the economy and society. This chapter addresses three questions. First, what changes occurred in the ways the Cabinet worked; second, how far did the scope of Cabinet government grow; and third, to what extent did the public’s expectations of government change?
Changes in Cabinet Government In 1914 the prime minister had twenty Cabinet colleagues: three ministers without portfolio, fifteen in charge of government departments, and two law officers. There was no Cabinet Office and no Cabinet secretary, or even a stenographer. Ministers who wished to raise a matter in Cabinet would inform the prime minister and might, if they chose, circulate a memorandum. When the Cabinet met, the prime minister would call on ministers to speak in the order he had decided. The only formal record of the proceedings was a handwritten letter to the king from the prime minister, with the prime minister keeping a copy for his own use.2 It was up to ministers to inform
1
2
Peter Hennessy, Whitehall (London: Secker and Warburg, 1989), p. 64; Anthony Seldon with Jonathan Meakin, The Cabinet Office 1916–2016: The Birth of Modern Government (London: Biteback Publishing, 2016), p. xviii. Photographic copies of the prime minister’s wartime letters to the king are in CAB 41/35 to CAB 41/37, The National Archives of the United Kingdom, London (TNA).
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their departments what the Cabinet had decided, and if a minister was uncertain his private secretary would telephone the prime minister’s private secretary to check. This informal system worked only because the pressure in what was predominantly an age of laissez-faire was normally not very great, and because departmental expenditure was subject to strict Treasury control. These conditions changed once war broke out. Previous accounts of Cabinet government during the war have neglected the loss of effective Treasury control, but it brought about a major change. In peacetime each departmental minister had to settle with the Chancellor of the Exchequer detailed estimates of expenditure for the coming financial year.3 If a minister and the chancellor could not agree, the Cabinet would adjudicate, and the convention that expenditure should normally be balanced by taxation encouraged financial restraint on the part of the Cabinet as a whole, even if, as individuals, ministers wanted as much money as possible for their own departments. Once the estimates had been agreed, a department’s expenditure was fixed for the next twelve months, unless the Treasury agreed to a supplementary estimate. The Treasury also kept an eye on expenditure to ensure it was for the purposes for which Parliament had voted. Ministers were thus subject to much more restraint than the informality of conducting Cabinet business would suggest. However, the discipline of balanced budgets lapsed once war-related expenditure was financed out of parliamentary votes of credit. Treasury control of expenditure became ineffective in the absence of detailed estimates. Departments were, in effect, free to compete in spending as much as industry could supply, and the Cabinet could no longer use finance to allocate or enforce priorities.4 Before the war, grand strategy had been debated in the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID). The CID included the prime minister, the Foreign Secretary, the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Secretary of State for War, and their principal professional advisers, the first sea lord and the chief of the imperial general staff (CIGS). Unlike the Cabinet, the CID did have a secretary, Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice Hankey, who circulated memoranda and conclusions, but the CID was only an advisory body and final decisions were taken by ministers in Cabinet.5 At the outbreak of war the prime minister, H. H. Asquith, held two meetings of a War Council with similar membership to the CID, and with Hankey as secretary, to discuss the despatch of the British
3
4
5
For the relationship between Treasury control of expenditure and Cabinet government, see Ivor Jennings, Cabinet Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), pp. 118–38. G. C. Peden, The Treasury and British Public Policy, 1906–1959 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 114–20. Photographic copies of the CID’s pre-war minutes and papers are in CAB 38/1 to CAB 38/ 8, with a digitised index at CAB 38/9, TNA.
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Expeditionary Force to the European continent.6 Thereafter the conduct of the war was in the hands of the full Cabinet, however, and Asquith continued the peace-time practice of having no secretary and not circulating a record of conclusions. Inevitably, with about twenty ministers taking part, its discussions were diffuse. Consequently, Asquith tended to call together small groups of ministers to deal with emergencies, but without keeping a proper record of what had been decided. Clarity of decision-making was not helped by the appointment of Field Marshal Lord Kitchener as secretary of state for war on 5 August. Kitchener enjoyed a great reputation as a soldier, but he was unfamiliar with the work of the War Office, ignored the General Staff, and was unwilling to explain his plans fully to ministers, whose ability to keep secrets he doubted. He persuaded ministers to agree to his call for volunteers without anyone having a clear idea of how big the new army would become, its purpose, or its impact on the economy and on pre-war plans for munitions production.7 Once the initial battles on the western front had resulted in stalemate, strategy had to be reconsidered. Asquith accordingly set up a new War Council which initially included only the prime minister, the chancellor of the exchequer (David Lloyd George), the foreign secretary (Sir Edward Grey), the first lord of the Admiralty (Winston Churchill), the secretary of state for war, the first sea lord and the CIGS, and Arthur Balfour, the former Conservative prime minister who had been a member of the CID. Hankey was secretary, as he would be with the War Council’s successors and the War Cabinet. Asquith would have preferred to keep the War Council small, but circumstances and the insistence of colleagues led to the addition of five more ministers by March 1915. Whereas the CID had been purely advisory, the Council’s conclusions were sent to the heads of departments for immediate action. Initially, it met only when the prime minister wished to discuss some big question of policy, and the day-to-day conduct of the war remained in the hands of the full Cabinet. The Council met with growing frequency: once in November, twice in December, and six times in January, but it became increasingly immersed in detailed military and diplomatic co-ordination. Moreover, from early 1915 the most important strategic decisions were taken in the Dardanelles Committee, a Cabinet sub-committee whose membership overlapped with the War Council, although initially the heads of the armed forces were not always in attendance. Originally created to consider plans to open a route to Russia by attacking Constantinople, the Dardanelles Committee found it had to consider war strategy as a whole, since decisions to send forces to Turkey affected other theatres. Meetings of the War Council 6 7
Minutes, 5 and 6 August 1914, CAB 42/1, TNA. David French, British Economic and Strategic Planning 1905–1915 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1982), pp. 98, 124–8, 130.
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became less frequent and ceased when Asquith formed a coalition with the Conservatives on 25 May. The Dardanelles Committee was reformed on 5 October with six Liberal and five Conservative ministers, and its title was changed to the ‘War Committee’. A month later the War Committee was formally given responsibility for all military operations. The CIGS and the first sea lord were always present, and ministerial membership was reduced to five: three Liberals (Asquith, Lloyd George – now minister of munitions – and Reginald McKenna, his successor at the Treasury) and two Conservatives (Andrew Bonar Law, the party’s leader, and Balfour, now first lord of the Admiralty). Kitchener, still secretary of state for war, was not a member, reflecting the decline in his influence. The War Committee was handicapped by the stubborn refusal of the CIGS, Sir William Robertson, to discuss any strategy other than concentration of military forces on the western front. Moreover, it became preoccupied with resolving miscellaneous interdepartmental disputes and was a failure so far as consideration of grand strategy was concerned. Hankey’s diary has a description of Asquith writing answers to Parliamentary questions during a meeting of the War Committee while the discussion ‘roamed at large over a wide field’.8 Ultimate responsibility for policy remained with the Cabinet, and the continued lack of records of Cabinet conclusions was a systemic weakness, since in effect only the overworked prime minister was in a position to know for certain what the overall policy of the government was. The Cabinet’s archaic procedures probably suited Asquith, who was prone to procrastination and obfuscation while seeking a compromise when the government was split on some issue. The Cabinet was deeply divided on the question of what kind of war Britain should be waging: a traditional one of naval blockade, with support for allies through production of munitions plus provision of subsidies, with only limited military commitment; or a major effort on land with an army that could be kept up to strength only through conscription. On the one hand, McKenna and Walter Runciman, the president of the Board of Trade, argued that strategy must be related to what the nation’s financial and industrial resources could sustain in a long war, and, on the other, Kitchener and Lloyd George believed that an enlarged army was necessary to prevent defeat, with the latter hoping that victory could be won
8
Maurice Hankey diary, 10 November 1916, HNKY 1/1, Churchill Archives, Cambridge. The minutes and papers of the War Council and its successors are in CAB 42/1 to CAB 42/26, TNA, with a digitised index at CAB 42/27. Hankey’s account of their work is in his The Supreme Command 1914–1918 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961), esp. pp. 222–4, 237–9, 323–7, 439–43, 544. For discussion of their effectiveness, see John Turner, ‘Cabinets, Committees and Secretariats: The Higher Direction of the War’, in Kathleen Burk (ed.), War and the State: The Transformation of British Government, 1914–1919 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1982), pp. 57–83.
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by the end of 1916 before the nation’s financial resources were exhausted. Asquith referred the dispute to a Cabinet sub-committee, the Committee on War Policy, chaired by the Marquess of Crewe, the president of the Board of Education, and containing none of the principal protagonists. The committee reported early in September 1915 that every effort should be made to maintain an army of seventy divisions, but the Cabinet must soon decide whether to tell the French that Britain could either do that or finance its allies, but not both; they also needed to decide whether to introduce conscription. The Cabinet failed to come to any clear decision, but on 31 December it accepted a compromise, suggested by Hankey, whereby a conscription bill would be drafted, and Asquith would chair a new sub-committee, the Committee on the Co-ordination of Military and Financial Effort, which would decide on the size of army Britain could afford. By the time the committee reported to the Cabinet in February in favour of maintaining sixty-two divisions in the field, by means of financial expedients that could not be long sustained, the Military Service Bill had passed its first reading.9 While Lloyd George exaggerated in his memoirs the degree of muddle in decision-making under Asquith, he certainly exercised a very different style of leadership on becoming prime minister on 10 December 1916 in a coalition dominated by the Conservatives. He appointed twenty-three ministers of Cabinet rank, but the full Cabinet never met during the war. Instead, he formed a War Cabinet, initially with five members – himself as the sole Liberal, three Conservatives (Bonar Law, Lord Curzon and Lord Milner), and one Labour (Arthur Henderson). Only Bonar Law, who was chancellor of the exchequer, had any departmental responsibilities. The intention was that members should be free from administration in order to survey the war effort as a whole and be responsible for all aspects of it.10 There were personnel changes in 1917 and 1918, including the appointment of the South African statesman Jan Smuts, but seven members was the maximum size. Thus, five to seven men had the authority that had previously been exercised by the full Cabinet. In a sense, Cabinet government had shrunk rather than grown. However, other ministers were summoned to the War Cabinet with their advisers whenever its business concerned their departmental responsibilities, and the advisers were expected to speak freely in response to questions from
9
10
‘War Policy: Report’, 6 September 1915, CAB 27/2; ‘Report of Cabinet Committee on the Co-ordination of Military and Financial Effort’, 4 February 1916, CAB 27/4, TNA. For the context of these debates, see Martin Farr, ‘A Compelling Case for Voluntarism: Britain’s Alternative Strategy, 1915–1916’, War in History, 9: 3 (2002), pp. 279–306; David French, British Strategy and War Aims 1914–1916 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986), pp. 128–31, 159–60, 169–76. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. II (London: Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1933), pp. 962–86, 1006–10.
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members of the War Cabinet. The foreign secretary was almost always present, and the first lord of the Admiralty and the secretary of state for war almost as often. Sometimes as many as thirty-five people were in the room.11 With a secretariat headed by Hankey preparing agendas and circulating conclusions that had the force of instructions to departments, the War Cabinet represented a major change from previous practice. However, Hankey found that initially the conduct of government business was worse under Lloyd George than under Asquith. The meticulous Cabinet secretary regarded Lloyd George as appallingly unbusinesslike. In particular, the prime minister sometimes neglected to initial the War Cabinet’s conclusions for up to a week, thereby holding up their circulation. Moreover, ministers rarely stuck to the set agenda, but instead allowed themselves to be side-tracked, often by parliamentary questions or some different topic that Lloyd George wished to discuss. As a result, Hankey periodically had to insist that the War Cabinet focus on items on the agenda that were awaiting decision, and for a day or two ministers would do so. Although the War Cabinet met almost daily, the volume of business was too great, and thus Hankey invented a system for catching up on arrears. Some decisions were delegated to individual members and they would be advised by ad hoc committees of departmental ministers and officials when necessary. By August 1917, he felt that the War Cabinet was at last abreast of its work.12 Even so, ministers’ discussions were often unfocused. No attempt was made to insist on the circulation of explanatory memoranda before matters were discussed, and issues were often dealt with piecemeal. Interdepartmental rivalries over industrial capacity or shipping space were dealt with by standing committees, of which the most important was the War Priorities Committee, under Smuts. In all cases, departments could appeal to the War Cabinet against decisions by its sub-committees so that delegated business tended to return to it. In an attempt to free up time for high policy, the War Cabinet held meetings – known as the ‘A’ series – with few departmental ministers in attendance and with a restricted circulation of minutes.13 Even so, by June 1917 Lloyd George felt it necessary to convene a subcommittee, the War Policy Committee, to review policy as a whole: military, diplomatic and domestic, and to form fresh plans in light of the Russian Revolution and mutinies in the French army. He wanted to conserve Britain’s military strength and wait for the American army to arrive in France in 1918, so that Britain would have a powerful voice at a peace conference. However, he considered it to be too great a responsibility for the 11 12
13
The War Cabinet minutes are in CAB 23/1/1 to CAB 23/12/20, TNA. Hankey Diary, 11 January and 18 March 1917, HNKY 1/1; 30 May and 2 August 1917, HNKY 1/3, Churchill Archives, Cambridge. For more detail, see Turner, ‘Cabinets, Committees and Secretariats’, pp. 64–9.
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War Policy Committee to take strategy out of the hands of their military advisers, the CIGS, Robertson, and Sir Douglas Haig, the commander of the British forces in France; notwithstanding the prime minister’s doubts, Haig’s plans for what would become the battle of Passchendaele were agreed.14 Lloyd George took a firmer line in the winter of 1917–18, when he used another War Cabinet sub-committee, the Manpower Committee, to allocate labour according to strategic priorities that ran counter to the demands of the general staff for more men for the western front. The committee’s draft report gave first priority to the navy and the air services; second to shipbuilding; and third to agriculture, timber felling, and provision of food storage. The army came last, a position reflecting Lloyd George’s belief that economic capability of waging war into 1919 should not be sacrificed to the War Office’s demands.15 Ministers were thus belatedly able to use manpower budgeting to exercise control over the war effort as whole. Servicing the network of committees was a considerable bureaucratic achievement on the part of Hankey and his growing staff. However, while Hankey himself readily offered advice to ministers, he insisted that his subordinates restrict themselves to secretarial duties. Lloyd George felt a need for more assistance to help him cope with the flow of information. Whereas Asquith had made do with four civil servants as private secretaries, Lloyd George had his own personal secretariat, known from its location in temporary offices in the Downing Street garden as the ‘Garden Suburb’. This irregular body of public servants, drawn from academic life, business and journalism, acted as independent advisers on policy and as the prime minister’s eyes and ears, monitoring departmental action to see if the War Cabinet’s decisions were being carried out. Between them the Cabinet secretariat and the Garden Suburb enabled Lloyd George to provide effective leadership.16 However, it was leadership exercised without direct advice from professional economists. Whereas during the Second World War Churchill had economists in his Prime Minister’s Statistical Section, and another group in the Economic Section of War Cabinet, examples of economists in government service during the First World War are few and far between: John Maynard Keynes, who 14
15
16
Secretary’s notes on meetings of Cabinet Committee on War Policy, 19 and 21 June 1917, CAB 27/6, TNA. For context, see David French, The Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition, 1916–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 94–124. The Manpower Committee’s minutes for 10, 11 and 15 December 1917 and draft report dated 1 March 1918 are in CAB 27/14, TNA, which also contains a note, dated 2 April 1918, by Hankey explaining that there had been no final report, but that action had been taken on practically all the recommendations in the draft report. Hankey, Supreme Command, pp. 582–91; John F. Naylor, A Man and an Institution: Sir Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretariat and the Custody of Cabinet Secrecy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 26–48; John Turner, Lloyd George’s Secretariat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
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worked on overseas finance in the Treasury; Alfred Flux, who was permanently employed at the Board of Trade; William Ashley, who advised a committee on food prices in 1916 and another on the cost of living in 1918; and Hubert Henderson, who was secretary of the Cotton Control Board. It is probable that, of these economists, Lloyd George only met Keynes, and then only while chancellor of the exchequer and again at the Paris peace conference, where Keynes was the treasury representative. The War Cabinet was a constitutional oddity. It was described by one disappointed Conservative politician, Walter Long, as a ‘dictatorship in commission’.17 Members of Parliament complained that ministers appeared infrequently in the House of Commons; however, the government remained answerable to Parliament, as was shown by the Maurice debate in May 1918 when Lloyd George had to answer allegations that he had misled the House on several military issues. It would be more accurate to say that the post of prime minister was in commission. Lloyd George depended on support from the Conservatives, and he met Bonar Law every morning to discuss policy, knowing that what was acceptable to the Conservative leader would be acceptable to the War Cabinet.18 There was an element of truth in Long’s criticism, however: the fact that the full Cabinet ceased to meet meant that most ministers had no opportunity to discuss policies for which they had collective responsibility.
The Scope of Cabinet Government One measure of the growth of Cabinet government is the frequency with which ministers discussed matters relating to the home front. The War Council and its successors at first focused on military and naval strategy and did not deal with economic and social problems until March 1916, when food supply and production, and the related shipping shortage, appeared on the agenda. In May there was further discussion of the position regarding wheat imports, and the need for the Admiralty and the War Office to release merchant shipping. By the summer, labour shortages raised the question of releasing agricultural workers from the army, and food supplies and shipping shortages were back on the agenda in November. The growing concern about matters relating to the home front reflected the strain on the economy of raising and maintaining a large army, and the effect of U-boat attacks on imports.
17
18
John Turner, British Politics and the Great War: Coalition and Conflict 1915–1918 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 153. Robert Blake, The Unknown Prime Minister: The Life and Times of Andrew Bonar Law (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1955), pp. 342–4.
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Another measure of the growth of Cabinet government is the increase in the number of government departments from fifteen in 1914 to twenty-four by 1918. Most, like the Ministry of Munitions, the Ministry of Blockade or the Air Ministry, took over some of the work done by existing departments, but the Ministry of Food, which was established in response to a widespread clamour for control of food prices and distribution, represented an extension of the state in the civil sphere. Another way to look at the expansion of Cabinet government is to note the growth of controls exercised by departments over the economy. Britain’s pre-war plans had not required total mobilisation of national resources, but some government intervention was anticipated. In particular, plans had been prepared from 1912 to place the railways of Great Britain under state control at the outbreak of war, initially to ensure the rapid movement of troops, but also to make best use in the national interest of what was then the most important form of inland transport. The day-to-day running of the railways was left to the existing managers, who in effect became public servants for the duration of the war, but profits were fixed by the government. The CID had also anticipated that the risk of enemy action at sea would raise the cost of shipping insurance to prohibitive levels, and the Board of Trade had prepared a government war-risks insurance scheme at lower than market rates, initially for ships, but which, from early 1915, was extended to cargoes.19 The Treasury had failed to prepare for the financial crisis that gripped London at the outbreak of war, but together with the Bank of England it successfully improvised a solution, including a five-month closure of the stock exchange. It was in this context that Lloyd George, then chancellor of the exchequer, coined the phrase ‘business as usual’ to reassure bankers and businessmen.20 Business as usual did not seem to him to be an adequate approach to ensuring a rapid increase in munitions production on the scale required by Kitchener’s new armies and Britain’s allies. In February 1915, after serving for some months on the Cabinet’s ineffective Committee on Munitions Supplies, Lloyd George persuaded Asquith to let him introduce legislation giving the government powers to control the engineering industry. Two months later he secured the prime minister’s agreement to a new Cabinet committee, chaired by Lloyd George (still chancellor of the exchequer), that would be responsible for munitions supply, albeit in consultation with the War Office and Admiralty. The ‘shells scandal’ that led to the formation of the coalition government on 25 May gave Lloyd George the opportunity to take sole control of munitions production through the creation of the Ministry of Munitions, 19
20
William Ashworth, An Economic History of England 1870–1939 (London: Methuen, 1960), ch. 11. Richard Roberts, Saving the City: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
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which he headed. This ministry took over from the War Office the placing of contracts and the organisation of supply. Lloyd George was quick to see that output by private firms had to be supplemented by state-owned, purpose-built, National Shell Factories, and the government thereby became a major employer of labour. When private firms’ profits aroused political protests, he responded by obtaining powers to fix prices in relation to production costs. However, the consequence was that the greater the manufacturer’s costs, the greater his profits. Control of munitions prices, therefore, entailed control of sub-contractors’ prices as well, so that state involvement gradually spread throughout industry. The ministry also took on the entirely new role for a government department of advising firms that were new entrants to munitions production, encouraging them to adopt mass production methods. Partly in response to the huge influx of women into the engineering industry, the Ministry of Munitions encouraged the spread of welfare provision in factories under its control.21 Mass production involved ‘dilution’ of labour whereby work hitherto reserved for members of craft-based trade unions would be done by workers who had not served apprenticeships. Production was broken down into simple stages that semi-skilled workers could cope with, but trade unionists often responded by going on strike in defence of their craft privileges. Government was thus drawn into industrial relations to an unprecedented degree. In March 1915 Lloyd George, while still chancellor, secured the ‘Treasury Agreement’, whereby union leaders consented to compulsory arbitration to avoid strikes, and to the employment of semi-skilled workers or women on munitions contracts for the duration of the war. A National Labour Advisory Council of trade union representatives was set up to deal with labour questions, and in July the Treasury Agreement was given the force of law by the Munitions of War Act, which applied to all industries designated by the government as essential to the war effort. In practice it was sometimes difficult to enforce compulsory arbitration and strikes continued. Lloyd George recognised the importance of industrial relations in December 1916 by creating the Ministry of Labour. Headed by a trade union leader, John Hodge, the ministry took over the Board of Trade’s labour department, which, in addition to arbitration, dealt with national unemployment insurance, employment exchanges, and wage boards in trades where minimum wage legislation was in force. However, Hodge’s remit was limited by the fact that Lloyd George also created the separate Department of the Director-General of National Service, under Neville Chamberlain, to mobilise civilian labour for war purposes. A good deal of confusion resulted over who was responsible for labour questions, Lloyd
21
French, ‘Rise and Fall’, in Burk, War and the State, pp. 22–4; Chris Wrigley, ‘The Ministry of Munitions: An Innovatory Department’, in Burk, War and the State, pp. 32–56.
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George having improvised administrative responses to complex problems without thinking through how the work would be divided.22 Moreover, military recruitment remained with the War Office, which circumvented Chamberlain’s department by making bilateral arrangements with the Ministry of Munitions and the Board of Agriculture about releasing men for military service. Chamberlain resigned when Lloyd George lost confidence in him, and his department was replaced in August by the Ministry of National Service, which was given full control over the allocation of manpower, whether for the armed forces or for industry. The new minister, Sir Auckland Geddes, was a member of the War Cabinet’s War Priorities Committee and, although his statutory powers over labour were limited, he was authorised to prepare lists of reserved occupations so that industry would not lose skilled men, to arrange for workers to be transferred to work of national importance from less important jobs, and to identify men who could be enlisted without damage to vital services and trade.23 War increased the role of Cabinet government in international trade, both as regards economic warfare against the enemy and as regards maintaining imports to Britain. The Ministry of Blockade had its origins in the War Trade Department, set up in February 1915 with Lord Emmott as director. The War Trade Department had difficulty in co-ordinating the activities of the Board of Trade, which was responsible for commercial policy, the Admiralty, which enforced the blockade, and the Foreign Office, which conducted the diplomacy necessary to make the blockade acceptable to neutrals. Emmott had been a member of the Cabinet since August 1914 as First Commissioner of Works, but his membership lapsed with the formation of the Coalition in May 1915. As only the Cabinet could resolve interdepartmental disputes, his department’s position was thereby weakened. This unsatisfactory situation led in February 1916 to the creation of a new Ministry of Blockade under Lord Robert Cecil, with instructions not only to restrict German trade but also to encourage British exporters to take over German markets.24 The Ministry of Shipping, created in December 1916, took over the responsibilities of the Admiralty’s department of sea transport, both for troops and their supplies and for food and raw materials for industry. The government
22
23
24
Rodney Lowe, ‘The Ministry of Labour, 1916–19: A Still, Small Voice?’, in Burk, War and the State, pp. 108–34. Robert Self, Neville Chamberlain: A Biography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 51–63; Keith Grieves, The Politics of Manpower, 1914–1918 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988). Philip Dehne, ‘The Ministry of Blockade during the First World War and the Demise of Free Trade’, Twentieth Century British History, 27: 3 (2016), pp. 333–56; Nicholas A. Lambert, Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 384–91, 483–96.
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had taken powers in November 1915 to requisition ships for commercial cargoes or to withhold licences to import, but these powers were not much used until 1917, when U-boat attacks created a serious shipping shortage, and the shipping controller, Sir Joseph Maclay, himself a shipowner, requisitioned all uncontrolled ships. Thereafter practically all shipping movements were directed by the ministry. However, it could not take on the entire responsibility for allocating shipping space, for that involved deciding between the competing claims of the War Office, the Ministry of Munitions, the Board of Trade and the new Ministry of Food, and here the War Cabinet and its War Priorities Committee had an essential co-ordinating role. The distribution of food within Britain was at first left to the free market. Wheat prices rose 80 per cent and meat prices by 40 per cent in the first twelve months of the war, provoking serious social and industrial unrest. There were complaints about hoarding by speculators and profiteering by retailers. Food policy was in the hands of the Board of Agriculture, which encouraged farmers to switch from meat to grain production, and the Board of Trade, which had oversight of imports, but the distributive trades were at first untouched by government. Matters were brought to a head by a poor harvest in 1916, and one of Lloyd George’s first actions as prime minister was to set up the Ministry of Food under Lord Devonport, a Liberal and owner of a retail grocery chain. Devonport was too concerned with maintaining existing channels of the retail trade to be willing to adopt his officials’ plans for compulsory rationing, but matters were brought to a head when rising food prices were exploited by militant shop stewards in the munitions industries. Devonport was replaced in June 1917 by Lord Rhondda, a Liberal coal-mine owner, who embarked on bulk buying of food abroad, while at home flour mills, milk distribution and livestock markets were placed under direct government control. The marketing of oils, fats, butter and meat were controlled by quasi-autonomous trade associations set up at the ministry’s behest. Price controls and a bread subsidy followed, but these did not address the central issue of shortages. On 12 December 1917 Rhondda told the War Cabinet that long queues outside distributing shops were due to the shortage of supplies and were directly responsible for much of the prevailing industrial unrest. The War Cabinet had agreed to compulsory rationing in principle before Devonport’s resignation, but it had been extremely reluctant to approve specific rationing schemes, fearing that bureaucratic controls would arouse popular protests and encourage black markets. Now it began to press Rhondda to introduce rationing before the necessary arrangements could be put in place. A system had been worked out by a committee of officials under William Beveridge, and gradually, as administrative difficulties were overcome, rationing was extended to sugar, meat, jam, butter, margarine and lard. By the end of the war the
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Ministry of Food was responsible, in one way or another, for over 85 per cent of the nation’s food supplies.25
Expectations of Government As casualties mounted in 1916, maintenance of morale demanded that something be done to assure servicemen that they and their dependents would be cared for. Hitherto pensions for veterans had been administered by the Admiralty and the War Office, but in December Lloyd George created the new Ministry of Pensions under George Barnes (Labour) to handle war pensions. As an indication of the sheer scale of the task, it may be noted that in the 1920s the money paid out would be greater than expenditure on the navy.26 The War Cabinet was also concerned with civilian morale. Commissions of enquiry into industrial unrest in 1917 reported that, while there was general support for the war, working people were determined that life would be better after it than in 1914. There was also pressure from within Whitehall for measures to improve the health of the population, since conscription had revealed that many men were not fit for active service. Asquith had set up a ministerial Reconstruction Committee in March 1916, but from March 1917 Lloyd George took the chair of a new Reconstruction Committee, and in July the Ministry of Reconstruction was set up under Dr Christopher Addison to work out plans for demobilisation and to draw up wide-ranging programmes for improving social conditions. There were also political pressures. Trade unions had increased membership during the war, and participation in Cabinet had enhanced the reputation of the Labour Party. The 1918 Reform Act, which trebled the electorate by largely removing property and residential qualifications for male voters over twenty-one, and by enfranchising women over thirty who were householders or wives of householders, made it seem likely that social questions would dominate politics after the war. The Minister of Reconstruction had powers to appoint committees to enquire into a wide range of questions, including housing; industrial relations; women’s employment; land purchase for small holdings for ex-soldiers; and afforestation, but he could only advise the War Cabinet, since responsibility for executing policy remained in the hands of other departments. The shortage of housing was a particularly strong working-class grievance. Housebuilding had almost ceased during the war, partly because labour was diverted to war work, and partly because the imposition of rent controls in 1915 to prevent industrial unrest had left little incentive for private enterprise to build new 25
26
Jose Harris, ‘Bureaucrats and Businessmen in British Food Control, 1916–19’, in Burk, War and the State, pp. 135–56. Bernard Mallet and C. Oswald George (1983), British Budgets, Third Series, 1921/ 22–1932/33 (London: Macmillan, 1933), pp. 556–9.
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houses for rent. The Local Government Board (LGB) had long been the department responsible in England and Wales for housing legislation and for sanctioning loans for local authorities to rehouse people made homeless by slum clearance, but neither it nor local authorities had experience of building on the scale that Addison envisioned. (That was also true of Ireland and Scotland, where the responsible ministers were the chief secretary for Ireland and the Scottish secretary.) Addison, a Liberal who would later join the Labour Party, found the president of the LGB, W. Hayes Fisher, a Conservative, obstructive. Hayes Fisher looked to private enterprise rather than to local authorities to build houses, and the Treasury was, as ever, keen on restricting financial commitments. The two ministers also clashed on the question of whether the LGB’s responsibilities should be taken over by a new Ministry of Health. Matters were not resolved until January 1919, when the Ministry of Reconstruction was wound up and Addison became president of the LGB, which was renamed the ‘Ministry of Health’ five months later. The only partially successful efforts of the Ministry of Health to fulfil Lloyd George’s pledge in the general election of December 1918 to build ‘homes fit for heroes’ are beyond the scope of this chapter. The point made here is that war had created the expectation that the scope of Cabinet government would extend to the provision of housing and other measures to improve the health of the nation.27 A greater role for the state was possible because war had what the economists Alan Peacock and Jack Wiseman called a displacement effect on public finance. They calculated that, expenditure by central and local government on social services after the war was twice as high, measured as a percentage of gross national product, as it had been before 1914.28 War had made higher levels of taxation politically acceptable: the standard rate of income tax increased fivefold, to 6 shillings (30 pence) in the pound between 1914 and 1918, and was reduced no further than to 4 shillings (20 pence) in the pound thereafter. However, most war expenditure was paid for not by taxation but by borrowing in ways that proved to be highly inflationary. Indeed, much of the industrial strife during the war can be ascribed to rising prices and the determination of trade unionists to maintain real wages. From the time of the armistice in November 1918 the Treasury sought to halt inflation by reestablishing its control over government expenditure. At first Lloyd George was unsympathetic to calls by the chancellor of the Exchequer for financial 27
28
Kenneth and Jane Morgan, Portrait of a Progressive: The Political Career of Christopher, Viscount Addison (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 70–82; War Cabinet and Cabinet Historical Section: ‘Notes on the Ministry of Reconstruction, 1917–19’, CAB 102/620, TNA. Alan Peacock and Jack Wiseman, The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961), pp. xxiv, xxvii–xxviii, 90–4.
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restraint, but by the summer of 1919 press opinion was building up against high levels of public expenditure and alleged extravagance. On 10 July, the War Cabinet solemnly discussed whether ministers were entitled to have motor cars at public expense, Bonar Law, now lord privy seal, noting that feeling both in Parliament and the general public was very strong on the subject.29 On 13 August, the War Cabinet restored Treasury control over departments’ expenditure by agreeing not to consider any bill involving expenditure unless the chancellor had approved it or, if he had not, the minister responsible had indicated his intention to appeal against the decision.30 In so doing, the War Cabinet moved to end the free-for-all whereby ministers could charge war-related expenditure to votes of credit with no detailed estimates. It thereby took a major step towards restoring normal Cabinet government. The War Cabinet ceased to meet after 27 October and the full Cabinet, now with twenty-four ministers, resumed its traditional responsibilities.
Conclusion In a sense, Cabinet government became smaller between 1914 and 1916, as a Cabinet of over twenty ministers gave way to a War Cabinet of between five and seven; however, the scope of Cabinet government also grew, as Whitehall took on an ever-growing range of responsibilities. Taken together, the activities of the ministries of Munitions, Shipping and Food represented a significant move from a market economy towards a command economy. By 1917 the Ministry of Reconstruction was responding to changed public expectations of government by drawing up plans for a permanent increase in the state’s activities. The War Cabinet system was not to endure. It had been appropriate while government pursued the single purpose of victory; however, in peacetime governments have no single criterion to guide them between the competing political demands which must be resolved in full Cabinet. Insofar as war marked the beginnings of modern Cabinet government, the crucial change was in the way in which Cabinet government worked. For the first time an efficient Cabinet secretariat circulated agendas before ministers met and conclusions afterwards as to what had been decided. Lloyd George was the public, dynamic force in government, but it was Hankey who enabled that force to be brought to bear on so many issues, from strategy to the home front.
29 30
WC 591, 10 July 1919, minute 7, CAB 23/11/5, TNA. WC 613, 13 August 1919, minute 3, CAB 23/11/27, TNA; Peden, Treasury, pp. 125–6, 129–31.
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4 The Defence of the Realm Act and Other Emergency Laws . . This chapter seeks to offer an overview of the legal powers at the disposal of the British government to secure its domestic objectives during the First World War.1 It argues broadly that a flexible and frequently changing legal framework for wartime domestic policy, notwithstanding instances of legal bluffing and occasional repressive action by the executive against industrial militants and the critical press, reflected sensitivity on the part of the authorities to the stresses and tensions caused by wartime legal restrictions and shortages. The most important of these legal powers were those granted under a succession of Defence of the Realm Acts (DORA) enacted throughout the war. These acts authorised the promulgation by the Privy Council of hundreds of Defence Regulations covering most facets of economic and social life on the home front. Those regulations, in turn, devolved legal powers to more subordinate governmental levels, normally ministers of the crown, where ‘notices’, ‘orders’, and ‘rules’, whether of local or of more general application, industrywide or narrowly focused, would be issued. It may also be noted that wartime delegated or sub-delegated powers could be granted by pre-August 1914 legislation, and could be conferred on statutory bodies, not just on ministers. For example, the Scottish Insurance Commissioners were granted powers under the National Insurance Act 1911 to make regulations during the war whereby individuals who represented insured persons on insurance committees, and who were absent on war service for more than six months without leave of the committee, would not be deemed to have ceased to be members of the insurance committee.2 More examples of delegated legislation will appear below. 1
2
The raising of armies to fight overseas wars and the financing thereof were matters of acute constitutional controversy regarding the scope of royal prerogative powers to wage war. The conflicts lessened after the enactment of the Bill of Rights and the first Mutiny Acts in 1689. For an overview, see the Manual of Military Law (London: HMSO, 1914), 8–14; R. v Hampden (the Case of Ship Money) (1637) 3 St. Tr. 825. Manual of emergency legislation comprising all the acts of parliament, proclamations, orders etc passed and made in consequence of the war: supplement no. 2 to December 5th, 1914, ed. A Pulling, CB (London: HMSO, December 1914), pp. 486–7.
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The focus upon DORA and its progeny should not blind us to the existence of other legal measures available to the government to pursue its domestic war aims during the conflict. For example, there were a number of pre-1914 statutes which were essential to the conduct of the war. In addition, the government sought to rely on historic royal prerogative powers under common law. Examples of ‘pure’ prerogative powers include, most famously, the proclamation declaring that a state of war existed, as from 4 August 1914, between Great Britain and the German Empire. Another early proclamation under the royal prerogative announced on 5 August that, if any British subjects contributed to a loan to the German emperor or contracted with German government departments, they would be guilty of high treason (which rather pre-empted the role of the judiciary in determining the law).3 Prerogative powers could also take the form of Orders in Council (that is, orders issued by the Privy Council), where the Crown’s power to issue such orders derived directly from the prerogative or, more commonly, derived from statutory powers such as those calling out reserve naval officers and men4 under various nineteenth-century naval enlistment and naval reserve statutes and, most significantly, the defence regulations issued as orders in council under the authority of the various DORA acts themselves. Such orders might spawn ‘notifications’ among many other labels, for example the notification concerning the treatment of enemy vessels and their crews in British ports (reciprocating German powers over British vessels and crews at the outbreak of the war).5 But the government also attempted to employ ‘pure’ prerogative powers, especially in the first two years of the war, for a more contentious purpose, that of requisitioning private land and property for military use. The government claimed that it had been established in case law during the reign of Charles I (when constitutional conflicts were acute) that the crown possessed legal powers under the prerogative to ‘trespass’ on private property in order ‘to
3 4
5
London Gazette, 5 August 1914. Army personnel otherwise due for release were retained in service under the Army Act 1881. There was also a separate category of Orders of Council made not by the king but by the lords of the Privy Council. They addressed, inter alia, the areas of trading with the enemy and the exportation of warlike stores (which often meant foodstuffs). Various terms used to describe quasi-legal purposes included memorials and memoranda in the case of the Admiralty fixing separation allowances, warrants for officers’ pay or even simple announcements for soldiers’ rates and separation allowances. It is noteworthy that the first compilation of emergency laws listed in the table of contents includes a lengthy chapter entitled, ‘Emergency Proclamations, Orders, Notifications, Regulations, Rules, Directions, Warrants, General Legislation and Official Notices and Announcements . . ..’ See Pulling (ed.), Manual of Emergency Legislation.
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build bulwarks for the defence of the realm.’6 The deployment of such nonstatutory legal powers, accompanied by the government’s undertaking to award, on an ex gratia as distinct from an ex lege basis, minimal compensation to property owners (involving the payment only of direct loss, if any, not the more generous market value loss), was widely accepted, at least for a time. However, there were limits to the scope of the prerogative to permit government departments such as the War Office to requisition property, as a legal defeat in mid-1916 demonstrated. Moreover, it was often the case that subordinate or delegated legislation had both statutory and prerogative pedigree. For example, the Crown had the prerogative power to regulate the status of aliens in wartime but parliament chose to enact legislation covering this topic in the form of Aliens Restrictions Acts. Army reservists were called out by royal proclamation (that is, under the royal prerogative) on 4 August 1914, under the Reserve Forces Act 1882. Another ‘hybrid’ area concerned prize courts which determined who was entitled to acquire ownership of captured vessels and cargoes. While prize law, per se, fell within the scope of international law (and therefore under the prerogative unless the international law provision had been incorporated into statute), prize court procedure was regulated by orders in council issued under specific prize court acts of parliament, including that enacted on 5 August 1914. Similarly, while the Crown sought requisitioning powers under the prerogative over certain kinds of property (shipping was one recognised category), Defence of the Realm legislation, and regulations issued under that legislation, covered similar ground. Indeed, while a royal proclamation of 2 August 1914 sought to impose a moratorium on the payment of bills of exchange, on the following day parliament enacted the Postponement of Payments Act 1914 which in turn conferred power on the crown to issue such proclamations (which was duly exercised on 6 August).7 Perhaps this was an early governmental admission of legal uncertainty regarding the scope of prerogative powers, an issue that was to emerge more dramatically in due course. Indeed, litigants’ challenges to the exercise of government legal powers, and how the executive responded, will be one of the minor features of this chapter. The enactment of the Prize Court Act and the Postponement of Payments Act in August 1914 are reminders that wartime statutes were scarcely confined to DORA, the Military Service Acts, the Munitions of War Acts and other familiar wartime legislation. A count of the relevant Annual Statutes volumes 6
7
King’s Prerogative in Saltpetre (1607) 12 Co. Rep. 12. We will see that the executive’s exercise of prerogative powers over property during the war exceeded the scope of decisions such as saltpetre. For a full account, see Richard Roberts, Saving the City: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
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shows that in 1913 parliament had passed forty-nine new statutes and in 1914, up to 31 July, it had passed just ten. But in the rest of 1914, one hundred new acts were passed, though not all concerned the war. The Welsh Churches Act, for example, was enacted on 18 September of that year. Yet the bulk of new statutes enacted by Parliament in the last third of 1914 necessarily were warrelated. The broadly named Manual of Emergency Legislation up to 30 September 19148 comprises over 570 pages of new legislation for just that two-month period. It includes the Defence of the Realm Acts themselves; the Special Constables Act; the Isle of Man (War Legislation) Act; the Patents, Designs and Trade Marks Act and a later Amendment Act; the Intoxicating Liquor (Temporary Restrictions) Act; the Death Duties (Killed in War) Act; and many others. Various war-related statutes were already at the disposal of the government prior to August 1914. A series of nineteenth-century Defence Acts and Military Lands Acts authorised the War Office and Admiralty to requisition land and property for the purposes of defence and military training. However, like the compulsory acquisition of land to construct railways and harbours under the ubiquitous nineteenth-century Lands Clauses (Consolidation) Acts, full compensation, usually including a premium, was legally due to the landowners.9 But also in existence were statutes such as the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1904 and a number of Aerial Navigation Acts which authorised the minister to impose restrictions on wireless signalling and flying, which he promptly did even before Britain had declared war. Though few in number, such pre-August 1914 parliamentary measures represented a modest, albeit essential, source of the wartime legal terrain. Notwithstanding the various categories of wartime law, the principal focus remains on DORA. This chapter therefore indicates the scope of the defence regulations, showing the diversity of their provisions and noting how the coverage expanded from the initial concern with security and espionage to the most recondite aspects of manpower, food and materials controls. Little empirical work has been done on the impact of DORA, with most research studies to date concentrating on censorship, and on morals and policing issues. A. J. P. Taylor observed that in 1914 few people would have had much contact with the state apart from the post office, the police and military.10 Thus, the arrival of DORA represented not just a substantive change in the relationship between state and society but also a cultural shift in the conception of the state. Whether British society on 8 August 1914 was aware of how
8 9
10
Pulling (ed.), Manual of Emergency Legislation (September 1914). See, for example, Leslie Scott and Alfred Hildesley, The Case of Requisition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920), pp. 10–41. A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), p. 25.
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its relations to the state would be fundamentally recast for the duration must be doubted. How popular or unpopular was the DORA regime? It is actually a difficult question to answer. We know that some property owners challenged the requisitioning of their goods under DORA (as well as under prerogative powers). However, at stake were usually questions regarding the quantum of compensation, although later in the war ‘village Hampdens’ such as Lord Rosebery would emerge to protest at ‘constitutional outrages’.11 Property owners did not reflect all of public opinion, and working-class dissatisfaction with food controls and rent controls or a lack thereof, and with manpower deployment and controls, were all of greater importance to government than the concern of hotel or race course or private harbour owners to receive ‘proper’ levels of compensation when their properties were taken over by the War Office or Admiralty. And how does one judge the views of the ‘ordinary suburbanite’, such as the woman fined for sketching at Lulworth Cove or the person charged with ‘treating’ a soldier in a pub, or the man riding a bicycle without lights or the neighbour failing to ‘put that light out’?12 Measuring the success or failure of the DORA regime is complicated. One issue is the extent to which the emergency legal regime was responsive to domestic dissatisfaction, working-class or otherwise. Certainly, defence regulations were frequently amended or repealed, and new regulations were added as the war evolved and as new, previously unanticipated, situations arose. For example, the Shipping Controller’s power to direct the shipping trade involved adding, over time, thirteen defence regulations stretching from Reg. 39BBB to Reg. 39GG.13 But major legal shifts often came about as a result of popular discontent or protest, perhaps one of the most notable being the enactment of the Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restriction) Act 1915, which protected tenants to some extent from rent increases and evictions and which was passed after rent strikes in important munitions centres like Glasgow.14 In
11
12
13
14
G. R. Rubin, Private Property, Government Requisition and the Constitution, 1914–1927 (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), pp. 159–73, 221–44. Terry Charman, The First World War on the Home Front (London: Andre Deutsch, 2014), pp. 106–7. Charman cites numerous examples of petty prosecutions. See also Gerard De Groot, Back in Blighty: The British at Home in World War I (London: Vintage, 2014), pp. 198–9. Manuals of Emergency Legislation, Defence of the Realm Regulations [Monthly Edition], Consolidated and Revised to January 31st, 1919 (London: HMSO, January 1919), pp. 61–7. Reg 39BBB was thought to expand the Crown’s prerogative power to requisition shipping in wartime. See Rubin, Private Property, pp. 141–58. Sean Damer, ‘State, Class and Housing: Glasgow 1885–1919’, in J. Melling (ed.), Housing, Social Policy and the State (London: Croom Helm, 1980), pp. 73–112; Joseph Melling, ‘Clydeside Housing and the Evolution of State Rent Control, 1900–1939’, in Melling, Housing, pp. 139–67; Ann and Vincent Flynn, ‘We Shall Not Be removed’, in L. Flynn
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one sense its enactment was evidence of a relatively open legal system which could respond quickly to popular demands. It was also symptomatic, perhaps, of law in a country marked by parliamentary sovereignty and the absence of a written constitution, and where that law is easily reversible in terms of parliamentary procedure.15 Perhaps, indeed, the above example might provoke the hypothesis of a legal interpretation of the First World War.16 It might even suggest a legal interpretation to explain the war’s outcome. According to this, the United Kingdom prevailed because its constitutional structure was more responsive to domestic pressures for change than was the case in Imperial Germany. Supporting evidence includes certain non-DORA legal developments, such as the Rent Restriction Actor even the amendments made in 1916 and 1917 to the Munitions of War Act 1915 to appease trade union critics.17 As a general proposition with regard to DORA, however, changes forced on the government were more likely to have been at the instance of property-owning middle-class interests rather than of working-class interests. In short, those DORA provisions which struck particularly at working-class norms or culture, whether concerning horse racing, alcohol, vagrancy or prostitution, were essentially resistant to change during the war. As a matter of legal principle, the defence regulations issued by the King in Council (but in reality by government ministers) under the authority of the primary DORA statutes were lawful only if they fell within the scope of the enabling act. That is, parliament only authorised ministers to issue defence regulations in specific spheres (such as, initially, in respect of spying or disaffection or protecting transport facilities), where the regulations regarding the above matters could be construed as being for the clear purpose of ‘securing the public safety and the defence of the realm’. The same legal test of whether this delegated legislation was intra or ultra vires would apply to the vast numbers of orders, directives, notices, etc. issued by ministers as subdelegated legislation under the authority of particular regulations, and whether or not the measures were of industry-wide or of geographically unlimited application. Judicial review of delegated legal powers was on occasion a brake on state economic policy on the home front, but governmental expedients,
15
16
17
(ed.), We Shall Be All: Recent Chapters in the History of Working Class Struggle in Scotland (Glasgow and London: Bookmarks, 1978), pp. 18–33. The late Professor Royden Harrison many years ago made this point to the present author. Perhaps by analogy with Avner Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). The abolition of the leaving certificate scheme in 1917 under the Munitions of War Acts might be an example. See G. R. Rubin, War, Law, and Labour: The Munitions Acts, State Regulation and the Unions, 1915–1921 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 215.
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sometimes of doubtful legal authority themselves,18 tended to circumvent the obstacles erected by the courts. Indeed two legal writers had claimed that, in view of the infelicitous wording of the August 1914 DORA statutes, ‘For four months [8 August 1914 to 27 November 1914] we have been living under decrees of the military and naval authorities that have been absolutely illegal’.19 Rectification of the wording was effected in the Defence of the Realm Consolidation Act of 27 November 1914 which, more significantly, implicitly acknowledged that the war had now also to be fought on the industrial front. Consequently, it authorised the Admiralty and Army Council to issue defence regulations which would enable the armed forces to requisition not only the output of factories in which arms, ammunition, or warlike stores or equipment, or any articles required for the production thereof were manufactured, but the factories and workshops themselves. And as to what were ‘warlike stores’, who was to deny that an army also marched on its stomach? Indeed, as Susan Pethick Lawrence wrote in August 1915, ‘Tents are munitions, boots are munitions, biscuits and jam are munitions; sacks and ropes are munitions; drugs and bandages are munitions; socks and shirts and uniforms are munitions.’20 Total war had arrived earlier than most people had anticipated.
18
19
20
A simple example is Chester v Bateson [1920] 1KB 829 which declared Reg. 2(A)2 ultra vires insofar as it precluded a private landlord from seeking a court order to evict a munitions worker tenant without the permission of the Ministry of Munitions. Lord Darling and his fellow judges ruled in the Divisional Court that to restrict a citizen from access to the courts was not, in the absence of explicit wording in the enabling Act, a necessary or reasonable way to further the security of the state and the defence of the realm. The date of the decision, in early 1920, is consistent with the success of government delaying tactics during the war itself where it feared adverse rulings. T. Baty and J. H. Morgan, War: Its Conduct and Legal Results (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1915), p. 102. The basis for their argument was that the first two DORAs declared that ‘“His Majesty in Council has power” to issue regulations [rather than declaring “It shall be lawful” to issue regulations]. And regulations for what purpose? The answer was “regulations as to powers and duties of the Admiralty and Army Council [and other persons]. . .. for securing the safety and defence of the realm”’. The authors explain that the wording ‘means, on the face of it, power to regulate existing powers, not to create new ones’. They conceded that regulations issued before the amending DORA of 27 November 1914 would be intra vires if they addressed spying, spreading disaffection and alarm, securing the safety of railways, harbours and ‘proclaimed’ areas or the lifting of restrictions on land acquisition by the military, since these matters were specified in the body of the August DORAs. Any regulations beyond those areas would appear to be ultra vires, including the trial of civilians by court martial as prescribed in Reg. 27. Whether the authors’ legal analysis was correct was never tested during that four-month period. It was possibly never identified by anyone else. For the authors’ interesting careers, see Rubin, Private Property, p. 25n. Labour Woman, 3 (August 1915), p. 315.
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It is appropriate at this point to offer more detailed coverage of DORA and its issue. The first defence regulations issued on 12 August 1914 comprised just twenty-seven regulations. Part I of the regulations (Regs. 1 to 13) conferred general powers on the military to take possession of land, buildings or other property, and to make use of them for defence purposes (the important Reg. 2),21 to have items and persons removed from such lands, to restrict alcohol sales, not to withhold information, to enter, search and seize items, and arrest powers without a warrant if anyone was suspected on reasonable grounds of acting prejudicial to public safety. Trial of civilians by court martial was possible until parliamentary uproar forced a change in early 1915. Part II (Regs. 14 to 27) covered provisions to safeguard communications, to prevent persons communicating with the enemy and obtaining information for unlawful purposes, and also to secure the safety of railways, docks and harbours.22 Thus while a total of just 27# substantive defence regulations existed on 12 August, by the end of the war 31 variants of Reg. 2 alone had been promulgated, culminating in Reg. 2UUU.23 Moreover, whereas by January 1919 the King in Council had issued 261regulations in total (fifty-seven of them repealed at some time), ministers must have issued probably thousands of sub-delegated legislation in the form of orders, notices, directives etc. under the authority of those regulations.24 Sub-delegated orders, directives, notices, etc., were often signed off by the senior civil servant in a department, such as William Beveridge at the Ministry of Food, rather than by the minister himself. And they might be applicable at the micro-geographical level (for example, street lighting restrictions in 21
22
23
24
After the DORA Consolidation Act was passed on 27 November 1914 Reg. 2 was expanded significantly, especially in Regs. 2B, 2D and 2E (and later 2F regarding the Food Controller’s powers), to permit the military and other authorities to acquire factory output and to direct factory production. It was nationalisation of the industrial and food producing sector in all but name. The controversial Clyde ‘deportations’ of militant shop stewards from Glasgow, primarily to Edinburgh, were authorised under Reg. 14 in an amended form. See James Hinton, ‘The Clyde Workers’ Committee and the Dilution Struggle’, in A. Briggs and J. Saville (eds.), Essays in Labour History 1886–1923 (London: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 152–84; James Hinton, The First Shop Stewards’ Movement (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973), pp. 156–60; Iain McLean, The Legend of Red Clydeside (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd, 1983), pp. 78–85. Reg. 2UUU concerned Board of Fisheries powers over the foreshore and seabed. Repeals and amendments were frequent, For example, at some point Regs. 2S and 2T had been issued but were later repealed. As an example of the complicated nature of the regulations, the Home Secretary, Reginald McKenna, issued an order on 2 September 1914 prohibiting people from owning homing pigeons unless they possessed a police permit to do so. The order was issued under Reg. 3, not of the Defence Regulations of 12 August but of the later Defence (No. 2) Regulations of September 1 which amended Reg. 16 of the August version (and which, in turn, became Reg. 21 in the Consolidated regulations issued on 28 November 1914).
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Grimsby and Folkestone) or perhaps in respect of specific items of food or supplies (such as prohibiting the export of sugar and molasses). One order from the Board of Agriculture directed that the suspension of the Parasitic Mange Order of 1911, issued under the Diseases of Animals Acts 1894 to 1914, was to cease, meaning that the suspension on sheep dipping to remove parasites, imposed on 6 August 1914, was lifted, presumably because infestations were again observed. Meanwhile the supply of new regulations was incessant as the needs of the war economy unfolded. In September 1915, Supplement Number 4 of the Manual was published and included another 450 pages of statutes, regulations and orders covering 1 May 1915 to 31 August 1915, a period long before the establishment of new government departments with their own regulatory regimes such as the Ministries of War Transport, Blockade, Labour, Food, National Service and Reconstruction, most of which were created after Lloyd George became prime minister in December 1916. Add to those supplements the War Material Supplies Manual of Emergency Legislation revised to 28 February 1918 (462 pages) or the Food Supplies Manual, or the Financial Interests Manual. Moreover, there was only minimal overlap regarding their contents. In total how many discrete wartime legal measures were there, whether under DORA or under other emergency legislation such as the Aliens Restriction Acts, the Trading with the Enemy statutes, the Currency and Banknotes Acts, or the Courts (Emergency Powers) Acts; or even under preexisting legislation such as the Inland Revenue Act 1879 which authorised the king to issue proclamations through the Privy Council prohibiting the export of certain warlike stores? It seems futile to try to find out. What we do know is that wartime controls stretched over nearly every facet of human activity in Britain. Some areas, of course, remained untouched such as divorce law or the law of tort (delict in Scotland). Most significantly, parliament held back from legislating for industrial conscription as it did in the Second World War under Essential Works Orders, by which Ernest Bevin in the Churchill wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945 directed labour to where it was needed for the war effort. During the Great War the Minister of Munitions issued Reg. 8A in 1917 to prevent non-essential businesses from recruiting male staff between eighteen and sixty employed in essential trades, but non-essential firms were not initially obliged to release existing staff to work on munitions.25 Military conscription, the operation of the leaving certificate scheme under the Munitions of War Acts, and tight controls on the conduct of other businesses, such as the controls under the Retail Business (Licensing) Order 1918 issued by the Ministry of National Service under Defence Regulation 8AA, which
25
See De Groot, Blighty, pp. 145–8.
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restricted the opening of so-called refreshment shops when other local cafe owners had been called up,26 operated reasonably effectively to constrain the labour market. Defence regulations and pre-existing statutory powers were only half the story of legal controls during the Great War. For the government also placed significant reliance on the royal prerogative power under common law to take whatever steps were deemed necessary for the defence of the realm. Indeed, when the War Office had been discussing in 1896 the legal powers that the military might need on the outbreak of war, the parliamentary draftsman, Sir Courteney Ilbert, who also wrote the chapter on the history of military law in the 1914 Manual of Military Law published by HMSO, sought to reassure the military that a shopping list of statutory powers was unnecessary since the prerogative would cover every necessary contingency. He might have added that parliament could also pass, retrospectively, as it did in 1920, an Indemnity Act to legalise any acts by the military, taken in the name of the prerogative to defend the realm, which the courts might subsequently condemn as illegal, such as unlawful requisitioning, or unlawfully detaining civilians, or unlawful trespasses. It was a view echoed by Sir John Simon, the Solicitor-General, at a Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) meeting in June 1914.27 In the event, and presumably not to alienate the military who abhorred avoidable uncertainty, the Cabinet agreed to the limited shopping list of statutory powers that the military officers attending the CID meeting had demanded and the first DORA, confined to security matters and to acquiring land for the military, passed through parliament in one day. But the prerogative was not in consequence filed away in a drawer. It was, for example, invoked by the War Office in December 1914 when issuing a notice to the owners of Shoreham aerodrome near Brighton that the property was to be taken over to serve as a home defence training station.28 Annoyingly for the government, the officials chose badly because the chairman of the company that owned the aerodrome was a lawyer. After eighteen months and two court decisions upholding the government position, the government’s action in relying on the prerogative in the case was eventually found by the House of Lords judges in mid-1916 to be unlawful.29 The upshot was that the prerogative power was put back in its box except for certain traditional matters such as requisitioning ships or detaining or deporting aliens, while
26
27 28
29
Gerry R. Rubin, ‘Race, Retailing and Wartime Regulation: The Retail Business (Licensing) Order 1918’, Immigrants and Minorities, 7 (1988), pp. 184–205. Rubin, Private Property, pp. 5–9. The precaution was taken of adding a requisitioning order under defence regulation 2, but the owners also challenged that measure since it was silent as to compensation. See Rubin, Private Property, pp. 30–55 for this and subsequent information. Rubin, Private Property, passim, for this and subsequent detail.
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compensation claims under the government’s requisitioning programme were diverted (probably unlawfully, in fact)# to a non-statutory Losses Commission that was prohibited from offering more realistic market level compensation. Those property owners who resisted being short-changed in this manner were met by a policy of dissembling, deception and delaying tactics on the part of civil servants. As one senior official recorded, ‘We bluffed with confidence’.30 A small number of determined companies and individuals did litigate and found some holes in the drafting of a few defence regulations which led to better financial compensation. However, despite the government’s Shoreham aerodrome setback, the executive, with a number of twists and turns into the post-Armistice period, including obtaining an Indemnity Act 1920 from parliament to neutralise any adverse court rulings, still managed to save millions in compensation that it otherwise owed. There have been very few historical studies of the operation of particular defence regulations. Apart from the present author’s work on DORA and property requisition, other studies of defence regulations include: Virginia Berridge, Marek Kohn and Laura Lammasniemi on drugs control under Reg. 40B and prostitution and VD under Reg. 40D; Deian Hopkin and Susan Carruthers and many others on domestic censorship under Reg. 18; Brian Simpson on executive detention under Reg. 14B; M. E. Rose on alcohol controls; various studies of the police, including special constables and policewomen, during the war (inter alia, Philippa Levine, Ronald Seth, Sophie Jackson and Haia Shpayer-Machov); labour controls (Chris Wrigley and the present writer); housing controls (Melling, Englander, et al.); the abolition of economic controls; a limited study of the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act 1919; and, finally, examples of prosecutions, usually concerning public order or safety infringements culled from contemporary newspapers, and mentioned in various overview studies of the home front, for example by Gerard De Groot, Terry Charman and others.31 Shortly after the war, the Carnegie Peace 30 31
NA, LCO2/367, Sir Claud Schuster, LCO, to G L Barstow, Treasury, 16 February 1917. See Virginia Berridge, ‘War Conditions and Narcotics Control: The Passing of Defence of the Realm Act Regulation 40B’, Journal of Social Policy, 7 (2009), pp. 285–304; Marek Kohn, Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground (London: Granta, 2001); Laura Lammasniemi, ‘Regulation 40D; Punishing Promiscuity on the Home Front during the First World War’, Women’s History Review, 26 (2017), pp. 584–96; Deian Hopkin, ‘Domestic Censorship in the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 5 (1970), pp. 151–69; Susan L. Carruthers, The Media at War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), pp. 54–68; A. W. Brian Simpson, In the Highest Degree Odious: Detention without Trial in Wartime Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 1–33; M. E. Rose, ‘The Success of Social Reform? The Central Control Board (Liquor Traffic), 1915–1921’, in M. R. D. Foot (ed.), War and Society: Historical Essays in Honour and Memory of J. R. Western (London: Elek, 1973); Philipa Levine, ‘Walking the Streets in a Way No Decent Woman Should: Women Police in World War One’, Journal of Modern History, 66 (1994), pp. 34–78; Ronald Seth, The Specials (London: Victor Gollancz, 1961),
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Endowment series, particularly the works by E. M. H. Lloyd on War Office and Ministry of Munitions requisitioning, William Beveridge on British food control, and Humbert Wolfe (a prolific poet and author, as well as a civil servant) on labour supply and regulation, as well as others, addressed legal controls. As to the impact of emergency law on the home front, whether Arthur Marwick’s ‘deluge’ or Gerard De Groot’s ‘mountain stream’ of regulations is the better metaphor,32 it is clear that the initial emergency statutes and regulations, when the government were still boasting of business as usual, sought to address mainly the short-term financial crises and immediate matters of home security. The possession of binoculars and homing pigeons, communicating with the enemy, and delineating prohibited zones were early measures under DORA which led to prosecutions before the magistrates. Despite ‘business as usual’, apart from the short-term market calming measures taken by the Treasury in early August 1914, interference in the ‘free market’ in fact arrived early, and long before the demise of Herbert Asquith or the introduction of the ‘men of push and go’ into the new wartime ministries. This is demonstrated by a look at the lists of prohibited articles for export in the 1914 Manual of Emergency Legislation, bearing in mind that the dominant theory of how the war was to be fought, so far as Britain’s involvement was concerned, was by naval blockade, with the BEF playing only a subsidiary role. On 3 August 1914, the day before war was declared, a prohibition on exporting thirty-four types of product was issued. It covered militarily obvious items, such as aeroplanes, pack animals, benzol, cartridges, oil, engines and lorries, gunpowder, nickel, petrol, projectiles, silk, toluol, bandages, coal sacks
32
pp. 75–118; Sophie Jackson, Women on Duty: A History of the First Female Police Force (n.p.: Fonthill, 2014); Haia Shpayer-Machov, ‘Close Encounters of an Unprecedented Kind: Police and German Enemy Aliens during the First World War in Britain’, Journal of British Studies, 60 (2021), pp. 221–44; C. J. Wrigley, David Lloyd George and the British Labour Movement (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1976); Rubin, War, Law, and Labour; Melling (ed.), Housing; David Englander, Landlord and Tenant in Urban Britain, 1838–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); S. M. H. Armitage, The Politics of Decontrol of Industry: Britain and the United States (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969); Rodney Lowe, ‘The Erosion of State Intervention in Britain, 1917–1924’, Economic History Review, 31 (N.S.) (1978), pp. 270–86. Rubin, Private Property, pp. 221–44; Gerry R. Rubin, ‘Law as a Bargaining Weapon: British Labour and the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act 1919’, Historical Journal, 32 (1989), pp. 925–45; De Groot, Blighty; Charman, First World War; Jonathan Shaw, Law and War: Magistrates in the Great War (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2017). DORA powers were, of course, continued in Ireland after the war, see Colm Campbell, Emergency Law in Ireland, 1918–1925 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), while the public order elements were adapted to a colonial or mandate setting, for example, in Sudan, Kenya and Palestine. De Groot’s reference is to Arthur Marwick’s seminal study The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London: Macmillan, 1973); De Groot, Blighty, p. 155.
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and zinc. Two days later a second proclamation prohibited the export of sixty further items, most of which were still recognisably military. On 10 August, a third list was issued. Almost forty items, including various chemicals relevant to explosive manufacture, were added, but what was more interesting is that various categories of foodstuffs were now included. Although they might be consumed by soldiers abroad, they were also essential or daily foodstuffs for the civilian population. Bread, biscuits, butter, margarine, cheese, corn, grain, pulses, eggs, fish, fruit, sugar, glucose, molasses, confectionery, milk, tea and vegetables could no longer be exported. Some marginal adjustments to the list within ten days allowed biscuits to be exported, but not jams and marmalades.33 Just as events such as initial industrial dislocation, a rush on savings, and voluntary recruitment were impacting on the civilian population in the first week of the war, so also did government civil servants rapidly become conscious that, as a net importer of foodstuffs from abroad, Britain might soon become vulnerable to a German sea blockade. British civilian society was affected non-militarily within days of the war’s outbreak in more immediate, if indirect, ways by the executive branch’s interference in the free market. Whatever it was, this was not ‘business as usual’. It was not long before the legal net widened to embrace most social and economic activities which might impact indirectly on the war effort. The command economy was emerging more quickly than the ‘business as usual’ analysts and advocates believed. Moreover, it was not simply a top-down exercise managed by civil servants confident in their own abilities to run a wartime economy – the initial impression to be gained from the post-war Carnegie series. In fact, the management of the war economy also revealed extensive collaboration and negotiation with the national representatives of labour and capital, which pointed to corporate bias.34 It was not so much a matter of Britain’s military-industrial complex as its military-industrial-consumer-trade union complex. Although in one respect he put the cart before the horse, Alan Milward was correct when he wrote in 1984: The production ‘miracles’ during the war were in fact primarily the result of the control and diversion of resources by the central government. Indeed in the case of munitions they were the outcome of a specially created Ministry of Munitions with remarkable legal powers . . .35 33 34
35
For the provisions, see Manual of Emergency Legislation . . . to September 1914, pp. 160–7. See, most recently, Gerry Rubin and Colin R. Moore, ‘Emergency Legal Powers in Britain in World War One: “Corporatist” Law or a Government that “bluffed with confidence”?’ in D. Deroussin (ed.), La Grande Guerre et son droit (Issy-les-Moulineaux, France: Lextenso editions LGDJ, 2018), pp. 323–59. Alan Milward, The Economic Effects of the Two World Wars on Britain, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984), p. 19.
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Thus, the foundation for industrial success was set in law. Law here was the enabler, the facilitator and, on occasion, the stick rather than the carrot. Demographic studies by Jay Winter have asserted that infant health improved during the war.36 Was it not, at least in part, because the law had a role to play in imposing controls? It is difficult to see how such improvements and other welfare reforms could have been made on a voluntary basis, even if rationing was not introduced for some commodities until 1918. Nonetheless, one must reject a reductionist analysis that sees wartime law as an effective instrument for the state control of the economy. After all, the government suffered a number of defeats in the courts over the legality of different defence regulations or orders it issued, or over the use of the prerogative to requisition land and buildings, compelling the executive to resort to bluff and delaying tactics.37 The law still retained a degree of autonomy from the Marxian substructure, although if litigants had any German origins then judges were overwhelmingly framed as judicial warriors battling against the Hun.38 There is therefore a degree of complexity in identifying who should get the credit for change. But a number of tentative conclusions might be offered. First, when legal challenges were mounted against defence regulations or their like, the litigants were generally property owners or businesses – unsurprisingly. Second, working-class challenges to legal controls or disadvantages tended to involve direct action which in some cases, such as over rent or labour controls, was successful in achieving law reforms. Third, the evidence for widespread grumbling and moaning over the petty types of security restrictions or on alcohol consumption is difficult to assess. More work needs to be done on how unpopular DORA was during the war itself, as distinct from after the armistice. Fourth, we need to find out more about objections to departmental orders affecting individual businesses or farms. For example, in her history of food policy during the war, Margaret Barnett noted that of 100,000 cultivation orders directed to farmers in 1917–18, 251 were ‘opposed to the point of litigation’.39 Did they go to court? Was it a bluff by either side? Were cases settled out of court? Finally, the reality was that people broke the food control regulations and the drinking restrictions; they went on strike; they illegally evicted tenants; they did not ‘put that light out’; and they deserted from the army. Although one can probably find statistics of prosecuted, perhaps even reported, illegal conduct, were the unreported cases no different from the dark figures for crime more generally? In short, the surface has barely been scratched in our quest for what Punch called Dame DORA [see Fig. 4.1], 36 37 38 39
J. M. Winter, The Great War and the British People (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986). This is spelled out in detail in Rubin, Private Property, passim. See Rubin and Moore, ‘Emergency Legal Powers’, and sources cited therein. L. Margaret Barnett, British Food Policy during the First World War (London: Routledge, 1985), p. 198.
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Figure 4.1 ‘Dora’ discomfited. ‘Dora’ – ‘What, no censorship?’ Cartoon by Bernard Partridge for Punch, or the London Charivari, 22 January 1919.
and we are left with one tantalising conjecture, alluded to earlier.40 While the British volumes in the Carnegie series, written predominantly by civil servants, might give the impression of a top-down approach to the conduct of the war on the home front,41 negotiation, confrontation, the exercise of discretion, litigation, even bluff, could lead to accommodations, of varying degrees of satisfaction to each party, between authority on the one hand, and consumers, producers and citizens on the other. In contrast, it is widely accepted that in Germany the military-industrial complex governed that country and, in consequence, neglected the needs of the home front, which impacted adversely on
40 41
Charman, First World War, p. 116. Dame DORA was actually male in Punch cartoons. On the Carnegie series, see Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 110–13.
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military and industrial morale.42 Perhaps it is a cultural thing; indeed, it might be suggested that the nature of the British state, far removed from the concept of the Rechtstaat, allowed for a more open and multi-faceted engagement between state and society43 than in the more pronounced top-down command of the German economy.44 Certainly courts of law still operated in Germany, but whether in practice they were, to any extent, safety valves for consumers, private property owners and workers against the might of the German military-industrial complex, may be doubted. This is not, of course, to argue that the courts in Britain consistently favoured those challenging emergency laws, but the state in Britain did rest on the (admittedly imperfect) legal foundations of the rule of law and parliamentary sovereignty, particularly when purported prerogative powers exercised by the government were given short shrift by the judicial House of Lords in 1916. So were differing legal structures, contrasting the more pragmatic common law system with the more principled civilian legal system in Germany,45 pertinent to the outcome of the war, at least so far as the home fronts in Britain and Germany were concerned?46 It is a proposition worth investigating 42
43
44
45
46
At the risk of simplifying the analysis, this can be inferred from various studies. See, for example, Stig Foerster, ‘Civil-Military Relations’, in J. Winter (ed.), The Cambridge History of the First World War, Vol. II; The State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 91–125; Gerald Feldman, ‘Mobilizing Economies for War’, in J. Winter, G. Parker and M. Habeck (eds.), The Great War and the Twentieth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 166–86; Winter and Prost, Great War, pp. 116–25; Offer, First World War, pp. 58–9. Feldman refers to ‘state-run corporatism or even societal corporatism based on voluntary collaboration of interest groups’ in Britain. See Feldman, ‘Mobilizing’, p. 183. For detailed consideration of the German war economy, see, for example, Jurgen Kocka, Facing Total War: German Society 1914–1918 (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1984); Gerald D. Feldman, Army, Industry and Labor in Germany 1914–1918 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966); and numerous contributions to Winter (ed.), The First World War, vols. I–III. There is much modern literature on comparative legal cultures. See, for example, Henry W. Ehrmann, Comparative Legal Cultures (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976); Mary Ann Glendon et al., Comparative Legal Traditions: Text, Materials and Cases . . .., 2nd ed. (St Paul, MN: West Publishing Co., 1994); Andre-Jean Arnaud (ed.), Legal Culture and Everyday Life: Inauguration Ceremony (24 May 1989) (Onati, Spain: Onati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, 1989). There are only limited historical perspectives in those works. Martial law was pervasive in Germany but absent in Britain during the war, with the exception of Ireland. L’état de siège was also imposed in France until October 1915. For a brief survey, see Steven R. Welch, ‘Martial Law’, in (1914–1918 online) International Encyclopedia of the First World War (accessed 18/4/2017). For instances of wartime legal controls in France, see for example, Robert O. Paxton, ‘The Calcium Carbide Case and the Decriminalisation of Industrial Ententes in France, 1915–26’, in P. Fridenson (ed.), The French Home Front 1914–1918 (Oxford: Berg, 1992), pp. 153–80; and numerous essays in Deroussin, La Grande Guerre.
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on a cross-cultural basis. Indeed, scholars have begun to explore its parameters when addressing the distinguishing features of ‘open’ and ‘closed’ legal systems during the war.47 We earlier alluded to the prospect of a study which might be entitled ‘The First World War: A Legal Interpretation’. Perhaps the energies of younger interdisciplinary scholars might be channelled in that direction in due course.
47
See the collection of essays in Erasmus Law Review, Issue 2 (2014), including Janwillem Oosterhuis, ‘Unexpected Circumstances Arising from World War I and Its Aftermath: “Open” versus “Closed” Legal Systems’, Erasmus Law Review, 2 (2014), pp. 67–79.
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5 Local Government and the Great War: The Experience in Essex Introduction The First World War does not occupy a prominent place in histories of local government in England. In surveys of the general development of English Local Government, this is perhaps understandable; the war years did not bring about lasting changes to the scope or structure of local government, and its legacy was much less than that of the Second World War.1 Looking at local experiences of the Great War, however, local authorities played a prominent and evolving role, particularly as state intervention increased from 1916.2 The impact on councils’ work was remarkable to contemporary observers, such as the Essex newspaper that proclaimed in December 1916 that: Quite a revolution has taken place with regard to the work of public affairs owing to the war. Building developments, preparations for [Local Government Board] inquiries, and all manner of municipal schemes have given place to [Military Service] Tribunals, War Pensions, and so on, with the town’s undertakings still to be maintained in as efficient a manner as circumstances will allow.3
To explore the role of local government, this chapter differs from the nationwide approach of the rest of this volume. Instead, it focuses on the experience of the county of Essex in the southeast of England.4 It explores the growth of war-related activities undertaken by, and organised through, the county’s local 1
2
3 4
J. A. Chandler barely mentions the First World War at all in his history of local government, while a chapter is dedicated to the Second World War and reforms of the post-war Labour Government. J. A. Chandler Explaining Local Government: Local Government in Britain since 1800 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). See Jonathan Mein, Anne Wares and Sue Mann (eds.), St Albans: Life on the Home Front 1914–1918 (St Albans: St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society, 2016) for a good example of a local study demonstrating the importance of local government. Barking Advertiser (BA), 2 December 1916. This chapter is largely drawn from my DPhil thesis: S Hallifax ‘Citizens at War: The Experience of the Great War in Essex, 1914–1918’, unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford (2010).
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authorities and the important role played by some of those bodies in managing the extent and equality of sacrifice locally. Their lack of long-term impact should not distract from the complexity, novelty, volume and importance of these wartime roles.
Background Essex: A County of Contrasts In 1949, Essex was described as ‘a county of contrasts’, whose boroughs, towns and villages had little in common: ‘It is not distance that divides them but time. They belong to different centuries’.5 It is a description that could have been written thirty-five years earlier on the eve of the Great War. Located directly northeast of London, half of the county’s 1.4 million inhabitants in 1911 lived in areas that were virtually indistinguishable from the capital: East and West Ham, Walthamstow, Leyton and Leytonstone, areas that included docks and industrial areas and a large swathe of London suburbs. The rest of the population lived in the towns and countryside. The larger towns like Chelmsford, Braintree and Colchester had thriving light industries and ageing markets, while Southend-on-Sea was a booming tourist destination. Between and around them were smaller market towns and agricultural districts that remained largely unchanged from the mid-nineteenth century.
Local Government in Essex As with the rest of England, there was a patchwork of local authorities, from parish councils to the Essex County Council and – for some services – London County Council in the metropolitan districts. Between them was a middle tier: the borough councils of the larger towns, and the urban and rural district councils that covered the rest of the county. Their powers were also a patchwork: rural districts might be responsible only for water and roads, the larger districts and boroughs for schools, lighting, sewers, museums and libraries, and in some cases for publicly owned companies including gas, trams and electricity.6 While some important activity was organised at county level, as we shall see, the parish councils’ war work was minimal.7 This chapter focuses primarily on the activities of borough, urban and rural district councils and the local bodies they created.
5 6
7
William Addison, Essex Heyday (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1949), p. 1. See John Joseph Clarke, Outlines of Local Government (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1918). See Charles T. Perfect, Hornchurch during the Great War (Colchester: Benham & Co., 1920), p. 217.
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According to one study, English local government ‘was not evolved to provide a co-ordinated system of administration for a logically-defined range of services; rather it emerged, piecemeal, in answer to a succession of separate needs and demands’.8 Another historian notes that, although by 1900 local authorities ‘appeared to have a clear purpose within the Constitution along with resources and prestige’ compared with fifty years earlier, the development of social functions through the first decades of the twentieth century saw local authorities left out, as schemes were run on a national basis or through alternative regional and local structures.9 Developments during the war years reflected both of these trends: the ad-hoc creation of new functions and a mixture of national, regional and local structures.
The Range of Wartime Roles Edgar George Bratchell from Hornchurch (then a village near Romford) served on no fewer than thirty-one public bodies in the war years. They included the Hornchurch fire brigade committee and local council, both of which he already chaired. Others were war specific. Bratchell chaired Romford’s Food Control Committee and its Military Service Tribunal, Food Economy Committee, and Housing and Town Planning Committee. He was vice-chair of the Distress Committee and a member of the local Emergency Committee and the Romford sub-division of the War Pensions Committee. He also served on numerous committees of the local Board of Guardians.10 While Bratchell was something of an exception, it was not unusual for the mayor and deputy mayor, or council chairman and vice-chairman, to serve on many of these bodies; the list of his roles demonstrates the range of local war work. This chapter focuses on the war-specific tasks undertaken by councils, or by bodies they created. This is not to say that there was no impact on the existing functions, but it was relatively minimal. Ongoing activity was affected by the war, as the continued payment of allowances to employees in the forces, increasing salaries and costs, and the use of buildings for war purposes drained resources, while the use of less experienced replacement staff reduced efficiency.11 The presence of troops in the area (common to much of Essex at
8
9 10 11
Brian Keith-Lucas and Peter G. Richards, A History of Local Government in the Twentieth Century (The New Local Government Series, number 17; London: Allen and Unwin, 1978), pp. 35–7. Chandler, Explaining Local Government, ch. 6. Perfect, Hornchurch during the Great War, pp. 227–8. John A. Fairlie, British War Administration (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Preliminary Economic Studies of the War, edited by David Kinley, No. 8; New York: Oxford University Press, 1919), pp. 151–2.
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various points) also put a strain on water supplies, roads, baths and public health. There was little, however, in the way of major projects. At the end of 1916, the Barking Advertiser – which had hailed the ‘revolution’ in public affairs a few weeks earlier – observed that, ‘In municipal affairs there is, so to speak, “nothing doing,” except that of assisting to carry on the national war work of preparing for the conditions which will subsequently arise.’12 It is worth noting that both councils’ ongoing and war work was undertaken by a largely unchanging cohort of councillors as local (as well as parliamentary) elections were repeatedly postponed from 1915 until 1918. This wartime continuity saw Robert Banks-Martin serve four consecutive terms as mayor of East Ham, from November 1914 to November 1918.13
Councils’ Response to the Outbreak of War Essex’s councils were overwhelmingly supportive of the British war effort from its start. There was little organised opposition to the war in Essex at any stage, let alone in its local government structures. Indeed, many councils passed prowar and anti-German resolutions at various points during the war.14 They were, however, alert from the start to the risks that war brought and their initial responses to its outbreak highlight their main areas of concern – areas that their later roles would, to some extent, revisit – particularly around military manpower and the war’s social and economic impact.
Recruitment The mass volunteer army raised in 1914–15 was to a large extent raised by local bodies. As Peter Simkins notes, from the start of October 1914 in particular, the War Office left ‘the raising of new infantry battalions almost completely to local authorities and the Territorial Force County Associations’, both of which recruited with a local focus.15 In Essex, as elsewhere, local authorities promoted recruiting with speeches, provided allowances to encourage employees to enlist, enabled their buildings to be used for recruitment
12 13 14
15
BA, 30 December 1916. Perfect, Hornchurch during the Great War, pp. 225–6. For example, see Waltham Forest Archives (WFA), Leyton UDC minutes, 1917–18, 3 November 1917; Essex Record Office (ERO), D/RMa M1/11 – Maldon RDC minutes 1916–19, 3 July 1918; Southend and Westcliff Graphic (SWG), 24 August 1917; Walthamstow Gazette (WG), 9 November 1917 and 5 October 1917. Peter Simkins, Kitchener’s Army: The Raising of the New Armies 1914–1916 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. 79–82. See also David Littlewood, Military Service Tribunals and Boards in the Great War: Determining the Fate of Britain’s and New Zealand’s Conscripts (London: Routledge, 2017), Conclusion.
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meetings and offices,16 and directly recruited specific local units. These were not only infantry units: Mayor Banks-Martin in East Ham ‘had raised three or four brigades of artillery’ by late 1915, when he led – with mixed results – the recruitment of an East Ham battalion of the Royal Fusiliers.17 While less populous districts could not hope to raise full local units, their council leaders, along with MPs and other prominent locals, rallied to promote enlistment through their speeches and practical assistance, including the provision of transport to the recruiting office.
Distress and Relief To support civilians affected by the war, councils established distress committees. Alongside a National Relief Fund (NRF) headed by the Prince of Wales that raised over £1 million in seven days in August 1914 and £5.5 million in a year,18 local distress relief efforts raised money for local and national use.19 After some initial disruption there was, however, very little need for relief by the time that distress committees were operating.20 From early September, official reports found little or no distress in most areas of Essex: Stansted council asked whether it was necessary to have a local distress committee when there was no reported war distress; in Colchester only £5 per week was being spent on relief, of over £3,000 collected locally; Chelmsford’s only applicant for relief soon found work at a local factory.21 The exceptions to this trend came in coastal areas, where fishing, dock work and tourism were affected by wartime conditions and tensions;22 even there, though, it was less than expected. By early September, ‘So far as the County Committee had been able to ascertain in the various districts of Essex there was as yet very little distress as a result of the war.’23 16
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18 19
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22 23
See, for example, East Ham Echo (EHE), 4 September 1914; Essex County Standard (ECS) 5 September 1914. H. C. O’Neill, The Royal Fusiliers in the Great War (London: William Heinemann, 1922), p. 24. The confusion may have been caused by one of the units being an ammunition column. The units raised are quoted elsewhere as 173rd Brigade R.F.A., 178th (Howitzer) Brigade, the 16th Ammunition Column, the 141st Heavy Battery R.G.A., and the 32nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers (Perfect, Hornchurch during the Great War, p. 225). Daily Mirror, 15 August 1914; Times, 7 August 1915. In Colchester the local fund struggled until after the war to recover for local use money it had sent to the NRF (ERO, D/B 6 M29/1, Colchester War Relief Committee). This is echoed in the official report of the NRF, which states that ‘distress among the civil population has been much less than was at one time feared’. P.P. 1914–16 (Cd. 7756) Report on the administration of the National Relief Fund up to the 31st March 1915, p. 8. ECS, 5 September 1914; BA, 3 October 1914; ERO, D/B 7 M3/3/1 Chelmsford Local Committee for Distress Relief, and C/DC 14/1 County War Distress Committee minutes. A separate fund was provided by the NRF for hardships in East Coast towns. BA, 5 September 1914.
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Some local authorities also formed committees to house and assist Belgian refugees.24 As a ‘prohibited zone’ on the coast, potentially at risk of invasion, however, practical assistance to refugees was not a significant feature of councils’ work in Essex.25
Invasion Emergency Committees Local ‘Emergency’ Committees were set up to prepare for the evacuation of the populace from the coastal districts of the county. A pre-war flurry of novels depicting a German invasion of Britain had frequently cited Essex as a landing ground,26 and army manoeuvres in 1904 saw a force land at Clacton on the Essex coast.27 Fear of spies preparing for an invasion had led to pre-war questions in Parliament, including from Epping’s MP, who claimed that a German staff ride had already taken place preparatory to an invasion.28 How much weight did fears of invasion carry with ordinary people? Combined with news of atrocities committed by the Germans in Belgium and France, this invasion threat was seen by many as directly threatening their homes and communities.29 Military and civilian opinion vacillated during the war and in 1916 the military again practised for a hostile landing at Clacton.30 The authorities were careful to stress that the establishment of emergency committees did not indicate an increased threat of invasion.31 The committees’ first meetings took place in December 1914 and January 1915, and they planned routes of evacuation westward across the county to Hertfordshire and 24 25 26
27
28
29
30
31
Fairlie, British War Administration, pp. 149–50. See Essex County Chronicle (ECC), 23 October 1914. For example, Erskine Childers, Riddle of the Sands (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1903); William Le Queux, The Invasion of 1910, with a Full Account of the Siege of London (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1906); P. G. Wodehouse, The Swoop! Or How Clarence Saved England: The Tale of a Great Invasion (London: Alston Rivers, 1909). Marion Harding, ‘The Invasion of Essex, 1904’, in National Army Museum Year Book 1 (London: National Army Museum, 1989). Christopher Andrew, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (London: Heinemann, 1985), pp. 40–6. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, MS Eng hist e 88–177, ‘Echoes of the Great War’ diaries of Revd Andrew Clark (hereafter ‘Clark diaries’), 11 February 1915 and 4 February 1915; ERO, T/P 188/3, Stondon Massey, Materials for a History of the Parish, volume III (hereafter ‘Stondon diary’), 30 October 1914. Catriona Pennell, ‘“The Germans have landed!”: Invasion fears in the South-East of England, August to December 1914’, in Heather Jones, Jennifer O’Brien and Christoph Schmidt-Supprian (eds.), Untold War: New Perspectives in First World War Studies, History of Warfare, 49 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 111; Clark diaries, 14 June 1915; ERO, D/DGd C44, Marion Todd to Revd Dixon, 27 April 1916; The National Archives (TNA), AIR 1/646/17/122/343, Papers relating to a Sham attack at Clacton. Essex Weekly News (EWN), 4 December 1914; ERO, D/BC 1/7/1/4, Southend Chief Constable’s Orders, #55, 12 November 1914.
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Oxfordshire.32 In early 1915, lists were drawn up of people who would need to be transported, of the livestock to be driven or destroyed, and of able-bodied men to carry out this work.33 Evacuation routes were marked out with arrows painted on trees and walls to direct the refugees, offering a very visible symbol of the threat.34 A dry-run in August 1918 revealed problems with local animosities, and there were concerns that people might prefer to help their own families rather than the local sick and infirm.35 Fear of invasion was quite real, especially in the first six months of war. Whether the national and local efforts to plan for evacuation helped or hindered is hard to assess.
Developing Role during the War As the war went into its second and third years, a greater practical role developed for councils and the new bodies they set up, particularly the Food Control Committees and Military Service Tribunals, key bodies established by all borough, urban and rural district councils. Before focusing on them, however, it is worth setting them in context alongside other bodies created during the war.
Food Control Committees Food Control Committees (FCCs) were set up in the summer of 1917, following the first widespread queues for food over the previous winter. Their powers were broadly to enforce national ‘Food Orders’.36 The national Food Controller appointed a Commissioner for each of the sixteen divisions into which Great Britain was divided for the purpose, below which each borough, urban and rural district council in England appointed a committee: some 1,900 in total.37 Previously, official efforts in relation to food had been focused on work by local War Savings Committees on promoting ‘food 32
33
34
35
36 37
See Burnham and Dengie Advertiser, 26 December 1914, 2 January 1914 and 9 January 1915 and ERO, Stondon diary, 15 December 1914. For more detail see Pennell, ‘The Germans have landed!’, pp. 105–6, 109–12. See ERO, Stondon diary, 15 January 1914; Clark diaries 15 March 1915; See Imperial War Museum (IWM), 87/53/1, B.E. Todhunter records relating to emergency planning in the Saffron Walden area, and Pennell, ‘The Germans Have Landed!’, pp. 110–11. Pennell, ‘The Germans Have Landed!’, pp. 110, 114; this was commemorated with a small plaque in Ugley near the Hertfordshire border. Pennell, ‘The Germans Have Landed!’, pp. 111–12; W. W. Lawrence, W. W. Lawrence, 1888–1968 (unpublished memoir held at ERO), p. 50; Michael Bardell, ‘Total War 1914–1918: An Essex Village Diarist’s View’, Unpublished MA Dissertation, University of Essex (2002), pp. 31–46. Fairlie, British War Administration, p. 208. This is the total for Great Britain, local committees were formed on a slightly different basis in Scotland; P.P. 1918 (Cd. 9005), The War Cabinet Report for the Year 1917, p. 178.
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economy’ through talks and classes, work that was also taken on by the new FCCs, and on the cultivation of unused land.
Military Service Tribunals When the flow of volunteers for the army slackened in 1915, councils helped to administer a National Register to assess the availability of military aged manpower.38 At the end of the year, a hybrid voluntary conscription system came with the Derby Scheme. Men who ‘attested their willingness to serve’ were assured that they could appeal against being called up; some claimed to have been told that if they did not attest they could not appeal.39 Thus was born the local tribunal, established to hear these appeals. At first explicitly a committee of the local council, the local tribunal was expanded when conscription was introduced in early 1916 under the first Military Service Act. Across Great Britain, there were there were 2,086 local tribunals and eightythree county appeal tribunals at which local decisions could be challenged; a Central Tribunal heard cases where a point of principle needed to be decided.40
War Pensions Committees Unlike the FCCs and tribunals, War Pensions Committees were formed at county level and, initially, only in the largest boroughs and urban districts. Created after the inadequacy of pre-war arrangements and reliance on charities became clear, they provided information and assistance to discharged servicemen and the families of those who had died, as well as obtaining information about applications, supplementing pensions, grants or allowances, and helping to provide employment and training; over time their administrative and investigative roles expanded.41 In June 1916, the Barking Advertiser wrote that the pensions committee’s ‘functions are among the most important of any organisations which have been established in our midst’. In many ways they played part of the role that the distress committees had expected to perform: supporting those affected by the war. Like the tribunals (as we shall see), the pensions committees were
38
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41
See Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Polity, 1985), pp. 167–8. See Hallifax ‘Citizens at War’, pp. 159–60. Fairlie, British War Administration, pp. 157–61; P.P. 1919 (Cmd. 413), ‘Forty-Eighth Annual Report of the Local Government Board,’ p. 116. Conscription was not extended to Ireland, although legislated for in 1918. EWN, 7 April 1916, p. 5; PP 1919 (Cmd. 14), ‘First Annual Report of the Minister of Pensions’, pp. 5–10.
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extremely busy: in 1916, Barking’s Committee dealt with 1,200 cases, Southend’s with 1,150 by mid-1917.42 In Clacton, 176 cases were dealt with in six months in 1918, but even this level of provision could be time consuming as only sixteen cases were heard in a meeting lasting more than five hours in East Ham in March 1918.43 Barking’s Committee was hailed for its fairness and sympathy,44 while East Ham’s was criticised in the press for its overly generous decisions and in 1919 was suspended for knowingly making irregular payments beyond what was permitted by law.45 The importance of having local bodies is noticeable in the case of the Pensions Committees, as in the case of tribunals. Among slightly over 300 committees across Great Britain, only 59 were boroughs and districts with populations below 50,000 permitted to have committees in 1916, including Colchester, Chelmsford and Barking in Essex.46 The lack of local committees in smaller towns such as Chingford caused concern, and from 1917 they were more generally allowed in towns with over 20,000 residents,47 suggesting an official recognition of the need for such important decisions to be made by local bodies.
War Agricultural Committee and Executive Committee War Agricultural Committees were set up early in the war; like the Pensions Committees they were county-wide bodies. In a nation dependent on imports, food production and efficient use of agricultural land was naturally of great importance and these committees attempted to increase production through encouraging greater cultivation and managing agricultural manpower. Their
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P.P. 1917–18 (Cd 8750), ‘Report to His Majesty the King of the War Pensions, &c., Statutory Committee for the year 1916’, p. 83; SWG, 6 July 1917. ECS, 2 November 1918; West Ham and South Essex Mail (WHSEM), 22 March 1918. BA, 22 July 1916. WHSEM, 8 March 1918 regarding comments in John Bull; Alfred Stokes, East Ham: From Village to County Borough (London: Wilson & Whitworth, 1933), pp. 152–3. The official report goes into some detail and cites dual purposes of generosity and an attempt to force a change in regulations by purposefully breaching the regulations; P.P. PP 1920 (Cmd. 575) ‘Ministry of Pensions. Report of Mr Marlay Samson, CBE, KC, an officer of the Ministry of Pensions appointed to hold a public inquiry into the conduct of the East Ham Local War Pensions Committee.’ PP 1919 (Cmd. 14), ‘First Annual Report of the Minister of Pensions’. The report notes that the profusion of sub-committees came as a result of local pressure and was not necessarily helpful.; P.P. 1917 (Cd 8750) ‘Report on the War Pensions, etc., Statutory Committee’. EWN, 7 April 1916, p. 5; PP 1919 (Cmd. 14), ‘First Annual Report of the Minister of Pensions’, pp. 5–6; WG, 5 January 1917.
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work included an agricultural census in 1916, surveying some 5,000 holdings across Essex.48 From early 1917, a smaller food production committee – later renamed the War Agricultural Executive Committee – was set up, manned by members of the War Agricultural Committee. It dealt with issues of cultivation and, increasingly, manpower – ranging from tribunal appeals relating to agricultural workers to organising for agricultural work to be done by soldiers, German prisoners of war, and women volunteers.49
Shorter-Term Committees Housebuilding by local authorities virtually ceased with the outbreak of war.50 Housing and Town Planning Committees took on a short-term role in 1917, looking forward to post-war reconstruction in the expectation of government assistance for housebuilding. When the government asked for returns on local populations and housing needs, plans were worked up for areas where new homes should be built.51 By the end of the year, the majority of local authorities had responded to the Local Government Board’s request and indicated the need for more than 300,000 new homes across the country.52 Some local authorities also formed air-raid committees. Walthamstow’s committee met in late 1915 to consider lighting and the use of trams during air raids, and how to treat casualties; later, another Walthamstow air raid committee discussed the use of a siren to alert the population and the provision of air raid shelters.53 In Chelmsford, a ‘special purposes’ committee looked into the provision of air raid shelters specifically for women residents.54
Composition of the New Bodies Following its declaration of a ‘revolution’ in public affairs, the Barking Advertiser noted the extensive co-option of members onto these bodies from
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ERO, D/Z 45/1–14, Agricultural census forms for Essex Unions. (Not all holdings were farms.) ERO, D/Z 45/16, Minutes of Executive Food Production Committee, 1917–18. P.P. 1914–16 (Cd 8195,8196,8197) Forty-fourth annual report of the Local Government Board, p. 53. For examples, see ERO D/B 7 M1/31, Chelmsford Borough Council minutes 1917, 29 August 1917 and 26 September 1917; D/B 7 M1/32, Chelmsford Borough Council minutes 1917–18, 30 January 1918; and D/RMa M1/11, Maldon RDC 1916–19, 1 and 29 August 1917. P.P. 1918 (Cd 9005) The War Cabinet Report for the Year 1917, p. 194 WFA, Walthamstow UDC minutes, Air-raid sub-committee 28 September 1915, and early 1918. ERO, D/B 7 M1/32, Chelmsford Borough Council minutes 1917–18, 27 March 1918.
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beyond councils’ ordinary membership.55 This important feature highlights that many of these bodies were not solely council entities; although councillors generally dominated, many others were involved, and an effort was often made to ensure that representatives of relevant organisations or sections of the community were included, including women and working men. When Maldon Rural District Council appointed its tribunal in early 1916, the membership was the council’s chair and vice-chair, five other councillors and two other men, including a Workers’ Union representative. The FCC was made up of the council’s chair, vice-chair, five councillors and four others – in this case including two co-operative representatives and one woman; in early 1918, it was expanded to include workers’ representatives.56 The picture was similar in the much larger boroughs of Colchester and East Ham at opposite ends of the county, with councillors dominating and a greater range of representation on FCCs (and virtually no women on the tribunals).57 War Pensions Committees were made up of similar people, chaired by the mayor or council leader and with a majority of members also being members of the council.58 Like the Food Control Committees they incorporated representative groups more effectively from the start than did the tribunals, including representatives of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association (some of whose responsibilities they had inherited), ex-servicemen, women, representatives of labour and often people involved in local education or hospitals. The War Agricultural Executive Committee was made up of councillors and aldermen, chaired by Edgar Gerald Strutt, an alderman who was also a wellknown agriculturalist and sometime adviser to the Board of Agriculture.59
Food Control At the end of 1917, the Walthamstow Guardian noted that among the ‘Many new organisations [which] have sprung into existence [. . .] the Food Control Committee have had to deal with problems which are of paramount importance to the happiness of the people in the district.’60 Their biggest challenge came when food distribution problems escalated in the winter of 1917–18, at the point when public confidence in the war effort had reached its nadir. Across the county, queues grew in size and in restlessness that winter. In
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BA, 2 December 1916. ERO D/RMa M1/11, Minutes of Maldon Rural District Council, 1916–19. Mrs F. Landon, a member of Brentwood Urban District Tribunal was a notable exception (EWN, 10 March 1916). Fairlie, British War Administration, p. 159. ERO, D/Z 45/16, Minutes of Executive Food Production Committee, 1917–18; ‘Hon. E.G. Strutt’, Obituary, Manchester Guardian, 10 May 1930. WG, 28 December 1917.
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Colchester, male munitions workers, angered by the long waits and variable success of their wives’ attempts to buy food, left work and barged into shops demanding to be served immediately, prompting warnings of the dangers of an angry population.61 In Leytonstone, a crowd reportedly looted closed provision stores, while West Ham Town Hall was raided on suspicion that food was being stored there.62 Writing later of that winter, Mr Jarmin, the chairman of Colchester’s committee, stressed that inequality was the root of public disquiet: In spite of every effort, it was seen that trouble would ensue unless something was done to increase the centres of distribution, and to disabuse the mind of the population in their belief that the rich could fare well while the poor fared badly. Equality of treatment could alone save the situation [. . .].63
This is backed up by the East London Advertiser, which stated in January 1918 that: ‘The unequal distribution of food has brought more discontent and dissatisfaction to the people of East London than anything we have known since the war started.’64 This supports Thierry Bonzon and Belinda Davis’s assessment of the food situation in London (which, of course, overlapped with southwest Essex): that disquiet about food was as much about equality and a sense of justice as it was about supply.65 The indignation they note over perceived inequality between London’s poor east end and wealthy west end was echoed in and between Essex towns.66 The first editions of newspapers in the New Year carried stories of Food Control Committees using newly granted powers to requisition supplies intended for one store (often the local Maypole Dairy67) and redistribute the goods among various retailers around the district.68 Jarmin recalled a crowd of 2,000 meeting the delivery of margarine to the Maypole Dairy shop in 61 62
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ECS, 19 February 1918, ECC, 1/2/1918. Wilson, Myriad Faces, p. 514; Paul Rusiecki, The Impact of Catastrophe: The People of Essex and the First World War (Chelmsford: Essex Record Office, 2008), p. 196. E. A. Hunt (ed.), Colchester War Memorial Souvenir (Colchester: Essex Telegraph Ltd, 1923) p. 62. East London Advertiser, 11 January 1918, quoted in Wilson, Myriad Faces, p. 519. Thierry Bonzon and Belinda Davis, ‘Feeding the Cities’ in Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert et al. (eds.) Capital Cities at War: Volume I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 339. Bonzon and Davis, ‘Feeding the Cities’, p. 329; WG, 4 January 1918, ECS, 9 February 1918. The Maypole was a ‘multiple’ store (i.e. one with multiple shops), which had its own supply of milk and was often better able to meet demand than independent local shops. In early 1918, it was often the sole provider of margarine, with butter supplies largely non-existent. WG, 4 January 1918, ECC 4 January 1918. This power was granted on 22 December, see P.P. 1918 (Cd 9005), ‘War Cabinet Report for the Year 1917’, p. 178.
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Colchester, in front of whom, along with two other FCC members and the committee’s Executive Officer, he requisitioned the margarine supply and announced that it would soon be available at twelve locations around the town.69 The practice soon became widespread across Essex towns. Jarmin and others across Essex could see that a wider rationing scheme was needed than the sugar rationing already in place. Local councils and their FCCs instituted local schemes, but the lack of co-ordination between local areas undermined these efforts both practically and presentationally. Concerns about people from outside buying up their districts’ precious provisions and allegations of people hopping between different queues to get more than their share caused disquiet and led Chingford, Buckhurst Hill, Loughton and other neighbouring boroughs’ committees to coordinate their fixed prices for meat.70 Localised schemes could try, but ultimately could not completely dispel the belief in ongoing inequality within and between communities. A wider-scale solution was needed and much called for – by councils, committees, newspapers, labour and co-operative groups and ordinary citizens.71 On 25 February 1918, the London and Home Counties rationing scheme was introduced and the queues disappeared virtually overnight.72 By April, meat rationing applied across the whole of Great Britain; from mid-July, a uniform national rationing scheme applied to meat, sugar, butter, margarine and lard.73 Local councils and their FCCs still had a role in local rationing schemes, ensuring that cards were issued and investigating infringements, as well as making some important decisions, for example over whether to launch a communal (or ‘national’) kitchen in their town or district. The success of, and need for, communal kitchens varied markedly, with the greatest need coming in the metropolitan areas.74 Although food supply and distribution was a significant local issue, local efforts alone could not resolve it. They could mitigate some of the immediate problems of distribution, but not dispel concerns about inequality of supply within and between communities. That took a wider scheme, first on a broad regional basis,75 and eventually nationwide. 69 70 71 72
73 74
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Hunt, Colchester War Memorial Souvenir, pp. 62–3. WG, 4 January 1918. For example, see WHSEM, 8 January 1918; WG, 11 January 1918. P.P. 1919 (Cmd. 325) The War Cabinet. Report for the Year 1918, p. 251; for local examples, see WHSEM, 1 March 1918. Wilson, Myriad Faces, pp. 648–9. ECS, 5 January 1918, 15 February 1918 and 17 August 1918; WG, 12 January 1918; ERO, D/B 7 M1/32, Chelmsford Borough Council minutes 1917–18, 27 March 1918; ERO, D/ RMa M1/11, Maldon RDC minutes 1916–19, 10 April 1918. The London and Home Counties region was a significant part of the nation, encompassing about a quarter of the English population, P.P. 1918 (Cd 9005), ‘War Cabinet Report for the Year 1917’, p. 178.
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Figure 5.1 Snowed up (it is reported that appeals are coming in in their hundreds), published in Southend and Westcliff Graphic, 9 June 1916. British Library.
Conscription and Exemption Although conscription might have been a national bureaucratic process that would not have included a local element, in practice a community’s local leadership, led by its council, played a major part through the Military Service Tribunals. While these bodies’ work was constrained by often-amended lists of reserved occupations and other guidance circulated by central government, they had a significant role in making decisions on the appeals before them that were specific and practical but also key to maintaining a sense of equality and fairness; these were decisions that had to take into account personal, local and national needs [see Fig. 5.1]. Their workload could be vast, with 748,587 men appealing for exemptions nationwide in the first six months of 1916, perhaps 60 per cent of all those called up.76 By the end of August 1916, Chelmsford Tribunal had heard 453 cases, and Ilford 1,896 by the end of July – around 5 per cent of each town’s 76
J. E. Edmonds, Military Operations: France and Belgium: 1916, vol. I (Macmillan: London, 1932), p. 152. Just over 770,000 men joined the army in this period, suggesting that around 1.25 million were called up of whom 60 per cent therefore appealed to tribunals (if – as figures from Essex suggest – a third of appeals failed).
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1911 male population.77 The tribunals met frequently, particularly in the larger towns and boroughs, with twenty-five meetings held in Chelmsford by the end of 1916, compared with forty-five reported in Colchester and sixty-six in East Ham; the press reported thirty-six and seventy-nine meetings in the latter towns respectively in 1917, but fewer in 1918.78 Meetings could last for many hours: in early 1918, Colchester’s tribunal met for between two and five hours each week.79 These appeals were made by the man himself or by a third party (usually his employer) on the basis of domestic or business hardship, work in a war-related industry, medical unfitness and conscientious objection. While the latter has always been the most prominent group and showed up weaknesses in the system, they were a tiny proportion of local tribunals’ work, making up around 2–3 per cent of cases in Essex and a similar proportion nationwide.80 It was other cases – those relating to domestic circumstance, medical fitness or (in the majority of reported cases) business considerations – that dominated their proceedings and which were core to the work and the local importance of the tribunals.81 The first stage was assessment by a ‘military representative’ appointed to the tribunal to make the military’s case; if he agreed to an appeal, it did not go to the tribunal – over a third of Ilford cases in the early months of 1916 were dealt with this way.82 Most cases, though, were decided by local tribunals. In early 1917, Mayor Banks-Martin, chairman of East Ham’s tribunal, described its role in making these decisions: [T]o weigh the merits and demerits of all applications that come before them, with a view to ascertaining whether the persons concerned could render more valuable service to the community by remaining in civilian life than by joining the Army.83
To balance those needs a tribunal might refuse exemptions to younger or unmarried men, erring on the side of retaining older, married men. In the interests of the community, it might exempt from service a man who was vital
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ERO, D/B 7 M3/2/1, Chelmsford Borough Military Service Tribunal, 1915–17; and Ilford Recorder (IR) 21 April 1916. ERO, D/B 7 M3/2/1, Chelmsford Borough Military Service Tribunal, 1915–17; WHSEM and ECS, 1916–18. The figures in the newspapers seem not to be complete, particularly for 1918, but the Colchester figures broadly tally with the eighty-seven meetings reported to have been held by early 1918 (ECS, 19 January 1918). ECS, 19 January 1918. Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 101; Hallifax, ‘Citizens at War’, pp. 262–73. See Hallifax, ‘Citizens at War’, tables 5.3–5.6. IR, 21 April 1916. WHSEM, 2 February 1917.
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to the support of elderly or infirm relatives. Or it could allow a firm to keep the last man able to carry out a certain role – at least until he could be replaced by a man over military age, a discharged serviceman, or a woman. Recruiting authorities clearly found the perceived ‘localism’ of the tribunals frustrating: the Local Government Board stressed to them ‘the urgent need of releasing for the Army all men who can reasonably be spared from civil life’, while Director of Recruiting Auckland Geddes complained that ‘the present exemption system is based almost entirely on individual or local considerations’, risking unwelcome variation from place to place.84 As well as judging individual cases, tribunals could be practical and proactive in trying to reorganise local businesses to best serve both local and national needs, by freeing up men for the armed forces, while maintaining local trade and services. Recommendations were made for rationalising business arrangements: one East Ham butcher’s slaughterman was exempted on condition that his previously exempted assistant enlisted instead, and the town’s butchers were ordered to arrange joint slaughtering and so reduce the number of exempted slaughtermen. Their failure to do so led the tribunal to reject all business appeals for slaughtermen.85 Elsewhere, bakers, dairymen, coal dealers, and even undertakers were instructed by local tribunals to rationalise their work or to work together.86 Offering hours to a co-operative scheme to support the businesses of conscripted men became a regular condition of business exemptions in East Ham, which was ahead of others in its interventionist approach, but its use spread later in the war.87 This type of co-ordination received a mixed response,88 but opposition appears to have declined during and after the shortages of the winter of 1917–18. The tribunals helped to maintain local consent for the war and for the ongoing application of conscription by maintaining a balance between local and national needs. As in the case of food, a sense of fairness and equality between and within communities was necessary, with the added factor of juggling personal, local and national needs. They were willing to clash directly
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1916–17 (Cd. 8697) Forty-Sixth Annual Report of the Local Government Board, p. 20; Geddes Quoted in Gregory, Last Great War, p. 108. See also Littlewood, Military Service Tribunals, ch. 7. EHE, 21 April 1916 and 5 May 1916. BA, 27 January 1917 and 17 February 1917; EHE, 21 April 1916; ECS, 8 April 1916 and 29 May 1917. ERO, D/B 6 M23/7, minutes of the Special (Traders) Committee, April–May 1918, following letter received in July 1917; ECS, 27 April 1918. Local newspapers were very critical of butchers’ failure to make labour saving arrangements in wartime (EHE, 5 May 1916 and 18 June 1916; WHSEM, 12 January 1917); ECS, 22 July 1916 and 3 June 1916; WHSEM, 4 May 1917, referring to earlier scepticism; similar resistance has been noted elsewhere (Ivor Slocombe, ‘Recruitment in the Armed Forces during the First World War: The Work of the Military Tribunals in Wiltshire, 1915–1918’, Local Historian, 30/2 (2000), pp. 105–23, 120).
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with national authorities to defend the local interest. Strikes and walk-outs were a feature in Southend, Colchester, and rural Ongar.89 The importance of local tribunals looking at local cases was highlighted by clashes between local tribunals and the Essex County Tribunal over the latter’s decisions, and by protests against the proposed merger of six tribunals in North Essex.90 Geddes’s proposal in 1918 to remove the local tribunals and make each County Tribunal into an ‘advisory’ committee suggests a continued frustration with local tribunals;91 the idea, had it been made public, would have likely provoked a strong negative response. While food control could not be tackled locally and needed a regional – and later a national – solution to the local problem, in recruitment the national manpower problem needed local tribunals to enable it to continue to work with the support of local communities. They helped to manage these tensions and maintain a sense of equality of sacrifice, contributing to the maintenance of vital consent for the ongoing war effort.
Local Government and Local Sacrifice Through their role in setting up and manning these important local bodies, local authorities in Essex and elsewhere responded to the wartime needs of the community – expected and real – from the conflict’s earliest days. In key areas where the war affected people and communities in Great Britain, bodies set up by local authorities provided an important local dimension, dealing with war pensions, manpower and food – particularly from 1916 onwards. Where Military Service Tribunals placed key decisions in a national recruitment process at a local level, enabling them to balance national and local needs, War Pensions Committees provided an increasingly local level of assistance and decisionmaking. Food Control Committees could not address local concerns through local actions alone and a regional, and later national, structure was required to provide the necessary sense of equality of sacrifice. Although these structures did not transform local government,92 their importance during the war came both in practical terms and in helping to maintain a sense of equality of sacrifice that was essential to maintaining consent for the war effort.
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ECS, 21 April 1917, 28 April 1917 and 15 October 1917; Rusiecki, Impact of Catastrophe, p. 106. ECS, 12 October 1918. TNA, CAB 24/46/37 (Former reference GT4036), Memorandum on amendment of Military Service Acts, 26 March 1918, quoted in Littlewood, Military Service Tribunals, ch. 7. Although some wartime functions did continue beyond 1918, most notably the war pensions committees.
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6 The Clergy and Cultural Mobilisation
On the eve of the outbreak of war in August 1914, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was more socially and politically divided than it had been at any other stage since its inception in 1800. Militant campaigns for workers’ rights and female suffrage, combined with an escalating crisis over Irish home rule, directly threatened the ability of the Liberal government to rule effectively and were undermining social cohesion.1 The formation, arming and drilling of paramilitary organisations in Ireland in the eighteen months before the war had generated particularly intractable tensions between state and society and given rise to a threat of civil war that had no had parallel elsewhere in Western Europe.2 These deep-seated divisions in British and Irish society meant that the support of significant swathes of the population, and Irish nationalists in particular, could not be taken for granted when Britain intervened in the European conflagration. The process of mobilising the state for war was further complicated by the fact that Britain, alone among the belligerents, could not rely on conscription to expand its comparatively small peacetime army and would have to encourage men to freely volunteer for military service. The case for mass mobilisation was also rendered somewhat less pressing by the fact that the United Kingdom, in stark contrast to Belgium, France and Germany, had not been invaded, and was not therefore acting directly in self-defence. Thus, as soon as war was declared, the great task of persuading the mass of British and Irish people that the war was necessary and just, and that it required their urgent support began very much in earnest. The success of this process of cultural mobilisation depended on the emergence of a popular sense of unifying purpose that could counter the 1
2
For an absorbing case study of pre-war working-class militancy, see Matt Vaughan Wilson, ‘The 1911 Waterfront Strikes in Glasgow: Trade Unions and Rank-and-File Militancy in the Labour Unrest of 1910–1914’, International Review of Social History, 52: 2 (August 2008), pp. 261–92. Catriona Pennell, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 23, and Heather Jones and Edward Madigan, ‘The Isle of Saints and Soldiers: The Evolving Image of the Irish Combatant, 1914–1918’, in Catriona Pennell and Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses (eds.), A World at War, 1911–1949 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 110–11.
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often-pronounced cultural fault lines in pre-war Britain and Ireland. As Adrian Gregory has noted, traditional accounts of British responses to the Great War have tended to be ‘remarkably blind’ to regional, class and gender divisions in Edwardian society.3 To each of these already potent influences on individual and community identity and outlook, we must add the elusive but critical elements of religion and denominational allegiance. The United Kingdom that went to war in 1914 was the most religiously diverse, and arguably the most religiously tolerant, state in Europe. Despite increasing clerical concerns about the rise of popular irreligion, moreover, much of the population was genuinely devout and most British people were at least nominally loyal to one of the main religious institutions.4 Importantly, in each of the four constituent nations of the UK, the majority were members of a different Christian denomination, be it Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian or Methodist. And while Catholicism, and, to a lesser extent, Anglicanism were relatively homogenous, Nonconformism boasted a colourful variety of larger and smaller sects. The diversity of chapel-going worship was particularly marked in Wales, which was home to no fewer than 175,000 Congregationalists, 170,000 Calvinistic Methodists, 143,000 Baptists, and 41,000 Wesleyans in 1910, with Nonconformists making up as much as 80 per cent of the principality’s population of roughly 2.4 million.5 In Scotland, as many as a quarter of an estimated population of 4.8 million in the period before the war had no formal relationship with any church, but the rest were overwhelmingly Presbyterian, and most belonged either to the established Church of Scotland or the United Free Church. Immigration from Ireland had also led to a fairly rapid pre-war growth in Scotland’s Roman Catholic population, which stood at 546,000 in 1913.6 South of the border, England also had a large and growing Catholic minority, along with a significant Nonconformist population, but established Anglicanism remained dominant, with Church of England clergy performing over 600 baptisms for every 1,000 live births in 1900.7 In Ireland, where denominational allegiance was most closely tied to identity and political affiliation, almost three-quarters of the population were Roman Catholic, but 3
4
5 6
7
Adrian Gregory, ‘British War Enthusiasm in 1914: A Reassessment’, in Gail Braybon (ed.), Evidence, History and the Great War: Historians and the Impact of 1914–18 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2003), p. 69. For an analysis of Edwardian church-going that challenges the traditional view of increasing pre-war religious indifference among the British working classes, see Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800–2000, 2nd ed. (London: Routeldge, 2000), pp. 149–61. G. Stephens Spinks, Religion in Britain Since 1900 (London: Andrew Dakers, 1952), p. 36. John Wolffe, God and Greater Britain: Religion and National Life in Britain and Ireland, 1843–1945 (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 70. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, pp. 6–7.
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there were large, prosperous and highly influential minorities of Anglicans and Presbyterians. The latter were, of course, heavily concentrated in the northeast of the island, and Protestant clergymen had played a prominent role in Unionist militancy between 1912 and 1914.8 Pre-war Britain was also home to a significant Jewish minority of almost 300,000. About 80 per cent of British Jews lived in just three English cities – London, Manchester and Leeds – but there were smaller communities spread across Britain and Ireland.9 And although antisemitism certainly existed in pre-war Britain, Jewish men and women were often highly assimilated and anti-Jewish sentiment was neither as virulent nor as ideological as it was elsewhere in Western Europe.10 Indeed, while popular sectarianism was a troubling social issue in certain Irish and Scottish cities, a general atmosphere of religious tolerance prevailed in the United Kingdom in the years before the war and no denomination was particularly out of favour with the state. And while the Edwardian clergy were by no means above public reproach, popular anticlericalism was much rarer and gentler in pre-war Britain than in France, Italy or Spain.11 Crucially, moreover, the ministers, priests and rabbis that represented the great panoply of British and Irish faiths still retained a significant degree of moral authority in their communities. There is now quite a rich and extensive historiography of the rhetoric and activity of the British and Irish clergy during the First World War. The Church of England has received particularly focused attention,12 but the ways in which 8
9
10
11
12
Jane McGaughey, Ulster’s Men: Protestant Unionist Masculinities and Militarisation in the North of Ireland, 1912–1923 (Kingston, Ontario: McGill–Queens University Press, 2012), pp. 34–6 and Nicola K. Morris, ‘Traitors to Their Faith: Protestant Clergy and the Ulster Covenant of 1912’, New Hibernia Review, 15: 3 (Autumn 2011), pp. 16–35. Aaron M. Kent, Identity, Migration and Belonging: The Jewish Community in Leeds, 1890–1920 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2015), p. 129. Edward Madigan, ‘“Thou Hast Given Us Home and Freedom, Mother England”: AngloJewish Gratitude, Patriotism, and Service During and After the First World War’, in Edward Madigan and Gideon Reuveni (eds.), The Jewish Experience of the First World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 311–12 and Todd M. Endelman, The Jews in Britain, 1656–2000 (London: University of California Press, 2002), p. 189. Edward Madigan, Faith under Fire: Anglican Army Chaplains and the Great War (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), p. 32; Brian Stanley ‘The Outlook for Christianity in 1914’, in S. Gilley and B. Stanley (eds.), The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 8: World Christianities c. 1815–c. 1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 597; and Hugh McLeod, ‘Anticlericalism in Later Victorian and Edwardian England’, in Nigel Aston and Matthew Cragoe (eds.), Anticlericalism in Britain, c. 1500–1914 (Stroud: Sutton, 2000), p. 207. Aimee E. Barbeau, ‘Christian Empire and National Crusade: The Rhetoric of Anglican Clergy in the First World War’, Anglican and Episcopal History, 85: 1 (March 2016), pp. 24–62; Edward Madigan, ‘Their Cross to Bear’: The Church of England and Military Service, 1914–1918’, Annali di Scienze Religiose, 8 (2015), pp. 165–200; Stuart Bell, The Church and the First World War, in Stephen G. Parker (ed.), God and War: The Church
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British and Irish Catholics and Scottish Presbyterians responded to the war have also been explored in some detail.13 Over the past fifteen years or so, the wartime experiences of army chaplains and their relationships with British soldiers of different faiths have also been subjected to in-depth research and the question of popular religiosity in the army has been investigated by Michael Snape and others.14 Finally, and perhaps most relevantly to what follows here, Adrian Gregory and Catriona Pennell have been among the first historians to consider the role of the clergy in broader explorations of British and Irish responses to the war.15 This impressive body of secondary research has greatly enhanced our understanding of the role of the clergy and the place of religion in the British experience of the ‘war to end all wars’. And yet given the great diversity of British and Irish faiths and the relatively strong influence of the clergy in the United Kingdom that went to war in 1914, historians have had little to say about the degree to which clergymen aligned themselves with the state in the first six weeks of the war. This chapter will explore the ways in which religious leaders across Britain and Ireland interpreted the war in August and September 1914 and consider the role they played in the process of cultural mobilisation and the establishment of a conscious home front during the critical opening phase of the conflict. *** When considering the British clergy’s engagement in cultural mobilisation in 1914, it should be emphasised that the government could not automatically
13
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of England and Armed Conflict in the Twentieth Century (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), pp. 33–60; Shannon Ty Bontrager, ‘The Imagined Crusade: The Church of England and the Mythology of Nationalism and Christianity during the Great War’, Church History, 71: 4 (December 2002), pp. 774–98; Alan Wilkinson, The Church of England and the First World War (London: SPCK, 1978); and Albert Marrin, The Last Crusade: Church of England and the First World War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1974). Jérôme Aan De Wiel, The Catholic Church in Ireland, 1914–1918: War and Politics (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2003); Michael Snape, ‘British Catholicism and the British Army in the First World War’, Recusant History, 26: 2 (2002), pp. 314–58; and Stewart J. Brown, ‘A Solemn Purification by Fire’: Responses to the Great War in the Scottish Presbyterian Churches, 1914–19, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 45: 1 (January 1994), pp. 82–104. See especially Linda Parker, A Seeker after Truths: The Life and Times of G. A. Studdert Kennedy (‘Woodbine Willie’) 1883–1929 (Amherst: Helion, 2018); Michael Snape and Edward Madigan, The Clergy in Khaki: New Perspectives on British Army Chaplaincy in the First World War (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013); Edward Madigan, Faith under Fire: Anglican Army Chaplains and the Great War (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011). Pennell, A Kingdom United, pp. 62–3 and Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 40–69.
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rely on clerical support in time of war, even from the comparatively dependable Church of England.16 Indeed, a small number of diverse British clergymen had been quite vocal in their opposition to the South African War. In January 1900, for example, Edward Hicks, who would go on to become the bishop of Lincoln, publicly condemned British aggression in the Cape in a sermon that was published by the Manchester Transvaal Committee.17 In October 1901, Charles Gore, who would later become bishop of Oxford, wrote an open letter to The Times deploring the death rates in British concentration camps.18 Several prominent English Nonconformist ministers, including John Clifford, also adopted a passionately anti-war stance.19 Clifford, who was then president of the Baptist Union, was particularly strident in his denunciation of the statesmen that he felt had dragged the country into violent conflict in pursuit of territorial gain.20 Perhaps unsurprisingly, members of the Society of Friends, the most traditionally pacifist of British sects, were overwhelmingly anti-war, and indeed many were decidedly pro-Boer.21 The disposition of certain clergy in the period just before August 1914 also suggested that their support for the state in wartime might be somewhat hesitant. Church of England clerics were quite actively involved in the prewar peace movement and numerous bishops, deans and canons had acted as vice-presidents of the Peace Society, an international organisation dedicated to promoting inter-state arbitration established in London in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars.22 The Church of England Peace League, founded in 1910, was a small organisation but it could count Bishop Gore and other eminent clergymen among its members. Senior Anglican clergy were also associated with the Anglo-German Committee, set up in 1905, which merged with the Anglo-German Friendship Society in 1911 and sought to foster warmer relations between the people of the two states. Indeed, many senior Anglicans and Presbyterians had spent time at German institutions and been influenced by 16
17
18 19
20 21
22
Madigan, Faith under Fire, p. 35. See also Mark D. Chapman, ‘Theological Responses in England to the South African War, 1899–1902’, Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte, 16: 2 (January 2009), pp. 181–96. For an absorbing account of local Anglican responses to the war, see Mark Allen, ‘Winchester, the Clergy and the Boer War’, in Tom Lawson and Stephen G. Parker (eds.), God and War: The Church of England and Armed Conflict in the Twentieth Century (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 15–31. The Mistakes of Militarism: A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral Church at Manchester, 21 January 1900 (Manchester: Wm. Hough & Sons, 1900). The Times, 28 October 1901, p. 9. ‘Opposition in England to the South African War’, The Advocate of Peace, 62: 2 (February 1900), pp. 28–9. Wolffe, God and Greater Britain, p. 233. Richard A. Rempel, ‘British Quakers and the South African War’, Quaker History, 64: 2 (Autumn 1975), pp. 75–95. Clive Barrett, Subversive Peacemakers: War Resistance, 1914–1918: An Anglican Perspective (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2014), pp. 22–3.
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German theology and English and Scottish Protestant clergymen often felt a natural affinity with their Lutheran counterparts. This sense of fellow feeling had led to the organisation of exchange visits of British and German clergy and theologians in London in 1908 and Berlin the following year, at which delegates attempted to outdo each other in their expressions of mutual respect, admiration and fraternity.23 The attitudes of the Irish Catholic clergy in the period before the war were naturally quite different to those of their Protestant counterparts in Britain, and were ultimately more concerning for the British authorities. The bishops and ordinary parish priests of the Catholic Church were a powerful political and cultural force in Ireland in the decades before 1914, and while the hierarchy was opposed to extremism, the clergy was generally nationalist in outlook and regarded the British army as a morally corrupting presence in Irish towns and cities.24 On the very eve of the war in 1914, moreover, at least some of the Catholic clergy felt deeply antagonistic about British rule in Ireland. During a nationalist gun-running operation in Dublin on 26 July, a detachment of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers opened fire on a crowd of civilians, killing three and wounding dozens more. On 29 July, just days before the British declaration of war, a major Irish Volunteer parade was staged in Cashel, Co. Tipperary and a local parish priest, Fr. Innocent Ryan, told the crowd that the Irish people would no longer stand the British ‘enemy’.25 Yet from the earliest days of the Great War, the leaders of virtually all of the main British and Irish churches and sects, along with the state’s most influential Jewish clergymen, publicly endorsed the government decision to intervene and offered support for what they quickly interpreted as a just war. Most of the more junior clergy followed suit, and the opening months of the conflict saw thousands of ministers, priests and rabbis across the islands actively and quite voluntarily placing themselves at the forefront of a great wave of cultural mobilisation. While there were some notable exceptions to this rule and the views of the small number of clergy and laity who opposed the war on the grounds of religious conscience in 1914 should be acknowledged, there was a striking consensus among the great majority of clergy in their public support for the war. As noted above, the pro-war rhetoric of most British and Irish clergymen in the opening months of the conflict is now quite well documented, but this support has invariably been contemplated in quite narrow denominational terms. There is, however, one almost entirely neglected source that highlights the remarkably ecumenical consistency of clerical support for the state and allows us to consider the way the clergy interpreted the crisis of the war as it unfolded. 23 24 25
Wilkinson, The Church of England, pp. 21–3. Aan de Wiel, The Catholic Church in Ireland, p. 8. Ibid., p. 20.
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The Ethics of War Beginning on 18 August and continuing daily until 16 September, a series of detailed statements on the war by a very diverse and senior body of British clergy and a handful of laymen appeared in The Standard under the heading ‘The Ethics of War’.26 Founded in 1827, The Standard had built its reputation and boosted circulation through its dramatic reportage on the American Civil War and other nineteenth-century conflicts. By 1914, it was co-owned by the Conservative MP Davison Dalziel and very much an organ of the Tory party, and although it was struggling to compete with the Daily Mail and had been surpassed by its own evening edition, it was still a reasonably widely-read Conservative daily.27 No fewer than thirty-nine commentators were interviewed or submitted written statements for the ‘Ethics of War’ series, each initially responding to a simple question posed by the paper: ‘Is Christianity compatible with war?’ The group was overwhelmingly English and dominated by Anglicans, including the archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, the archbishop of Armagh, John Crozier, and a dozen Church of England bishops, deans and canons and more junior clergy. Importantly, however, a wide crosssection of other faiths was also represented in articles written by the Catholic archbishop of Westminster, Francis Bourne, and some of the country’s most prominent Nonconformist ministers. The group also included an influential American evangelist, Leonard G. Broughton, and two Labour MPs: the tradeunionist Thomas Naylor and Arthur Henderson, then the party’s chief whip and later a cabinet minister in the wartime coalition government. Although limited by the Englishness of most of the authors, the ‘Ethics of War’ articles offer a vivid picture of the ways in which senior clergy responded to the outbreak of the war in 1914 and reflect the intensely moral atmosphere that prevailed across the United Kingdom in the first six weeks of the conflict. Virtually all of the commentators affirmed that Christianity and war were indeed compatible and unequivocally endorsed the government decision to intervene in the European conflagration. And while their responses varied a great deal, most of the articles share a tone of pointed moral certainty. The support for British intervention expressed by the influential Baptist minister, John Clifford, and by Bishop Gore of Oxford, who had both been openly critical of the government during the South African War, suggests that at least some clergy who were against war in principle nonetheless felt that Britain’s role in this particular conflict was manifestly just. Clifford’s views regarding the abstract righteousness of war are particularly notable. Although in his late seventies by 1914, his distinctly working-class background, his socialistic (if 26
27
There was no ‘Ethics of War’ column printed in the 31 August edition, but the series ran consistently on every other day between 18 August and 16 September. Dennis Griffiths, Plant Here the Standard (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 192–4.
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not quite socialist) worldview, his defence of the evangelical Christian position in state education, and his energetic ministry at Westbourne Park Chapel in London had assured him a position of unrivalled influence in English Free Church life.28 He was also a passionate advocate for peace, and had been attending a rather ironically scheduled Anglo-German peace conference in Baden-Württemberg when war broke out. In his statement for the ‘Ethics of War’ series, which appeared on 28 August, he admitted to a change of heart before going on to cast the war as a dramatic clash between good and evil: Hating war, I searched high and low for reasons against our entrance into the conflict, but when I had weighed the evidence, pro and con, I could not say that our Government had taken a wrong step. It seemed to me that it was not a war between England and Germany, but between the forces of freedom and those of slavery, between the forces that mean the growth of popular government, of the independence of nations, and fidelity to promises, and those against them; a war for the progress of humanity and all that in my judgement hinges thereon. And we were therefore forced into it.29
Nor was Clifford the only prominent Nonconformist to contribute to the series and confess to rethinking his views on the morality of war. George Campbell-Morgan was the pastor of Westminster Chapel and one of Britain’s leading evangelical preachers. His statement, the second in the series and printed on 19 August, quite clearly portrays British intervention as an unusual case of war being waged in pursuit of a higher moral purpose: Is war compatible with the Christian religion? I think it is when war is waged in a righteous cause. I preach peace at all seasons, but with regard to the cause of Great Britain in the present great conflict I have changed my view, because I believe that my fellow countrymen are pursuing the only honourable course open to them by upholding the cause of a small nation upon which the horrors of a ruthless invasion have been forced. It has been my opinion hitherto that war and the clamour for war are debasing to national life, but I am certain that Great Britain has been drawn into the present strife by the highest and noblest of emotions. She had no other honourable course left open to her . . .30
Campbell-Morgan’s reference to war being the country’s only ‘honourable course’ very much reflected the government’s publicly stated casus belli and echoed government language. In his highly influential speech to the Commons
28
29 30
On Clifford’s active engagement in working-class politics, see especially David Thompson, ‘John Clifford’s Social Gospel’, Baptist Quarterly, 31: 5 (1985), pp. 199–217. The Standard, 28 August 1914, p. 3. The Standard, 19 August 1914, p 4.
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on 3 August, Sir Edward Grey had stressed the paramount importance of safeguarding Britain’s ‘honour and interest’ by defending Belgian neutrality should Germany choose to violate it.31 In the same chamber just three days later, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was very clear on the question of the state’s ‘obligation not only of law but of honour’ when discussing the government decision to declare war.32 In the middle of the following month, David Lloyd George’s impassioned speech to a mostly Welsh Nonconformist audience at the Queen’s Hall in London was littered with references to British honour, and indeed was published under the title ‘Honour and Dishonour’.33 In the absence of a very direct military threat, these invocations of national honour were central to the rhetoric of British cultural mobilisation in the early days of the war,34 and most of the clerical authors who contributed to the ‘Ethics of War’ series consciously reinforced this narrative. The first article in the series took the form of an interview with Canon Herbert Westlake of Westminster Abbey and was printed under the headline ‘Honour Above All’. Westlake insisted that ‘Britain could not have kept out of the conflict and retained her honour’ and reassured readers that the close traditional ties between the clergy and the army ‘indicates that the Church gives its sanction to war’.35 On 2 September, the words of the controversial but perceptive dean of Durham, Herbert Hensley Henson, seemed to mirror those of the Secretary of State when he asserted that British men would have to enlist and fight for two reasons, ‘the first is that of honour, the next is that of interest’. He went on to contend that: We could never shake off the feeling of disgrace if we had flinched from this stern duty. Honour comes first with nations as with men, but in the widest sense it is the case that the war of honour is generally found to coincide with the war not of the nearest advantage, but of the truest interest. It is certainly the case now.36
In the following day’s edition, the bishop of Chichester claimed that ‘the participation by England in the present war is a vindication of her honour’
31
32 33 34
35 36
For a detailed and insightful analysis of Grey’s speech, see Douglas Newton, The Darkest Days: The Truth Behind Britain’s Rush to War, 1914 (London: Verso, 2014), pp. 216–48. Hansard House of Commons Debates, vol. 65, Col. 2079, 6 August 1914. David Lloyd George, Honour and Dishonour (London: Methuen, 1914). Pennell, A Kingdom United, pp. 57–62; Ute Frevert, ‘Wartime Emotions: Honour, Shame, and the Ecstasy of Sacrifice’ in 1914-1918-online, in Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz et al. (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the First World War, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2014-10-08. The Standard, 18 August 1914, p. 10. The Standard, 2 September 1914, p. 3.
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and chided young men who, in his view, had not enlisted because they preferred to stay at home and go to football matches.37 Simply in terms of his public profile and the sheer number of members to which his church could lay claim, the archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, was by far the most influential religious leader in the United Kingdom in 1914. As approximately two-thirds of the population of England was at least nominally Anglican, and with significant minorities of ‘Churchmen’ and women in the other three nations, Davidson enjoyed a considerable public profile.38 His contribution to the ‘Ethics of War’ series, which appeared on 25 August, opened by lamenting the eruption of ‘the greatest war that has ever happened in the whole history of the world’, before very confidently supporting the position of the state in declaring war: So far as I can see our conscience as a Christian State and people is, as regards this war, wholly and unchallengeably clear. We might, I suppose, for a time have stayed outside the arena, but to have stayed outside at this time would, as I understand it, have been at the cost of England’s honour, at the cost of England’s chivalry to weakened peoples, at the cost of England’s faithfulness to her plighted word. Could any of us for the sake of avoiding war have asked God’s blessing on our reticence?39
The archbishop’s evident certainty on the question of British righteousness was shared by a number of other contributors to the series, including the archbishop of Armagh and leader of the Anglican Church of Ireland, John Crozier. Crozier’s statement appeared on 10 September, two weeks after Davidson’s, by which time accounts of German atrocities against civilians in Belgium and France had greatly heightened the atmosphere of moral fervour on the emerging British home front. For Crozier, what had begun for the British as a war of honour had evolved into an existential struggle against German barbarism: Let us be well assured of one great outstanding fact – that so far as England is concerned no more righteous war has ever been waged. For it is a war that has been forced upon the nation if solemn pledges are to be kept, and if national honour is to be vindicated against the cynical suggestion that Great Britain would best ‘save her own skin’ by keeping out of it. Moreover, we see now most clearly that a war which was first a war of honour has now become a war of self-preservation against barbarism and brutal excess.40
37 38
39 40
The Standard, 3 September 1914, p. 5. Adrian Hastings, A History of English Christianity, 1920–1985 (London: Collins, 1986), p. 35. The Standard, 28 August 1914. The Standard, 10 September 1914, p. 9.
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The German violation of Belgian neutrality had provided the Liberal government with an apparently sound legal case for its declaration of war and provoked widespread moral indignation across the United Kingdom.41 But it was the violence perpetrated against the civilian populations of Belgium and north-eastern France by invading German troops that really allowed the British clergy to interpret the war, and to present it to the wider public, in robustly moral terms.42 From the earliest days of the invasion, journalists, Allied soldiers, refugees and other eye-witnesses had given accounts of German soldiers killing unarmed civilians, including women and children, perpetrating sexual violence, and wantonly destroying homes and civic buildings.43 Some of these reports were undoubtedly exaggerated or fabricated, but much of the narrative of German atrocities that emerged in Britain and Ireland from mid-August was informed by a very real campaign of violence against civilian life and property. And while some stories of German ‘barbarism’ were hard to believe, or difficult to verify, the near-destruction of the Flemish city of Louvain over two days and nights from 25 August, during which more than 240 unarmed civilians were killed, was witnessed by international journalists and could hardly be denied.44 This narrative of German barbarism, evidenced by the atrocities, became deeply ingrained in British thinking about the war in the first month of the conflict and was central to cultural mobilisation across the United Kingdom. The Standard, in common with other organs of the national and provincial press, actively fed into this narrative and did so not only through its publication of the ‘Ethics of War’ series but also in a parallel series of articles that ran under the title ‘The Twentieth-Century Huns’ and offered lurid eye-witness accounts of the malevolent conduct of German soldiers.45 Although their rhetoric varied in tone, the clergy of the various churches were very much a part of this process of othering and demonizing the enemy. Indeed, in several of the ‘Ethics of War’ articles, clerical commentators cast the Germans as a
41 42 43
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Newton, Darkest Days, pp. 221–2, and Pennell, A Kingdom United, pp. 34–5. Madigan, Faith Under Fire, p. 35. For a detailed account of atrocities perpetrated by the advancing German forces, see especially John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven: Yale, 2001), pp. 9–53. On the question of sexual violence during the invasion, see Antoine Rivière, ‘“Special Decisions” Children Born as the Result of German Rape and Handed Over to Public Assistance during the Great War (1914–18)’, in Raphaëlle Branche and Fabrice Virgili (eds.), Rape in Wartime (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012), pp. 184–200. Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 6–30. See, for example, The Standard, 26 August 1914, p. 9: ‘The Twentieth Century Huns’; ‘Girl Victims – Old Man Hacked and Burned Alive – Bodies Mutilated’.
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people that had gone, at least temporarily, beyond the pale of civilisation and reproached them for their rejection of Christian principles. On 29 August, a statement in the series by the noted biblical scholar and canon of Westminster Abbey, Robert Charles, offered an unambiguous portrayal of an enemy motivated by the most materialistic and unchristian ethics: I have not a single doubt as to the righteousness of war under certain conditions. So long as purely material aims are at the basis of the action of a nation or of a community it will turn a deaf ear, as Germany has done, to every remonstrance based on honour, truth, and equity. Such an attitude is anti-Christian, and the nation that adopts it is for the time being an incarnation of anti-Christ.46
This vision of the German nation and its leaders as the incarnation of the antiChrist was reiterated, in a particularly vivid fashion, on 16 September by the leading Wesleyan Methodist preacher and theologian, John Scott Lidgett, in one of the last articles in the series. For Lidgett, the ‘cruelty’ of the advancing German forces was an instrument of military policy rather than a case of undisciplined excess: Cruelty, not as an outbreak, but as a system; not as a momentary excess but as a deliberate plan of action; this is the last word of the War Lord – outraging humanity, casting honour and morality to the winds, depraving religion and blaspheming God. This is, indeed, the Anti-Christ of our age . . . The conscience of Britain, France, and heroic Belgium is absolutely clear. The one and only foe is the military despotism of the German peoples, with the Kaiser as War Lord.47
The duty of British men of military service age was strongly implied in statements that characterised the Germans as enemies of Christianity, but some clergymen made more overt calls for recruits. The active and occasionally zealous engagement of the Church of England clergy in the great recruitment campaigns of 1914 and 1915 is now reasonably well-documented,48 and the ‘Ethics of War’ series certainly provides examples of passionate Anglican appeals for recruits. In the edition printed on 3 September, Richard Free, the vicar of St Clement’s in Fulham, insisted that if he were young enough, he would himself be serving. Conforming perfectly to the stereotype of the belligerent non-combatant, he went on to note that ‘if I had ten sons they should all be on active service, or I would know the reason why’.49 46 47 48
49
The Standard, 29 August 1914, p. 5. The Standard, 16 September 1914, p. 4. Wilkinson, The Church of England, pp. 32–5; Keith Robbins, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales: The Christian Church 1900–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 98; Madigan, Faith under Fire, pp. 38–9; Madigan, ‘Their Cross to Bear’, pp. 21–2. The Standard, 3 September, p. 5.
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On 7 September, as the Allied forces were slowly beginning to stem the German advance on the Marne, the bishop of Bristol, George Nickson, was very clear about the duty of young Englishmen at such a moment of crisis: No Englishman can be a spectator. Each man has some part to play. If he is a young man with no insistent claims upon him he should offer himself for service either at home or at the front. With all my heart I endorse the call of Lord Kitchener for recruits. If the German system prevails, goodbye to freedom as we understand it.50
One week later, on 14 September, Fr. Paul Bull, a member of the AngloCatholic Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield in Yorkshire and a former regimental chaplain, accused those who refused to answer the call to arms of ‘cowardly selfishness’. He went on to suggest that women could ‘exercise a wholesome pressure of contempt for those who are inclined to shirk this duty of offering themselves’.51 These almost blithe demands for sacrifices from men who were not destined to play any role in the fighting would become increasingly controversial as the war dragged on.52 The Church of England clergy was by no means alone, however, in encouraging the youth of Britain to volunteer for military service and, in the opening phase of the war, clergymen representing most of the various Christian denominations publicly called on the men of their communities to enlist or seek commissions.53 In Scotland, where there was a disproportionately keen response to calls for service, the Presbyterian clergy interpreted the British cause as just and righteous and played a prominent role in recruitment.54 Enthusiastic if informal support for recruitment on the part of Church of England and Church of Scotland clergy, who belonged to institutions that enjoyed something very close to ‘state church’ status, is perhaps unsurprising. But they were joined in their calls for recruits by English and Welsh Nonconformist clergy whose churches had no claim or desire to be national and whose sense of loyalty to the state was generally more conditional. The respectively Baptist and Congregationalist backgrounds of David Lloyd George and Herbert Asquith, and the generally pro-Liberal bias
50 51 52 53
54
The Standard, 7 September 1914, p. 4. The Standard, 14 September 1914, p. 3. Madigan, ‘Their Cross to Bear’, pp. 184–95. Ian Beckett, Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly, The British Army and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 100. Brown, ‘A Solemn Purification by Fire’, pp. 82, 90. For an early account of Scottish clerical responses to the war, see Peter C. Matheson, ‘Scottish War Sermons, 1914–1919’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, xvii (1972), pp. 203–13.
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of British Nonconformists, are likely to have made influential Free Church leaders more comfortable in their public support for the war effort.55 The Catholic bishops of England, Scotland and Wales wielded significant influence among the working-class Irish communities and the growing numbers of Italian immigrants in British cities and many of them were also quick to throw their weight behind the recruitment campaigns of 1914.56 British Catholics had traditionally been subjected to a degree of distrust by the overwhelmingly Anglican or evangelical majority and, as Michael Snape has observed, the pro-war stance of British Catholics was at least partly inspired by a desire to assert their patriotism and demonstrate their loyalty to the Crown.57 Among the contributors to the ‘Ethics of War’ series were the most senior Catholic cleric in Britain, Cardinal Francis Bourne, archbishop of Westminster, and Bishop Louis Casartelli of Salford. Bourne’s statement, which appeared in the 22 August edition, amounted to a strident but somewhat abstract defence of a Christian nation’s right to declare and wage war.58 Casartelli’s contribution, which appeared at the end of the following week, referred much more directly to the world war and evoked the plight of Catholic Belgium: No picture is more appealing to one’s sympathy than the spectacle of that little neighbouring Roman Catholic country of Belgium, so prosperous under wise rule, so rich and beautiful in art and history, swept by this avalanche of blood and fire and horror59
The terrible fate of the small and overwhelmingly Catholic Kingdom of Belgium, which bore the brunt of the German advance in the west, was also routinely invoked by Irish Catholic clergy. The outbreak of war had brought about a dramatic, if ultimately temporary, cessation of hostilities between the Nationalist and Unionist factions in Ireland, and the clergy on both sides soon made statements in support of the British war effort. In 1914, the Catholic church had a wide and well-organised administrative structure, and the 3,000 secular clergy on the island exercised an extraordinary degree of social and political influence.60 Catholic bishops had been closely linked with the Irish Parliamentary Party since the last decades of the nineteenth century and were strongly in favour of the devolved government promised by Home Rule. They 55
56
57 58 59 60
Robbins, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, p. 104 and Wolffe, God and Greater Britain, pp. 234–235. Michael Snape, ‘British Catholicism and the British Army in the First World War’, pp. 322–4. Ibid., pp. 317–18. The Standard, 22 August 1914, p. 5. Ibid., p. 3. Aan De Wiel, The Catholic Church in Ireland, p. 7. [‘secular clergy’ are diocesan priests not formally associated with a monastic or other institutional order.]
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were thus likely to support the party leader, John Redmond, in his stance on the war. On 3 August, in a half-sincere, half-calculating response to Edward Grey’s speech in the Commons, Redmond assured the House that ‘the armed Nationalist Catholics in the South will only be too glad to join arms with the armed Protestant Ulstermen in the North’ to defend the shores of Ireland from German invasion.61 This was interpreted in the press and elsewhere as a firm commitment of Irish loyalty in a moment of British crisis and his intervention was warmly received both in the Commons and in the British press the following day.62 In his statement in the ‘Ethics of War’ series, published on 10 September, Archbishop Crozier of Armagh criticised the pledge merely to defend the shores of the island quite sharply and insisted that Irishmen were wanted at the front.63 Just ten days later, Redmond delivered an impromptu speech in Co. Wicklow in which he claimed that the war was being waged ‘in defence of the highest principles of religion and morality and right’ and unambiguously appealed to Irishmen to enlist in the British forces and go ‘wherever the fighting line extends’. This commitment of Irishmen to overseas service caused a major split in the nationalist volunteer movement, which would ultimately have serious ramifications for both Britain and Ireland, but in 1914 the great majority sided with Redmond.64 From at least this point on, the war was presented to potential Irish recruits as a righteous conflict in which Irish interests were very much at stake and many senior Catholic clergymen publicly endorsed this position.65 Indeed, the Irish-themed recruitment posters that became ubiquitous across the island from the beginning of 1915 were the only ones used in the United Kingdom that routinely incorporated religious iconography and statements in support of the war effort from clergymen.66 The Easter Rising of April 1916 would ultimately have a significant impact on public opinion in Ireland, and the Catholic clergy were very much part of the pan-nationalist front that opposed the introduction of conscription in 1918. In 1914, however, many Irish Catholics supported the war effort with much the same fervour as their Protestant counterparts. Indeed, as early as the second week in August, a clearly pro-war statement by Bishop Patrick Foley of Kildare and Leighlin was published in the local press and read to congregations throughout his diocese. His emphasis on the justice of the Allied cause echoes the language used by the clergy who contributed to the ‘Ethics of War’ series: 61 62
63 64 65
66
Hansard HC Deb 03 August 1914, vol. 65, c1829. Alvin Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 (London: Phoenix, 2004), pp. 167–8. On the significance of Redmond’s intervention, see also Newton, Darkest Days, pp. 228–9. The Standard, 10 September 1914, p. 9. McGaughey, Ulster’s Men, p. 112. Jones and Madigan, ‘The Isle of Saints and Soldiers’, pp. 112–13, and Aan De Wiel, The Catholic Church in Ireland, pp. 10–19. Jones and Madigan, ‘The Isle of Saints and Soldiers’, p. 119.
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[I]t becomes the duty of us as faithful Christians and loyal citizens of the great Empire to which we are proud to belong, to supplicate the Great God, on whom all nations and Empires, as well as individuals, absolutely depend, to come to the aid of the armies which are fighting on the side of justice and right and to enable them through the might of His power to triumph over their adversaries.67
As a somewhat conspicuous religious minority whose loyalties had been traditionally drawn into question, the Anglo-Jewish community had a certain amount in common with English Catholics, if not with their Irish counterparts. As the only significant non-Christian denomination in the state, however, and with their often distinctly German-sounding names, English Jews were in a potentially much more precarious position than any other religious group.68 The sense of vulnerability this engendered, combined with the genuine and often pronounced English patriotism of the Anglo-Jewish elite, led to staunch expressions of support for the war from Jewish intellectuals, journalists and, not least, clergymen in the first two months of the conflict. British rabbis were very much part of the wave of clerical support for mobilisation that swept the United Kingdom in the early days of the war, and, despite their doctrinal differences, they offered a very consistent interpretation of the conflagration as a just war in which Jewish men were honour-bound to participate.69 Preaching at the West London Synagogue on 15 August, for example, the noted theologian and minister Joseph Morris was very clear about the correct moral choice for Jewish men of military service age: . . . to fight in such a cause is a duty; to fall in it – if indeed we are destined to fall (which Heaven forfend!) – is glory. We of this congregation will keep this truth in mind. The broadest spirit shall actuate us. We are Jews, but Englishmen too: and, in this crisis, we are Englishmen first. Nay, in showing ourselves Englishmen, we are proving ourselves Jews, faithful to the grand conceptions of righteousness for which Judaism pre-eminently stands.70
67 68 69
70
Kilkenny Moderator, 19 August 1914, p. 3. Madigan, ‘Thou Hast Given Us Home and Freedom, Mother England’, p. 317. Ibid., p. 315. The conferring of rabbinical diplomas had been a somewhat controversial issue among British Jews in the decades before the war and was not fully resolved by 1914. Indeed, most Anglo-Jewish clergymen who had been educated in England during this period were not formally referred to as rabbis but held the position of minister or preacher and were styled ‘reverend’ (or Rev.). See William D. Rubenstein et al., ‘Rabbi, Title of in Anglo-Jewry’, in W. D. Rubenstein, M. A. Jolles and H. L. Rubenstein (eds.), Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 776. Jewish World, 19 August 1914, p. 10. For more on Joseph’s wartime ministry and his evolving commentary on the conflict, which increasingly emphasised peace, see Marc Saperstein, ‘Morris Joseph and the West London Synagogue in the First World War’, European Judaism, 48: 1 (2015), pp. 33–46.
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Anglo-Jewish clergy thus often supported the war using very similar language to their Christian counterparts, but their view of the conflict as an opportunity for Jews to repay a debt of gratitude to a country that had traditionally treated them well was quite distinctive among British religious groups.71
Dissenting Voices? Although the general picture offered by the ‘Ethics of War’ series is one of great moral certainty and pro-mobilisation (if not always pro-war) sentiment on the part of the British clergy, it should be emphasised that not all religious leaders acquiesced in the ultra-patriotic mood of the hour. Indeed, in the third statement in the series, published just over two weeks after the declaration of war, E. R. Sprigg of the British Society of Friends expressed grave reservations about the stance already taken by his fellow religious commentators: Surely these gentlemen, whose opinions are generally held in such high regard, must have forgotten for the moment the characteristics of envy, hatred and malice that engender war, and that war accentuates. Have Canon Westlake and Dr. Campbell Morgan foreseen the terrible casualty lists that must result from the military carnage now blighting Europe, the appalling lists of fathers, husbands, and sons who will be sent to meet their Creator with the sin of war wet in their souls, the battalions of fine young men who will be crippled for life, and the hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans who will curse the hand that plunged Europe into strife? . . . For my part, I am averse from war, for I can see no justification for it.72
Crucially, however, Sprigg went on to concede that ‘the action of Great Britain’ in intervening in the European war was ‘probably a righteous one’. With a membership of just over 20,000 in 1914, the British Quakers were a comparatively tiny sect, but the zeal for social reform and celebrated philanthropy of some of the Society’s more prominent members had made them a well-recognised force in Victorian and Edwardian life.73 Towards the end of the previous century, J. W. Rowntree and other young members of the Society had adopted a more liberal, less evangelical worldview and become passionate about social reform and openly critical of British imperialism. They also reaffirmed their commitment to pacifism, and the Quaker Renaissance of the 1890s influenced at least some of the pacifists who objected to military
71 72 73
Madigan, ‘Thou Hast Given Us Home and Freedom, Mother England’, p. 320. The Standard, 20 August 1914, p. 3. For an enlightening account of the fortunes of the British Society of Friends in the decades before the war, see Thomas C. Kennedy, British Quakerism, 1860–1920: The Transformation of a Religious Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
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service in 1914.74 The outbreak of the Great War thus presented conscientious Quakers with a direct and daunting challenge as to how to resolve the tension between their desire to be good citizens and their duty to be good Friends.75 This tension would not lead to conscious antagonism with the state until the introduction of the Military Service Act in 1916 forced younger Quaker men to decide whether to join the armed forces or refuse to serve entirely. In 1914, Quaker responses mostly took the form of expressing despair at the advent of war and denouncing it as un-Christian, as Sprigg had done, while adopting a public-spirited and essentially supportive, or at least non-obstructive, stance toward the state. This attitude was expressed very succinctly in the opening paragraphs of a detailed statement formally issued by the Religious Society of Friends in the second week of the war: We find ourselves today in the midst of what may prove to be the fiercest conflict in the history of the human race . . . We recognise that our Government has made most strenuous efforts to preserve peace, and has entered into the war under a grave sense of duty to a smaller State towards which we had moral and treaty obligations. While, as a Society, we stand firmly to the belief that the method of force is no solution to any question, we hold that the present moment is not one for criticism, but for devoted service to our nation.76
This outlook was very much shared by the weekly Quaker journal The Friend, whose editor unequivocally denounced the war as un-Christian but warned readers that ‘the duty of sacrifice is laid upon us all’, including men whose conscience forbade them to enlist.77 This sense that while they could not in conscience take up arms, they were still honour-bound to serve led members of the Society to form an overseas ambulance unit in the opening weeks of the war. An appeal for volunteers was published in The Friend on 21 August, about sixty men began training at a camp in Buckinghamshire in September, and what would ultimately become known as the Friends Ambulance Unit deployed itself to the Western Front at the end of October.78 It is worth noting that the young Quakers who were attached to the unit that November experienced active service, albeit non-combatant service with an independent unit, long before the vast majority of British men who enlisted in the opening months of the war. 74
75
76 77 78
Thomas C. Kennedy, ‘“They in the Lord Who Firmly Trust”: A Friend at War with the Great War’, Quaker History, 78: 2 (Fall 1989), pp. 91–5. Thomas C. Kennedy, ‘Early Friends and the Renewal of British Quakerism, 1890–1920’, Quaker History, 93: 1 (Spring 2004), p. 90. The Friend, 54: 33, 14 August 1914, p. 599. Ibid., pp. 591–2. Meaburn Tatham and James E. Miles (eds.), The Friends’ Ambulance Unit, 1914–1919: A Record (London: Swarthmore Press, 1919), pp. 1–3.
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And yet some members of the Society of Friends were clearly willing to go against the tide of patriotic public opinion in 1914. The Quaker and Liberal MP for York, Arnold Rowntree, adopted a clearly anti-war stance from the outset and, along with other radicals, formed the Union of Democratic Control, a pressure group opposed to militarism in foreign policy, in August 1914. Quakers were also active in the formation and membership of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. The Fellowship grew out of a gathering of over 130 anti-war Christians at Trinity Hall, Cambridge in late December, which was dominated by Quakers and Nonconformists. W. E. Orchard, a passionate preacher who would become known for his pacifism and would later convert to Catholicism, numbered among the latter. The conference had been organised by the Quaker medical missionary, Henry T. Hodgkin, and the Rev. Richard Roberts, a Welsh-born Presbyterian minister and pacifist.79 Yet although the Fellowship would become an influential pacifist organisation in the inter-war period, its activity during the war years was deliberately lowkey and its impact on the home front was not particularly significant.80 With regard to anti-war sentiment among the clergy of other denominations, a handful of junior Church of England clerics dissented from the stance adopted by the state and by their church in 1914.81 In Scotland, William Barr, the United Free Church minister of St Mary’s, Govan, in Glasgow, emerged as a staunch and very public critic of the war. For Barr, a Christian socialist, a former opponent of the South African War and ex-president of the Peace Society, the conflict had resulted from rapacious imperialism and the unchecked spread of nationalist sentiment.82 It should also be stressed that several religious leaders, including some of those who featured in the ‘Ethics of War’ series, encouraged people to remember that they were at war with the German state and with the menace of Prussian militarism, not with the German people. Nor were all clergymen involved in recruitment during the first year of the war, and some were clearly uncomfortable with the jingoistic patriotism of many of their brethren.83 The fact remains, however, that while a small number of clergymen adopted an anti-war stance, no religious leaders opposed the war and many staunchly supported the state. One clear example of religious leaders coming together to endorse the war effort in the early days of the conflict is provided by the British response to an unusual German document entitled ‘Appeal to Evangelical Christians Abroad’, which was circulated internationally at the end of August. The ‘Appeal’ had 79
80 81 82 83
Martin Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain, 1914–1945: The Defining of a Faith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 35. Ibid., p. 36. See especially Barrett, Subversive Peacemakers. Brown, ‘A Solemn Purification by Fire’, p. 90. Ibid., p. 101, and Madigan, ‘Their Cross to Bear’, p. 172.
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been composed and signed by twenty-eight leading German theologians and clergymen, including well-known Lutheran scholar Adolf von Harnack and the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Gustav Adolf Deissmann, who had both been involved in the pre-war Anglo-German friendship movement. Over the course of 1,500 words of text, the authors passionately repudiated German responsibility for starting the war and defended the moral position of the German state, which was presented as the victim of an international web of lies.84 This intriguing statement elicited two British responses, one composed by a group of Oxford-based theologians and the other by a remarkable cross-section of senior British and Irish clergymen and biblical scholars led by the archbishop of Canterbury. In the latter, more authoritative response, the authors offered an eloquent defence of the British decision to declare war and highlighted the importance of honour as a factor in that decision: It has not been a light thing for us to give our assent to the action of the Government in this matter. But the facts of the case as we know them have made it impossible for us to do otherwise . . . Eagerly desirous of peace, foremost to the best of our power in furthering it, keen especially to promote the close fellowship of Germany and England, we have nevertheless been driven to declare that, dear to us as peace is, the principles of truth and honour are yet more dear . . . We have taken our stand for international good faith, for the safeguarding of smaller nationalities, and for the upholding of the essential conditions of brotherhood among the nations of the world.85
The response was dated 23 September 1914 and signed by no fewer than twenty-nine clerics and prominent laymen, including the most senior figures in the Anglican churches in England, Scotland and Ireland, and a very diverse group of Nonconformist ministers and professors of divinity from across Britain. As it was published in The Times and other papers, and formally signed by the heads of various churches, this unusually ecumenical document can be regarded as an official expression of clerical support for the wartime state.
Conclusion In order to mobilise popular support for the war effort in 1914 in the absence of a very clear threat to national security, it was imperative that the conflict be 84
85
Harnack, Herrmann, Eucken, Deissmann et al., ‘Appeal to Evangelical Christians Abroad’, reproduced in H. S. Holland et al., To the Christian Scholars of Europe and America: A Reply from Oxford to the German Address to the Evangelical Christians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914). G. K. A. Bell, Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, 3rd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), pp. 742–3.
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widely understood as a righteous war in which British intervention was not only necessary and legitimate, but also honourable and just. Religious leaders across the United Kingdom very readily participated in this process of cultural mobilisation and placed themselves and the institutions they represented at the forefront of a great drive to transform a deeply divided peacetime society into a relatively unified home front. The ‘Ethics of War’ articles and other fragments of clerical rhetoric from the first two months of the conflict offer us a vivid picture of the ways in which British and Irish clergy sought to align themselves with the state and promote and reinforce a compelling narrative of moral fervour. These sources also highlight a varied but generally unanimous interpretation of the war on the part of clergymen from very diverse denominational, cultural and national backgrounds who, in peacetime, shared little common ground. The clergy’s mostly unreserved endorsement of the government position and support for the war effort can be explained in part by a somewhat opportunistic sense, felt especially by Protestant clergymen, that the great crisis of the war might bring the mass of ordinary, non-practising Christians back into the religious fold. Ultimately, the belief that the war would bring about a religious revival and counter the perceived decline of religious influence in national life would prove to be hopelessly naïve.86 In the opening months of the war, however, church congregations were indeed swollen and people across the islands genuinely seemed to be coming together in pursuit of a common purpose.87 For relatively devout religious minorities, such as British Catholics and Jews, the need or desire for revival was less evident but the war offered an opportunity to demonstrate patriotism and thus counter traditional suspicions of disloyalty. A more decisive factor in clerical support for the war than the somewhat incidental ‘opportunities’ the conflict presented was a sincere belief in Britain’s moral righteousness in honouring its treaty obligations and coming to the aid of a relatively defenceless neighbour. The use of religious language and the evocation of honour and principle by Asquith and his fellow statesmen in their framing of the government’s casus belli made it relatively easy for the clergy to endorse the British declaration of war. And the state’s legal case for war evidently overlapped with clerical interpretations of the conflict that drew on a just war tradition that dated back to St Thomas Aquinas.88 The atrocities committed by the German forces as they advanced through Belgium and northern France then seemed to make the moral case for war unimpeachable. As Walter Mursell, Minister of Coates Memorial Church in Paisley in Scotland, put it in a sermon he delivered in mid-November 1914: 86 87 88
Madigan, Faith under Fire, pp. 90–1. Ibid., pp. 33–4. Wilkinson, The Church of England.
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That one word – ‘Belgium’ – is enough to justify our entry into this war, enough to rouse the chivalry of our people, enough to determine us to fight to such a finish that tyranny will never be able to create or to grasp such an opportunity again.89
The extraordinary moral certainty generated by the atrocities helps to explain how even the most pacifist of Britain’s religious institutions, The Society of Friends, could despair at the advent of war but still actively support the war effort and discourage its members from protesting. And while the senior clergy of the other denominations often felt dismayed by the possibility of a major war between Christian peoples, they were nonetheless persuaded that waging war was the country’s only ‘honourable course’ and readily aligned themselves with the state.
89
W. A. Mursell, The Bruising of Belgium and Other Sermons during Wartime (Paisley, 1915), p. 24, as cited in S. D. Henry, ‘Scottish Baptists and the First World War’, Baptist Quarterly, 31, 2 (1985), p. 55.
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PART II Resources
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7 Iron and Steel
At the outbreak of the First World War the United Kingdom produced the majority of its iron and steel from high grade non-phosphoric hematite iron ores. Over the preceding three to four decades demand had outstripped home production of those ores and the associated steel alloy minerals, and the country was heavily reliant on imports. Those imports were increasingly vulnerable to enemy action at sea and, since the iron and steel industry responded to the demand for munitions, not just for the British forces but also for the French who had lost the majority of their steel industry to German advances, significant changes were required. Labour shortages were a problem for all aspects of the industry from the beginning of the conflict. The move to increased use of home resources, particularly the low-grade phosphoric ironstones of the English Midlands, required the erection of new, or recommissioning of old, furnaces, with an increased demand for fluxes and refractory material. These were labour intensive processes requiring the redeployment of manpower, the limited use of female labour, and the employment of prisoners of war. In some areas of ironstone production significant gains were made through increased mechanisation, as was also the case in the handling of imported ores. The demand for specialist steels for armaments resulted in rapid expansion in some sectors of the industry. For example, an extraordinary increase in the number of electric furnaces placed a great strain on power generation. By the last years of the war the industry was moving towards amalgamation and the development of new integrated plant. The latter was delayed as a result of shortages in skilled labour and many of these developments, along with increased use of home ironstone resources, were not fully effective until well after the conflict ended.
Introduction When, on 4 August 1914, war was declared in response to aggressive action by Germany, the United Kingdom iron and steel industry was in a strong position. In the preceding year it had produced 10,260,000 tons of pig iron and 7,664,000 tons of steel, the second largest in Europe, behind Germany but
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around a third of that produced by the United States of America (USA).1 It was however heavily reliant on imported iron ores, a factor which had its origins in the early development of bulk steel production in the 1850s and 1860s. The Bessemer converter, the first of the bulk steel processes, was successfully demonstrated in 1856, but it quickly became apparent that it could only produce sound steel from non-phosphoric pig iron, iron made from iron ores low in phosphor. Unfortunately, most iron ores worked in the United Kingdom carried significant amounts of phosphor. It was only the hematite ores found in the Furness area of what was then north Lancashire, and in the coastal area of west Cumberland around Workington, with lesser deposits in Glamorgan, south Wales, along with the limited deposits of spathic iron ores found in the southwest of England, most notably on the Brendon Hills of west Somerset, which were suitable for producing pig iron for the Bessemer process. Similar restrictions applied to the Siemens-Martin open-hearth process when that was developed in the 1860s. It was not until 1879 that the Thomas-Gilchrist basic lining, as an alternative to the silica rich ‘acid’ refractory linings used in the Bessemer convertors, allowed the phosphor to be removed in the slag produced as part of the process. And it was 1884 before that basic lining was introduced to the open-hearth.2 Thereafter the ‘basic processes’ made significant progress, particularly in Germany and France where they allowed steel to be produced from the large amounts of pig iron made using the extensive deposits of highphosphor ‘minette’ iron ores in Alsace- Lorraine and parts of northeastern France, Briey and the area south of Nancy. In the United Kingdom the earlier ‘acid’ processes still held sway. Although production of steel using the basic processes had reached 784,585 tons by 1900, acid steel production, using lowphosphor pig iron, stood at 4,409,953 tons,3 and most of that was reliant on imported hematite iron ores. The reliance on pig iron made from non-phosphoric iron ores, and the rapid take-up of the bulk steel production processes after 1856, meant that the demand soon outstripped the available resources in the United Kingdom. By the mid-1870s there had been significant British investment in overseas iron ore mining, particularly in Spain, and imports rose rapidly after 1875. From the mid-1880s onwards the number of British companies formed to develop iron mines were dominated by those working overseas. By 1915 of the 21,108,083 tons of iron ore available to the United Kingdom iron industry, 1
2
3
J. C. Carr and W. Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962), p. 230, Table XXXIX, and 306, table LV. P. King, ‘The Zenith of Iron and the Transition to Mild Steel in Great Britain’, Historical Metallurgy 50:2 (2016), pp. 109–22. Ibid, p. 115, table 1.
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6,874,755 tons came from overseas, still predominantly from Spain.4 But since the imported ores were of a much higher grade than the vast proportion of the ore mined at home (averaging around 50 per cent iron content, as opposed to 30 per cent for phosphoric ores from the English Midlands) their contribution to pig iron production was markedly greater than the tonnage suggests. In contrast, home production of high grade, non-phosphoric ores in 1915 was only around 1,663,000 tons. Imported ores also dominated the supply of other minerals essential to the steel production in the United Kingdom, particularly the metals used as steel hardening alloys – tungsten, manganese, nickel, chrome, molybdenum and vanadium – which were essential to the munitions and shipbuilding industries throughout the war. Of these, only tungsten was produced in any significant amounts from mines in Devon and Cornwall. Even those supplies were being processed in Germany in the decades prior to the war. Small quantities of manganese ores were mined in north Wales but they were low grade, around 25–30 per cent metal, compared with those imported from mines in India. The resources required by the iron and steel industry were, however, not confined to iron ores and the steel alloy minerals. As Table 7.1 shows they were wide ranging and all of them experienced supply issues over the course of the war. It was the supply of labour which was to affect every aspect of the iron and steel industry, and the supply of its essential resources. And it was labour, or a lack of it, which initiated the first crisis in the supply of non-phosphoric iron ore to the industry. In the early months of the war, skilled men from many industries enlisted in the forces and iron mining was no different. One of the underground mine managers and a large number of miners at the Hodbarrow mine, near Millom in west Cumberland, the largest iron ore producer in the area, had enlisted. By early 1915 the mine was struggling to maintain, let alone expand, its output to meet demand through lack of skilled miners, and Captain William Donald Barratt (considered ‘indispensable to the proper underground working of the mine’) and his men were recalled from the forces.5 But the conditions under which the men returned to work in the mines, still enlisted men and still subject to military discipline, were to cause problems in
4
5
P. Claughton, ‘New Techniques, New Sources: The British Steel Industry and Its Ore Supply, 1850–1950’, Proceedings of the 1st International Conference of Paleosiderurgy (Donostia / San Sebastian, Spain, 2005), pp. 277–90. Cumbria Archives (Barrow), BDB 21/6/10/2 Hodbarrow – list of soldiers returned from service to work in the mine; BDB 21/1/2/16 Hodbarrow minute book (November 1915 onwards), minutes dated 27 January 1916, reference to Capt. Barratt’s return from the Front.
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Table 7.1. Resources required for iron and steel production • Iron ores • Non-phosphoric ores (primarily hematite), including imported ores – 45–55 per cent iron • Phosphoric ironstones – Cleveland and the English Midland counties, along with the Coal measure ironstones – 25–30 per cent iron • Fuel - metallurgical coking coal – and electricity • Steel alloy minerals • Tungsten, manganese, chrome, nickel, molybdenum and vanadium – largely reliant on imports – all used as hardening alloys in steel, with manganese having the additional use as a de-oxidant in iron smelting, carried over into the steel production processes. • Fluxes • Limestone and, to a lesser extent, fluorspar • Refractory materials • Ganister (silica bricks), ferro-chromite, magnesite and dolomite (for ‘basic’ linings) • Labour – affecting not just iron and steel production but all the resources above.
September 1916 when they were ordered to continue working during a dispute. They broke ore but the enginemen refused to haul it to surface.6 The supply of labour remained a problem throughout the war. Steel manufacturers employed women in some roles, and they were found to be particularly skilful in driving the cranes used to move heavy loads around the works – something for which at least one trade union official acknowledged they were in some cases better suited than the men they replaced: ‘His experience has been that on certain classes of crane work women are considerably quicker than men’.7 This would have had a bearing in the case of a Miss Johnson, a crane driver with Messrs Thomas Summerson and Sons Ltd, Darlington, whose wages were advanced in March 1917 from 25 to 30 shillings on account of her skill in the work.8 Iron mining companies on the other hand were slow to employ women in surface roles. The Cleveland Mine Owners Association was of the opinion that ‘Ironstone Mining does not afford much, if any, opportunity for the 6
7
8
Cumbria Archives (Barrow) 21/1/2/16 Letter to directors of the Hodbarrow Mining Co. Ltd. (copy) dated 22 September 1916. TNA: PRO, LAB 2/244/LR2829/1917 – Ministry of Works minutes, annotation dated 2 April 1917. Ibid., letter from the Ministry of Munitions to Messrs Thomas Summerson and Sons Ltd., dated 27 March 1917.
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employment of women’.9 Yet by 1918, the iron mines in Cleveland were employing seventy-four women, over 4 per cent of their surface workforce, by far the largest for any of the iron mining districts.10 At the close of hostilities the wage rates for the women, working on the picking belts at the mines, had not been agreed and, as they were only to be employed until there were sufficient men available, it was considered that ‘no further action in this direction was necessary’.11 The shortage of labour also had an impact on the supply of other resources, particularly the limestone required in greater quantities as flux for smelting increasing quantities of the low-grade phosphoric iron ores from Lincolnshire and the Midland counties.
Increased Steel Production and the Basic Iron Programme Even before Sir John Hunter’s programme, to increase steel production using both acid (hematite) and basic pig iron, was initiated in September 1916 there were serious issues with the supply of limestone for flux. In February, the Parkgate Iron and Steel Co. Ltd in Sheffield had reported ‘considerable inconvenience’ from the shortage in supply from Buxton Lime Firms, in Derbyshire. The reason was that 600 of their quarry workers had enlisted and the assistance of the Ministry of Munitions was requested in applications for their return from the forces.12 By the late summer of 1916, with imports of iron ore under threat from enemy action at sea and a shortage of all types of steel, Hunter’s plan was to increase capacity using home resources.13 Approval was given for extensions to blast furnaces with a view to producing an additional 12,500 tons of hematite and 18,000 tons of basic pig iron per week. Early in the following year the Home Ore Supply Committee was formed within the Ministry of Munitions to supervise the supply of resources to produce pig iron from home resources. Despite an extensive search for new sources of non-phosphoric iron ores across Britain and Ireland,14 the committee had to focus its attention on the use of the low-grade phosphoric iron from north Lincolnshire and the 9
10
11
12
13 14
Teesside Archives (Middlesbrough) CMA – Cleveland Mine Owners Association, Secretary’s Report 1916, p. 6. Home Office, Mines and Quarries: General Report, with Statistics, for 1918 (London: HMSO, 1919). Teesside Archives (Middlesbrough) CMA – Cleveland Mine Owners Association, Secretary’s Report 1918, p. 2. TNA: PRO, MUN3/119 Minute to Major Scott re. complaint from Parkgate Iron and Steel Co. Ltd. Carr and Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry, p. 322. The results of which were published at the end of the war. See, for example, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Advisory Council, Report on the Sources and
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Figure 7.1 Transporter, with integral excavator – or navvy – to reduce the manpower required, used in the Midlands ironstone quarries. From A. E. L. Chorlton, ‘The mechanical quarrying of ironstone’, in the Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 1917.
Midland counties. By March of that year, agreement had been reached on new specifications which would allow open-hearth basic steel to be produced using pig iron from those phosphoric ores. Redundant blast furnaces were brought back into use, new ones were erected, and a number of blast furnaces, formerly producing either hematite or foundry pig, were converted to produce basic pig. Production of basic pig iron rose from 47,920 to 65,530 tons per week by the beginning of May 1918, but this placed a considerable strain on resources.15 Increased mechanisation, using rail-mounted steam-powered excavators and transporters [Fig. 7.1], improved productivity in north Lincolnshire, but here and in the new ironstone mines and quarries in Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, there was still a significant shortage of labour. During 1916–17 all available second-hand machines were secured and allocated to suitable ironstone workings, as were new machines as they came off the production line. In all a total of fifty-one steam excavators and thirteen transporters, with supporting track and locomotives, were allocated to ironstone working.16 Cornish china clay workers were transferred to Lincolnshire and large numbers of prisoners of war were employed in the ironstone quarries of Northamptonshire – large hutted encampments being erected to house them.17 Prisoners of war were also used in the construction of a standard
15
16
17
Production of Iron and Other Metalliferous Ores Used in the Iron and Steel Industry (London: HMSO, 1918). See also n. 59 below. History of the Ministry of Munitions, vol. VII (1922, reprinted, Uckfield: Naval and Military Press, date of reprint), pt II, pp. 40–5. F. H. Hatch, The Iron and Steel Industry of the United Kingdom under War Conditions (London: Harrison, 1919), p. 58. For a contemporary account of the mechanisation see A. E. L. Chorlton, ‘The Mechanical Quarrying of Ironstone’, Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 204 (1917), pp. 395–406. Ibid., p. 39.
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gauge branch railway into the Oxfordshire Ironstone Company’s quarries at Wroxton, near Banbury.18 By far the most concentrated use of prisoners of war in producing phosphoric iron ores was on the island of Raasay, off the east coast of Skye, where 300 were employed, working at surface and underground. The mine there was developed in 1911–14 and taken over in 1916 by the Ministry of Munitions with a view to expanding production. It was primarily an underground operation and there were significant investments in its infrastructure. Production reached 88,047 tons in 1918 – near 200,000 tons over the period of the war – but the mine was abandoned shortly after the Armistice.19 Smelting the low-grade phosphoric ores from Raasay, from north Lincolnshire and other Midland counties, with around 25–30 per cent iron content (as opposed to 50–55 per cent iron content in hematite ores), took twice as much fuel (metallurgical quality coke) and flux to produce the same quantity of pig iron. At the start of the war much of the coke was produced using beehive type ovens, with no opportunity to recover the various byproducts which could be used in the manufacture of high explosives. As a consequence, increased numbers of modern by-product ovens were erected, but the demand for coke was such with the move to smelting low grade iron ores that many of the old beehive ovens had to be brought back into service in 1916/17.20 Attempts to introduce quarry workers from other parts of Britain into limestone quarrying for flux met with limited success, primarily due to the difference in working practices and the inability of the incomers to earn sufficient income. By October 1916, large numbers of prisoners of war were being introduced into the quarries at Buxton and elsewhere.21 The erection or conversion of blast furnaces to smelt the phosphoric iron ores and the new steel furnaces to process the basic pig iron also demanded an increased supply of refractory materials – silica bricks and ‘basic’ linings. The latter were a problem, as the lining was an essential part of any furnace producing steel from basic pig, and there were only four producers in the country for the calcined dolomite used in manufacturing the linings. During 1916 the average monthly production was 10,175 tons but demand was expected to rise to 17,500 tons by July 1917 as new steel furnaces were brought into use. The Home Ore Supply Committee took on responsibility for controlling supply, and arrangements were made to expand the capacity of the existing producers. In addition, a new calcining plant was to be erected at John 18
19 20 21
E. Tonks, The Ironstone Quarries of the Midlands, Part II: The Oxfordshire Field (Cheltenham: Runpast, 1988), pp. 138–44. I. and P. Draper, The Raasay Iron Mine (Dingwall: L. and P. Draper, 1990). History of the Ministry of Munitions, vol. VII, pt II, pp. 45–53. TNA: PRO, BT66/4 Increased output of limestone – employment of prisoners of war in quarries belonging to Buxton Lime Firms Co.
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Delaney & Co.’s dolomite quarry near Grassington, Yorkshire. Prisoners of war were employed to increase production at the Whitehaven Basic Works, near Oswestry on the Welsh border, and hutted accommodation was provided for essential workers at the Whitehaven Works and at Grassington. Finding the essential labour was difficult and there were delays in increasing production of basic lining material to the levels required but, with labour problems also delaying the erection of the new steel furnaces, demand was being satisfied by the end of 1918.22 Magnesite was the only refractory material which relied entirely on imports. Those came from Austria prior to the war, and new sources in Greece had to be developed as an alternative.23 The requirement for the ferro-chromite used in furnace linings was largely satisfied using imported ores but there were deposits at Unst, on Shetland, which had been worked extensively in the decades prior to the war. When investigated in 1915/ 16 the opencast workings were abandoned and flooded.24 They were subsequently reopened and worked into the mid-1920s, but figures for production in the last years of the war are elusive. Steel production had already been undergoing transformation before the changes initiated by Sir John Hunter, Director of the Iron and Steel Department within the Ministry of Munitions, were put in place in 1916. Amalgamations were planned or put in place to ensure the supply of resources, particularly fuel (coking coal), and the pig iron necessary for expanding steel production. In south Wales, plans developed by Baldwin’s for a new integrated steelworks, with its own coke ovens, at Port Talbot were in place by 1915, although the work did not start until August 1916; and a number of Sheffield-based companies were to amalgamate as United Steel, initiated in 1915, with a new steelworks to be built at Templeborough, with work starting in April 1916.25 In the early part of 1916, there were plans for extensions to existing plants, with a view to increasing weekly production of acid (hematite) steel ingots by 19,455 tons and basic steel ingots by 36,680 tons in 1917. Further extensions were authorised to the plant producing steel tube, in order to rectify shortages resulting from increased demand from trench warfare and aircraft production. All these extensions were to be funded by government grants. However, Sir John Hunter soon realised that the planned extensions would not produce sufficient steel to satisfy demand, particularly as enemy action at sea had made
22
23 24
25
Hatch, The Iron and Steel Industry, pp. 104, 112–14. TNA: PRO. MUN5/205/1810/80, Reports of the Home Ore Supply Committee (1 March 1917–17 August 1917, and Miscellaneous reports re. the production of iron ore (23 March 1917–10 July 1917). Hatch, The Iron and Steel Industry, pp. 110–12. A. Strahan, J. S. Flett and C. H. Dinham, Special Reports on the Mineral Resources of Great Britain, vol. V (London: HMSO, 1916), pp. 31–3. Carr and Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry, pp. 323–30.
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the supply of steel for shipbuilding a vital requirement. A further nine extensions were therefore approved, providing for further weekly production of 4,500 tons of acid steel ingots and 7,900 tons of basic steel ingots. There would, nevertheless, still be an estimated shortfall in annual production of 3,000,000 tons in steel ingots. Further extensions were proposed, but in addition a scheme was developed with leading steel producers for six entirely new integrated steel works.26 With the introduction of the Basic Iron Programme in 1917 the development of the new steelworks, and the extensions to existing plant, were modified to increase the number of furnaces utilising basic pig iron. This scheme was modified yet again in response to the large increase in demand for shipbuilding plate for which it was necessary to provide additional rolling plant.27 Hunter’s plan for the construction of new integrated steel works was far sighted, in that it looked beyond the wartime requirements for the industry. Unlike most of the actions by the Ministry of Munitions, which were reactive, responding to the demands of the conflict, the plan considered what might be required of the steel industry in post-war reconstruction and was designed to place the industry in a strong position after the cessation of hostilities. As it was, most of the new plants were not in production until 1919 or later. They were hampered by the shortage of labour. Even the extensions to existing plant suffered from lack of skilled labour, with the ministry constantly having to seek the return from the forces of skilled furnace operatives to bring new plant into service.
Special Steels and the Associated Alloy Metals One significant feature of the expansion of steel production was the marked shift away from Bessemer steel to production using the open-hearth, particularly for basic steel – rising from 2,959,000 tons in 1915 to 3,986,300 in 1918, whereas basic Bessemer remained relatively static at around 500,000 tons per annum.28 Whilst steel production using the open-hearth took far longer than using the Bessemer converter, it was capable of far greater control, ensuring a precision product. The open-hearth would also accept significant amounts of scrap steel in the charge and, whilst recovery of scrap was ignored in the early years of the war, it was to become an important factor in boosting steel production. Provisions were put in place to recover the large amounts of steel 26 27
28
History of the Ministry of Munitions, vol. VII, pt II, p. 60. Ibid., pp. 62–3, where it is referred to as the Basic Steel Programme whereas Hatch, in The Iron and Steel Industry of the United Kingdom under War Conditions, consistently uses the title ‘Basic Iron Programme’. Carr and Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry, p. 322, table LIX.
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turnings from the manufacture of shells – which initially had been fed into blast furnaces for the production of pig iron – and send them to the nearest suitable steelmaker. By the summer of 1916 there was effective control of scrap, with fixed prices, and all possible sources of scrap were being investigated. It was estimated that by August 1917 a saving of 750,000 tons of pig iron annually was being made by utilising scrap, with the average consumption being raised from 34 to 47 per cent of the charge in steel furnaces.29 Also, by 1917 scrap was being recovered from the western front in France and returned to British steelworks, but not without problems. There were ‘some unfortunate experiences in connection with Scrap brought over from France. Much of it is unsuitable for many of the Steel Makers, and in three cases, at least, live bombs or grenades have found their way to the Steelworks. In one instance damages had to be paid to the Patent Shaft and Axletree Co. for destruction of their Steel Furnace.’30 The value of scrap steel and its use in the open-hearth, along with the development of electric arc melting furnaces to replace the earlier coke fired crucibles, were certainly important in the rapid expansion of alloy steel production during the war years. In the two to three decades prior to 1914 there had been significant advances in the use of steel hardening alloys, particularly in the perfection of ‘high speed’ steels with the cutting properties at high temperatures essential for machine tools, as used in vast numbers across the munitions industry.31 In addition there were constant improvements to be made in the quality and use of armoured steel plates, and in the development of strong but lightweight components for aircraft construction. The former was essential to the success of mechanised warfare, which was demanding production at a rate of 2,400 tons per month by October 1917.32 Electric arc steel-melting furnaces were not unknown in the United Kingdom prior to 1914 – there were thirteen in use in 1913 – but their numbers increased to around 140 by 1918, with the amount of steel produced by this method increasing more than tenfold to around 120,000 tons in 1918 as they became the preferred method for refining alloy steels. The majority of those furnaces were in the Sheffield area, where the leading alloy steel producers were based.33 Some steelworks, such as John Brown and Company, who began steel melting using electric arc furnaces in 1916, had built their own power stations.34 But most relied on public supplies and, in
29 30 31 32
33 34
History of the Ministry of Munitions, vol. VII, pt II, pp. 76–7. TNA: PRO, MUN4/404 – report by the Director of Iron and Steel Contracts, 2 July 1918. Carr and Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry, pp. 220–2. TNA: PRO, MUN5/204/1810/78 – Munitions Council Sub-Committee, Steel – report on meeting held 19 October 1917. Carr and Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry, pp. 332–3. Ibid., p. 329.
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some cases, that made it necessary to ration electrical power. By 1917 the provision of electric furnaces with adequate power supplies and the shortage of the electrodes essential to the continued operation of the furnaces was a regular topic for discussion within the sub-committee on alloy steels at the Ministry of Munitions.35 The use of electric arc furnaces was not confined to alloy steel production. They were employed in steel fabrication plants across the country. For example, in Bradford the Vulcan Ironworks of Thwaites Bros. Ltd. used a small electric furnace in preparing steel for the manufacture of road wheels.36 Electric furnaces also had a role in processing the wide range of metals required in the production of alloy steels. Most of those metals were sourced overseas – vanadium, molybdenum, nickel, chrome and vanadium – but others, such as tungsten and manganese, whilst still heavily reliant on imports, could also be sourced in the United Kingdom. At the start of the war there were only two firms in the United Kingdom capable of manufacturing the tungsten required for steel hardening, particularly for high-speed tool steels. These were the Thermo Electric Ore Reduction Corporation Ltd., based in Luton, and the Continuous Reaction Co. Ltd. In Battersea, London, and at least one of them was already suffering from a shortage of electricity.37 Prior to 1914 most of the tungsten ores from Cornwall and west Devon had been processed in Germany, and a large part of the United Kingdom’s overseas supply, primarily from Queensland, Australia, was controlled by German mining interests.38 The overseas sources were returned to British control and some of those Australian assets were subsequently acquired by the Thermo Electric Ore Reduction Corporation,39 but the priority during the war was to maximize production from the mines in Cornwall and west Devon. By August 1915 there was additional processing capacity, when the High Speed Steel Alloys had a plant operating in Widnes capable of 35
36
37
38
39
See, for example, TNA: PRO, MUN 4/404 – sub-committee preliminary meeting dated 1 October 1917. For details of the type of furnace used at the Vulcan Ironworks, see TNA: PRO, MUN5/ 204/1810/83 – Steel-making and the use of electric furnaces, a printed copy of a paper read at a meeting of the Keighley Association of Engineers, 9 March 1918. Electricity Works upgraded at last, extract from The Luton News, 14 January 1915 [web page] www.worldwar1luton.com/blog-entry/electricity-works-upgraded-last (accessed 9/ 12/2018). See R. S. Kerr, ‘German Demand for Wolfram, Tin and Copper in North Queensland, 1890–1914’, Zeitschrift fur Unternehmensgeschichte (ZUG), German Society for Business History, Republic of Germany, 36: 2 (1991), pp. 61–75. See also TNA: PRO, MUN4/414 – note to Sir John Eaglesome regarding the position of wolfram ore pre-war and in the first twelve months of war, 13 December 1916. Queensland Heritage Register, Thermo Electric Ore Reduction Corporation Mill [web page] https://apps.des.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=602240 (accessed 9/12/ 2018).
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producing one ton of tungsten powder per day, and by the end of the war there were at least ten plants processing tungsten ores.40 Whilst the majority of the tungsten used in the steel industry was imported, as the war progressed and imports became increasingly vulnerable to enemy action at sea, attempts were made to further expand home production. The tungsten ores, primarily wolfram (WO4), produced in Cornwall and west Devon prior to the war and in the early years of the conflict, came as a byproduct of tin mining, and the amount of ore produced was increased from 182 tons in 1913 to 332 tons in 1915.41 Waste dumps at a number of mines were reworked to recover tungsten ores which had been discarded during earlier working, with a large proportion of women being employed in this task.42 By 1915, investigation was carried out into wolfram deposits at Castlean-Dinas, around 10 miles southwest of Bodmin, and in 1916 Great Western Ores Ltd started work on developing Cornwall’s first dedicated tungsten mine. Opening up the deposit and erecting the processing plant took two years and the mine did not come into production until 1918.43 Over the same period, the only source of tungsten ores outside Cornwall and west Devon, the mine at Carrock, in Cumberland, was reopened, but that too did not come into full production until the very end of the war.44 The Ministry of Munitions took action in an attempt to expand production from other mines in Cornwall and west Devon. In February 1917 it agreed to a loan, not exceeding £10,000, to Cornish Wolfram Mines Ltd. towards the installation of additional processing machinery and development work at the Parc-an-Chy mine with a view to increasing production by 15 tons per month.45 However, despite employing up to 134 men and, probably, women in 1917–18, the mine failed to produce any tungsten ores.46 In June 1917 the Ministry of Munitions took the unusual step of taking the working of the Wheal Vincent and Treburland wolfram mines in Cornwall under their direct control, ‘in order to overcome obstructionist tactics on the part of the owner’.47 Although the ministry took overall control of the iron
40
41
42 43 44
45 46
47
The Cornishman, 15 August 1915, p. 5. TNA: PRO MUN4/4395 – list of tungsten manufacturers, 4/7/1918. T. Brooks, Castle-an-Dinas, 1916–1957: Cornwall’s Premier Wolfram Mine (St Austell: Cornish Hillside Publications, 2001), p. 7, table 2. L. Mayers, Bal Maidens (n.p.: Blaize Bailey Books, 2008). Brooks, Castle-an-Dinas, pp. 11–30. Industrial History of Cumbria: Wolfram [web page] www.cumbria-industries.org.uk/ wolfram/ (accessed 10/12/2018). TNA: PRO, MUN4/5303 – agreement re. loan, dated 7 February 1917. R. Burt, R. Burnley, M. Gill and A. Neill, Mining in Cornwall and Devon (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2014) – mineral statistics for Parkanchy (sic). TNA: PRO, T1/12118/ 23840 – letter, Ministry of Munitions to the Treasury, dated 25 June 1917.
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mines in west Cumberland in July 1917, to settle long running unrest and strike action by the miners, it did leave the day-to-day management in the hands of owners.48 It was only at Wheal Vincent and Treburland, and at the Cae Coch Pyrites mine in north Wales, that ministry officials ran the mines and managed their operation. At Cae Coch direct action was justified as the supply of sulphur in the manufacture of explosives was considered vital to the war effort, and by the second half of 1918 the mine was contributing more than half of total UK production.49 The impact of the intervention at Wheal Vincent and Treburland on the production of tungsten ores is unclear, as there was a recorded production of only 6.3 tons, along with 64.75 tons of arsenic, in 1917–18.50 The other steel alloy mineral which was produced in the United Kingdom was manganese ore. There were low grade deposits in the northwest of Wales, in Merioneth, to the north of Barmouth, and on the Lleyn peninsula, in Carnarfonshire – at around 25–35 per cent manganese, compared with the 50–55 per cent for the ores imported from mines in central India. Unfortunately, the mines were not very productive in 1914. The company operating the mines close to Rhiw on the Lleyn peninsula, the British Manganese Co. Ltd., had collapsed prior to 1914, and the plant at the mine, including the aerial ropeway to the shipping point on the coast, was offered for sale. The mine was reported to be flooded in January 1916 but a ‘take note’(a short term licence to work the minerals) was granted later that year, and the Ministry of Munitions assisted in restoring access to the pier and allocating shipping for the ore produced.51 The reopening of the mines at Rhiw will have contributed to the increase in production from northwest Wales, rising from a low point of 3,437 tons in 1914, to 5,140 in 1916, and to 14,492 tons in 1918.52 Of equal importance was the reopening of the Egryn Mine north of Barmouth in 1917, a new aerial ropeway being constructed from the mine to the road 2 km north of Llanaber, with twenty men working underground and ten men at surface in 1918.53 The ropeway only worked into the 1920s, but the ironwork remains can still be seen in situ, where they collapsed.
48
49
50 51
52 53
Cumbria Archives (Barrow), 21/3/1/13 – printed agreement and supplementary agreements, undated, but referring to the order dated 24 July 1917. J. Bennet and R. W. Vernon, Mines of the Gwydyr Forest, Part 7 (Cuddington: Gwydyr Mines Publications, 1997), pp. 34–5. Burt, Mining in Cornwall and Devon – mineral statistics for Treburland. TNA: PRO, CRES49/1619 – sale notice, 14 December 1914, letter re Carnarvon, Rhiw and Llanfaelrhys Mine and Aerial Tramway, dated 14 January 1916 and take notes 1916 onwards. Hatch, The Iron and Steel Industry, p. 78. Ibid. Merioneth Manganese – Egryn [web page]. www.davel.f2s.com/hendrecoed/MerionethManganese/mines/egryn/index.html (accessed 10/12/2018).
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Beyond the Conflict In the final year of the war the United Kingdom produced 9,086,000 tons of pig iron and 9,539,000 tons of steel. In terms of steel production there had been an increase of around 25 per cent over that in 1914 and that was wholly due to the move to basic steel in the last two years of the war [see Fig. 7.2].54 But it might have been even greater had the new plant and planned extensions been completed in full before the cessation of hostilities. As it was, in 1918 the majority of the iron and steel produced still relied on imported nonphosphoric iron ores. Labour shortages continued to hamper the erection and operation of new basic iron and steel furnaces, but the shortages were not confined to that sector of the industry. The hematite mines in west Cumberland and north Lancashire continued to experience labour difficulties and, despite the mechanisation of some aspects of the work, the unloading of imported iron ores still relied to a large extent on scarce manpower. At Barrow-in-Furness the introduction of crane-mounted mechanical grabs had assisted, if not replaced, manual labour. But the problem of unloading iron ores from Spain and the Mediterranean was accentuated after the introduction of convoy systems in 1917, with ore carriers arriving in groups rather than at intervals, making it necessary to deploy a transport battalion to assist dock labour.55 The call up, in the spring of 1918, of all men born in 1898–9 regardless of occupation, the so called ‘clean-cut’, was regarded as being disastrous for the iron and steel industry, which ran the risk of failing to produce the required steel for munitions through lack of essential resources and skilled men to operate the necessary furnaces. It was not until June that the Ministry of Munitions was allowed any discretion in retaining skilled workers, and on 1 November 1918 a schedule of protected occupations was put in place, thus ending four years during which there had been a continuous struggle to bring back key workers, miners, quarrymen and blast furnace operatives from the forces.56 This was a lesson that was learned for future conflicts. With the cessation of hostilities, the demand for special armament steels was much reduced. The mining of tungsten ores in the United Kingdom virtually ceased, and the new mines at Castle-an-Dinas and Carrock were placed on care and maintenance before closing completely, only to be re-opened with the advent of the Second World War. Manganese mining in northeast Wales continued into the 1920s as it had a market in the glass industry, but again it
54 55
56
Carr and Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry, p. 306, table LV, and 322, table LIX. P. Schofield, ‘Industry and Society: A Study of the Home Front in Barrow-in-Furness during the First World War’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Lancaster (2017), pp. 129–30. Hatch, The Iron and Steel Industry, pp. 51–9.
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Figure 7.2 Workers unloading pig iron at Pontardawe, Glamorgan, 1918. The pigs, which weighed around 50 kg each, came from an iron producer in north Lincolnshire and were handled primarily by women. National Museum of Wales.
was necessary to reactivate it during the Second World War. The quarrying of limestone for flux, and the refractory materials needed for the new blast furnaces and steel-making furnaces, continued unabated as the industry prepared itself for post-war reconstruction. Production of steel was at 9,067,300 tons in 1920, 50 per cent of which was made using the basic open-hearth process, but prices fell dramatically in the slump of 1921 onwards. Although steel production fell to 3,703,400 tons in 1921, recovering to 5,880,600 tons in 1922, the benefit of having the new integrated steelworks initiated under the Basic Iron Programme can be seen in the proportion of basic steel within those totals, at 3,625,500 tons of basic open-hearth steel in 1922.57 Imports of non-phosphoric ores fell steadily after 1925, but this did not necessarily benefit domestic production. The demand for home resources fluctuated significantly from year to year because of the poor economic conditions of the period. By the early 1930s, conditions had stabilised and as the ironstone deposits of the English Midlands were opened up those in Northamptonshire saw a marked increase, stimulated by construction of the first steelworks in that field at Corby in the early 1930s.58
57 58
Carr and Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry, p. 346, table LXI. Claughton, ‘New Techniques, New Sources’, fig. 2; S. E. Hollingworth and J. H. Taylor, The Northampton Sand Ironstone (London: HMSO, 1951), pp. 55–60.
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Moreover, as a result of the investigations carried out across the whole of the United Kingdom during the war, there was a comprehensive understanding of the nature of the country’s mineral resources, including iron ores, the steel alloy minerals, fluxes and refractory materials, details of which were published during the two decades after the war.59 The industry was therefore far better informed and far better prepared when, just over twenty years later, conflict once again made significant demands on its resources.
59
Memoirs of the Geological Survey, Special Reports on the Mineral Resources (London: HMSO, various dates), particularly vol. I, Tungsten and Manganese Ores, vol. VI, Refractory Materials (2nd ed., vol. XVI), and vols. VIII–XIII, Iron Ores. The information for Ireland was published as G. A. J. Cole, Memoir and Map of Localities of Minerals of Economic Importance and Metalliferous Mines in Ireland (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1922).
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8 Timber
Wood and timber were essential materials in maintaining the British war effort. Trench and tunnel revetments held up the western front, pit-props meant the mining industries could continue to supply munitions factories and railways, and the construction of camps housing new armies or migrant workers required massive amounts of timber. Although the First World War is seen as a pivotal event in the road to modernity, the list of vital uses for this ancient material is long. The woodlands of pre-war Britain were poorly managed for timber production, the nation relying very heavily on bulky imports. Improved self-sufficiency was therefore especially important as available shipping space declined as the war progressed. Although from mid-1916 a great deal of timber utilised on the western front was obtained from French forests by Canadian lumbermen, the woodlands, forestry profession and branches in the timber trade of the United Kingdom had to be mobilised and controlled to meet demand. The fact that stocks were eventually established, both in Britain and on the continent, and that shortages were never crippling to the war effort, illustrate how well these measures worked.1 Much of the existing historiography regarding the forestry effort addresses the work of Canadian and American forestry units working in Europe,2 and 1
2
John Turner, British Politics and the Great War: Coalition and Conflict, 1915–1918 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 362; ‘Memo showing necessity for the control of timber at the beginning of the Submarine Campaign, and the extent to which restriction and controls have been removed since Armistice’, 1 January 1919 (version dated 22 March also used in this chapter), The British National Archives (TNA), BT/71/3/55295. See for instance, Charles Wesley Bird and J. B. Davies, The Canadian Forestry Corps: Its Inception, Development and Achievements. Prepared by Request of Sir Albert H. Stanley, (London: HMSO, 1919); n.a., ‘War Material from French Forests’, American Forestry 24:290 (1918), pp. 69–76; Major Barrington Moore ‘French Forests in the War’, American Forestry, 25:306 (1919), pp. 1113–16 and all of the articles in this volume; Herman L. Porter, A Review of Activities with the 126th Company Canadian Forestry Corps while Stationed at Ampthill, Bedfordshire, England (c. late 1918–1919. Reprinted, Ampthill: Ampthill & District Archaeological & Local History Society, 2001); Roland H. Hill, ‘The Canadian Forestry Corps’, in W. A. Williamson and Roland H. Hill et al. (ed.), Canada in the Great World War: An Authentic Account of the Military History of Canada from the Earliest Days to the Close of the War of the Nation (Toronto: United Publishers of
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was released either during or soon after the war. Much was written by men who had been involved with the effort at high management or administrative levels, raising concerns about its objectivity.3 Two attempts were made to write histories about the management and administration of the overall forestry efforts on the home front, both by senior figures in the Board of Trade (BofT) and its Timber Supply Department (TSD).4 Although neither of these was fully completed or published, they provide detail on administrative structures and initiatives, as well as political and diplomatic efforts to ensure effective working relationships between government and industry, the allies, and trade or labour organisations. Some modern histories do touch briefly on elements of the forestry effort, and many give context whilst focusing on other facets of the war, such as logistical and manpower issues, or agricultural controls.5 Ian Brown and
3
4
5
Canada Limited, 1920); Perez Simmons and Alfred H. Davies (eds.), Twentieth Engineers, France, 1917–1918–1919 (Portland: Twentieth Engineers Publishing Association, 1920); Cuthbert P. Stearns, History of the Spruce Production Division, United States Army and United States Spruce Production Corporation (Portland: Press of Kilham Stationery & Printing Co, n.d, c. 1919); G. H. Colonel Addison, Work of the Royal Engineers in the European War 1914–1918: The Organisation and Expansion of the Corps 1914–1918 (Chatham: Institution of Royal Engineers, 1926), pp. 23–4, 51–60, 62, 65, 68–9 for forestry or related sections. For instance, from n. 2 above, C. W. Bird worked for the Timber Supply Department of the Board of Trade, Lieutenant J. B. Davies was a member of the Canadian Forestry Corps (CFC), all contributors to American Forestry 25:306 (1919) were officers who had served in the US 20th ‘Forestry’ Engineers. Professor L. T. Hobhouse, History of T.S.D, TNA, BT/71/2/32105, this attempt did not get past the stage of note collection; C. W. Bird, The Supply and Control of Timber during the War; With Special Reference to the Work of the Board of Trade’s Timber Supply Department, TNA, BT/71/21 (c. 1922), nearly completed and although not published was kept in the Board of Trade’s library before being archived. For a few examples, see Ian Malcolm Brown, British Logistics on the Western Front, 1914–1919 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), pp. 131–3 for a small amount on British timber agreements with France, but also pp. 1–2, 12–13, 109–10, 120–8, 134, 139–43, 146–9, 155–74, 179–204, 231–9 for sections or conclusions on the demands of 1916 and subsequent streamlining of administration, communications and use of civilian experts; Murray Maclean, Farming and Forestry on the Western Front 1915–1919 (Ipswich: Old Pond Publishing, 2004), provides a brief popular style history on the forestry effort; Christopher Phillips, ‘Managing Armageddon: The science of transportation and the British Expeditionary Force, 1900–1918’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds (2015); Turner, British Politics; Elizabeth Greenhalgh, Victory through Coalition: Britain and France during the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Jehuda L. Wallach, Uneasy Coalition: The Entente Experience in World War 1 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993) for details of committees established and details of the trials and tribulations of fighting such a resource based war alongside allies; Keith Grieves, The Politics of Manpower, 1914–18 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988); P. E. Dewey, British Agriculture in the First World War (London: Routledge, 1989); Avner Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
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Christopher Phillips show that the increased use of civilian experts, working in fields related to their speciality, improved efficiency. The use of civilian expertise, alongside the reorganisation and centralisation of management structures, was also applied to forestry. The relatively new and specifically environmental approach to the history of conflicts, focusing on the way warfare has affected different environments, has also touched upon those effects on woodlands and forestry.6 However, no single overall study of the forestry effort on the British home front exists. The poor, yet slowly improving, state of forestry in Britain in the years before 1914 provides context for the ‘acorn’ state of forestry as a profession on what would become the home front. Having set the baseline, this chapter outlines the main high-level measures taken to obtain the necessary supplies of timber. First, it addresses the mobilisation of the expertise available in Britain and its empire to manage or assist in this work. Timber production drew on existing government departments, the interested landed gentry, the relatively new field of scientific forestry education and the timber trade. Continuity in high-level staff was maintained as management bodies were gradually reorganised for centralisation. Although there was some understandable duplication of effort in the earlier stages, control was gradually rationalised given the changing contexts of the war, and suitable management and advisory bodies were established. State intervention grew. Many controls, from temporary bans on imports to complicated permit purchase systems, were introduced. Those in the trade, although always insisting on their desire to assist the war effort, were not always happy with these measures. However, sections of the Timber Trade Federation (TTF) were gradually involved in agreeing their detail.7 As well as instructions to economise on wood use in all areas, and attempts to find alternative materials, several types of control measures stand
6
7
1989); Lucy Noakes, Women in the British Army: War and the Gentle Sex, 1907–1948 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006). Examples include Richard Tucker, ‘The World Wars and the Globalization of Timber Cutting’, in Richard P. Tucker and Edmund Russell (eds.), Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Towards an Environmental History of War (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2004), pp. 110–41; Joshua A. West, ‘Forests and National Security: British and American Forestry Policy in the Wake of World War 1’, Environmental History, 8 (2003), pp. 270–93; Chris Pearson, Mobilizing Nature: The Environmental History of War and Militarization in Modern France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012); Chris Pearson, Peter Coates and Tim Cole (eds.), Militarized Landscapes From Gettysburg to Salisbury Plain (London: Continuum, 2010); Peter Coates, Tim Cole, Marianna Dudley and Chris Pearson, ‘Defending Nation, Defending Nature? Militarized Landscapes and Military Environmentalism in Britain, France, and the United States’, Environmental History 16:3 (2011), pp. 456–91. Resolution No. 1 of TTF meeting of 17 October 1917, as quoted in Bryan Latham, History of the Timber Trade Federation of the United Kingdom: The First Seventy Years (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1965), p. 68.
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out.8 The levels of current stocks and requirements had to be established; purchases of both imports and home-grown timber were centralised; production was increased; and requisitioning was established. Work in the woodlands and in the sawmills themselves was carried out by several home-front groups not closely associated with pre-war forestry. Men were brought back from retirement, the use of schoolboys was discussed, the Women’s Forestry Service (WFS) was established, and women’s roles in the ‘wood trades’ grew. Mobilising these human resources, as well as protecting specific roles in the timber industries from conscription, were important parts of the successful effort to direct and manage timber production. Given its weak starting position in August 1914, those who mobilised and managed this resource succeeded admirably and learnt from their early errors. They were still learning as the war ended, but from mid-1916 the situation changed and essential supplies were largely maintained. The mines, factories and numerous other aspects of the home front were kept going through sufficient quantities of forest produce from an increasingly rationalised, practical and state-controlled sector.
The Poor Pre-War State of British Forestry An important element in appreciating the good work of the wartime management bodies is understanding the starting position of forestry. The woodlands of Great Britain and Ireland in 1914 were a far cry from the virgin jungles that had been lost over centuries as populations, farming and industry expanded, and the navy built ships and wars reaped destruction.9
8
9
War Cabinet Paper G.-124 in Minutes of WC Meeting 70, 16 February 1917, pp. 2, 3, TNA, CAB/23/1/70; WO Office Memorandum No. 913, 7 March 1917, p. 1 point 2, TNA, BT71/ 4/78217; Memo regarding the control of timber during the war, 24 March 1919, TNA, BT/ 71/3/55295; The London Gazette, 16 April 1917, pp. 3569–70; Memo ‘Importation of Shooks’, 20 July 1917, TNA, MUN/4/3417; Letter Chairman of TASC (Ball) to Secretary WPC, 15 March 1918, reporting on timber situation, TNA, CAB/40/23; Department of Munitions Requirements and Statistics, including letter from the WPC regarding the ‘extremely serious’ need to minimalize use of timber, which was sent to all the main users (seen as the Admiralty, WO, MofM, Ministry of Shipping, Ministry of Food, Air Ministry, OWks, BofT), 22 October 1918, TNA, MUN/4/3417; ‘Memo showing the necessity . . .’, 1 January 1919, TNA, BT/71/3/55295; Bird, The Supply, p. 50, Appendix 2, p.1; ‘G.S.O’, G.H.Q. Montreuil-Sur-Mer (London: Philip Allan & Co., 1920), p. 129; Mark Swenarton, Homes Fit for Heroes: The Politics and Architecture of Early State Housing in Britain (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1981), pp. 92–4, 105–11, 113–14. Board of Agriculture and Fisheries; Office of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues, Cd.7488 Joint Annual Report of the Forestry Branches for the Year 1912–1913 (London: HMSO, 1914), pp. 7, 16–24; David Ross, Scotland: History of a Nation (New Lanark: Lomond Books, 2002), p. 40 for brief details on Scotland’s ancient forests; Edward P. Stebbing, British Forestry: Its Present Position and Outlook after the War (London: Murray, 1916),
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Anyone who goes through the New Forest and compares the miserable and scanty trees seen there with the magnificent forests of Germany, France, Belgium and Denmark, must be struck by the fact that in this country the Government have not used the Crown lands to the best advantage.10
This parliamentary statement in April 1914, just four months before war began, aptly describes the condition of much of what little was left of Britain’s woodlands. The crown owned some areas, managed by the Office of Woods, as did some local authorities in parks or near water sources, but the majority was privately owned. Successive monarchs and governments had provided little incentive for owners to manage these spaces properly for timber production. Forests were seen simply as places of beauty, for leisure or rearing game, to be hired out for hunting rents, or to be cleared to plant faster growing crops. The vast majority of timber, it was widely accepted, could always be obtained through imports.11 Despite Britain’s empire and its navy, some were aware before 1914 of the threats to the supply of timber from northern Europe or Canada and the USA.12 As far back as the 1790s Baltic supplies were occasionally cut off by naval blockades, even though ‘naval stratagems’ had been put in place to keep ports open. The timber import trade had been severely disrupted by British or worldwide economic slumps and by the Crimean and American Civil Wars.13 These emergencies had driven calls for afforestation, coupled with more statedriven ‘scientific’ management, on the grounds of economic potential, social
pp. xii–xiii, xxi; Richard Grove, ‘Scotland in South Africa’, in Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin (eds.), Ecology and Empire: Environmental History of Settler Societies (Edinburgh: Keele University Press, 1997), pp. 144–5; Roger Miles, Forestry in the English Landscape: A Study of the Cultivation of Trees and Their Relationship to Natural Amenity and Plantation Design (London: Faber, 1967), p. 28. See too Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside (London: Orion, 1986), pp. 6, 23–30, 39, 55, 57–9, 62–154. 10 Hansard Parliamentary Debates, Commons Sitting (CS), 8 April 1914, Cols. 2039–2040, in the online version of Parliamentary Debates the sixth from last word in this debate is ‘Grown.’ However, in the paper version of the same debate it is ‘Crown.’ See; ‘The Parliamentary Debates (Official Report), Fifth Series, vol. LX, House of Commons Third Volume of Session 1914 (London, 1914); also see William E. Schmidt, ‘Who’s Merry Now? Sherwood Forest may be Sold’, New York Times, Friday 8 April 1994, p. 4 for more modern view. 11 Cd.7488 (1914), pp. 7–8, 17; Miles, Forestry, pp. 25–7, 29; Dewey, British Agriculture, pp. 1–7, 240–2. 12 Hansard Parliamentary Debates, Lords Sitting (LS), 6 March 1918, Lord Hylton, Col. 283. 13 See William Schlich, Forestry in the United Kingdom (London: Bradbury, Agnew, 1904), pp. 5–6, 15, 26, and passim; Stebbing, British Forestry, pp. xi–xii, 15 and passim; N.D.G James. A History of English Forestry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), pp. 201, 207–17; E. G. Richards, British Forestry in the 20th Century: Policy and Achievements (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), p. xxxiii.
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improvement, the suitability of great swathes of underutilised land, and both local and worldwide environmental benefits. From at least the time of the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, high-level advocates had identified the reasons for the problem and called for measures to improve the situation. The arguments changed as lessons were drawn from imperial settings or as technology moved on.14 The central facets were pleas for greater centralisation and control; improved and expanded education, training and research; increased afforestation on existing and new publicly owned lands; financial incentives to grow trees; and practical advice to private landowners. Some ‘enthusiastic’ landowners, particularly in Scotland, took on the calls to improve home-grown timber supplies, and briefly at the end of the seventeenth century planting for timber could be a sound investment.15 Later experts argued that those British woodlands maintained solely for game or aesthetic reasons could in addition provide a profit from timber sales, as long as they were managed scientifically and ‘excessive sentimentality [was] somewhat curbed’.16 However, there were also counter-arguments. Several financial and industrial factors had reduced the importance of timber self-sufficiency. These included a change in the bulk of materials required for shipbuilding from timber to steel, and the removal of import duties from colonial timber in 1864, and from all foreign timber in 1866. This last step ended complex customs procedures and the need for large sums to pay duties ‘up front’, allowed
14
15
16
See all sources in n. 13, above; Cd.7488, pp. 9–10, 17–18; Sylvie Nail, Forest Policies and Social Change in England (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), pp. 53–5; T. W. Birch, ‘The Afforestation of Britain’, Economic Geography 12:1 (1936), p. 3; Miles, Forestry, pp. 25–29; Theodore S. J. Woolsey, Studies in French Forestry: With Two Chapters Contributed by William B. Greeley (New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1920); Raphael Zon and William Norwood Sparhawk, Forest Resources of the World, vol. 1&2 (New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1923); West ‘Forests and National Security’, pp. 272–8, 287–9; J. M. Powell ‘“Dominion over Palm and Pine”: The British Empire Forestry Conferences, 1920–1947’, Journal of Historical Geography, 33 (2007), pp. 852–3; Peter R. Gillis and Thomas R. Roach, Lost Initiatives: Canada’s Forest Industries, Forest Policy and Forest Conservation (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986), pp. 31, 53–4; Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin (eds.), Ecology and Empire: Environmental History of Settler Societies (Edinburgh: Keele University Press, 1997); Gregory A. Barton, Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); William Beinart and Lotte Hughes, Environment and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 15, 39, 116–19, 126; Jan Oosthoek, ‘The Colonial Origins of Scientific Forestry in Britain’ online paper, www.eh-resources.org/colonial_forestry.html (accessed 30/4/2013); Michael Williams, ‘Ecology, Imperialism and Deforestation’, in Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin (eds.), Ecology and Empire: Environmental History of Settler Societies (Edinburgh: Keele University Press, 1997), pp. 70, 175–7. W. L. Taylor, Forests and Forestry in Great Britain (London: Crosby Lockwood & Sons Ltd, 1945), p. 10 as quoted in Miles, Forestry, pp. 26, 28. Schlich, Forestry, p. 24.
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smaller firms to compete with larger importers and agents and enabled massive increases in Baltic and Scandinavian imports to Britain. Since the mid-Victorian period closer bonds with countries such as the USA, Canada and Australia had also been established for agricultural and industrial imports. Technological improvements in railway and shipping networks made imports cheaper and home-grown timber, even hardwoods, less profitable.17 Those who saw Britain as primarily a trading nation argued against afforestation given the country’s powerful economy and its position in world markets.18 Pre-war calls and limited precedents therefore foreshadowed the types of management actions undertaken during and after the war, culminating with the establishment of the central Forestry Commission in 1919. Some improvements had been made in the number and scope of education courses, and a few government trial protection schemes, for instance around the New and Dean Forests, had been introduced. Some areas of the trade had flourished, but other uses of land were still preferred. However, none of these initiatives had improved the quantities of timber Britain could produce quickly and efficiently, and there was still no central controlling body and no state plan for afforestation.19 Contemporary estimates for tree coverage in 1914 ranged from 2 to 4 per cent of the United Kingdom’s land mass, although later calculations ranged as high as 6 per cent.20 This was one of the worst averages in the world. European averages were approximately 25 per cent. Figures show a large and steady increase of loads of, and expenditure on, wood products from 1801 to 1841.
17
18 19
20
Cd.7488, pp. 22–4; Schlich, Forestry, p. 8; Stebbing, British Forestry, pp. 14, 164–5; Offer, Agrarian, pp. 1–5. 6; P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism 1688–2000 (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2002), p. 206; Turner, British Politics, p. 172; Latham, Timber Trade Federation, pp. 16–17, 23. Richards, British Forestry, p. xvii. Ibid., pp. xvii, 254–77, and see Appendix B.2 for chronological list of legislations up to 1977; Miles, Forestry, pp. 25–7, 34–6; Cd.7488, especially pp. 1, 3, 4, 7–9, 17; Ministry of Reconstruction, Cd.8881: Reconstruction Committee, Forestry Sub-Committee, Final Report (London: HMSO, 1918), pp. 4–20; Bird, The Supply, passim; Grove, Scotland in South Africa, pp. 148–9; Schlich, Forestry, pp. 15, 17–18, 28–9; Stebbing, British Forestry, pp. 16–18, 163; CS, 17 February 1914, Mr MacCallum Scott, Cols. 766–8, the Committee’s actual report was Cd.6085 (1912) according to Cd.8881, p.12; CS, 3 March 1914, Cols. 232–3; CS, 8 April 1914, Cols. 2039–41, especially line by Mr McKenna (Liberal – Monmouthshire Northern) in Col. 2041, giving the government’s view; CS, 18 May 1914, Cols. 212–3; Latham, Timber Trade Federation, pp. 23, 53–4, 57; Memorandum ‘Forestry Administration’, Lord Lovat to War Cabinet, January 1918, pp. 1–4, TNA, CAB/24/39/19. Schlich, Forestry, p. 17; Stebbing, British Forestry, p. 15; Bird, The Supply, p. 1, all give as 4 per cent of UK dry land under Woodlands; Richards, British Forestry, p. xvii, gives as 6 per cent.
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From 1843 onwards a sharp and constant rise was recorded for each decade up to 1912.21 In 1851, imports of timber amounted to 3.5 cubic feet per head of the population; by 1911 they had risen to 10.5 cubic feet per person.22 The yearly average for imports between 1909 and 1913 was 10,204,000 ‘loads’, at an average annual cost of £27,561,421. Some figures suggest this reached £40 million, a sum which could have bought nearly fifteen Dreadnoughts in 1913.23 Production of UK home-grown timber was not reaching 2 million tons per year by 1904, whereas imports were exceeding 10 million.24 Total imports in 1913 equalled approximately 11.6 million tons, with just 0.9 million tons produced domestically. Softwoods from Russia, the Baltic states, Scandinavia, and to a lesser extent Canada and the USA, pit-wood from France, and even hardwoods from India, southeast Asia or Australasia, poured into the United Kingdom.25 In terms of forestry, Britain was most definitely a workshop rather than a producer of raw materials.26 Given this poor pre-war situation, dramatic change was needed to obtain the unprecedented quantities suddenly required, especially as transportation difficulties due to U-boat blockades and shipping space shortages increased. Table 8.1 illustrates that imports gradually reduced until 1917, and then dipped sharply. Home-grown production stayed reasonably steady until 1917, when – critically – measures that had been put in place earlier could offset the shortfall in imports.27 21
22 23 24
25
26 27
Cd.8881, pp. 14–16, see tables for detailed breakdown of types of wood and where they were imported from. Ibid., p. 14; Cd.7488, p. 10 for similar figures but in ‘loads’ of unmanufactured timber. Cd.8881, pp. 14–16. Schlich, Forestry, p. 8; Cd.8881, p. 14; Calculated approximately from figures in text, and fn.13; as 10.2 m loads per year average, multiplied by 55 cubic feet per load (halfway between hewn softwood and sawn or split timber which made up the bulk of imports). ‘Minute by the Timber Controller for the War Cabinet on the Critical Position of the Timber Supply’, 1 December 1917, TNA, CAB/24/34/46; Cd.7488, p.10; Cd.8881, p. 14; For a detailed review of the quantities and value of wood and timber in many different forms imported into, and exported from, the UK on an annual basis see the annual Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom in Each of the Last Fifteen Years, published by HMSO. For instance Cd.9137, Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom in Each of the last Fifteen Years from 1902 to 1916 (London: HMSO, 1918), pp. 134–7, 140–2, 150–3, 158–9, 161–3, 184–5, 200–1, 206–7, 220–3, 228–9, 234–5, 264–5, 268–71, 275, 278, 280; Hill, ‘The Canadian Forestry Corps’, p. 302 puts at 11.5 m tons and also see Colonel Gerald W. L. Nicholson, Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1919: Official History of the Canadian Army in the First World War (Ottawa: R. Duhamel, Queen’s Printer and Controller of Stationery, 1962), pp. 499, 500; Bird, The Supply, p. 1; Beinart and Hughes, Environment and Empire, pp. 10–11; Offer, Agrarian, pp. 1–6. The War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War 1914–1920 (London: 1922; Reprinted by The Naval & Military Press Ltd, Uckfield), pp. 717–18.
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Table 8.1. Timber imports and home-grown timber, 1913–18
Year
Imports to UK (tons)
Estimated HGT production (tons)
Totals (tons)
1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 (est.)
11,589,811 8,432,646 7,665,524 6,318,872 2,875,143 2,400,000
900,000 900,000 900,000 1,000,000 3,000,000 4,250,000
12,489,811 9,332,646 8,565,524 7,318,872 5,875,143 6,650,000
Contemporaries were proud that during 1917 home-grown provided more than 50 per cent of the country’s timber needs, as opposed to 7 per cent before the war. Home-grown timber now provided an even higher percentage of pitwood, most of which had come from France before 1914. It was also felt these home-grown percentages would have increased had the war continued into 1919.28 Imports remained vital and French timber produced by the rapidly established and equipped units of the Canadian Forestry Corps (CFC) was the main source for the western front, although the timber produced in Britain was an important contribution to the overall struggle. The rest of this chapter outlines the essential factors in delivering this outcome.
Mobilisation, Centralisation and Continuity Management positions across many aspects of the war effort were filled by relevant experts. Civilian specialists were brought in to apply their experiences of working within large institutions. They introduced administrative changes resulting in structures more capable than many existing military ones. Especially noticeable following the formation of Lloyd George’s coalition government at the end of 1916, this trend affected forestry.29 28
29
Notes on Meeting of the Timber Allocation Committee, 28 February 1918, TNA, CAB/ 40/24; Minute by the Timber Controller for the War Cabinet on the Critical Position of the Timber Supply, 1 December 1917, TNA, CAB/24/34/46; CS, 14 January 1918, Mr James Hogge (Liberal MP and Party Whip, 1918–22), Col.122; Bird, The Supply, p. 1. Brown, British Logistics, pp. 1–2, 12–13, 109–10, 120–8, 134, 139–43, 146–9, 155–74, 179–204, 231–9; Christopher Phillips, ‘Logistics and the BEF: The Development of Waterborne Transport on the Western Front, 1914–1916’, British Journal for Military History, 12:2 (2016), pp. 42–58, passim, especially 42–51, 57–8 for civilians utilised; Christopher Phillips, ‘Managing Armageddon: The Science of Transportation and the British Expeditionary Force, 1900–1918’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds, (2015), pp. 1–15, 275 and passim.
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The forestry and timber trades were unlike those areas, such as logistics, in which the military already had a good level of expertise given its previous experience. As a result, the expertise that existed in the United Kingdom in 1914 had to become involved almost immediately on mobilisation.30 Increased timber supplies were needed by many other areas of the war effort, as well as by the military. Although fears were expressed regarding the possible loss of expertise as responsibilities were passed from one body to another, in practice staff and advisors tended, if appropriate, to move with the role.31 Committees were cross-pollinated with chairmen, secretaries, members and representatives, resulting in a great deal of knowledge exchange through meetings, notes, interviews, memoranda and reports.32 Such committees also fed members into the higher administrative bodies as workloads grew, and so expertise was certainly not lost. The Board of Trade (BofT)’s forestry expert, R. L. Robinson, who had been head of the Office of Woods, was Superintending Inspector of Forestry at the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries (BofAF) and was effectively in charge of forestry within the Office of Works. Later he became secretary to the Acland Committee, the Forestry Sub-Committee of the Reconstruction Committee, established in July 1916. This committee would recommend the establishment of the Forestry Committee.33 Although not directly dealing with wartime supplies, the Acland Committee’s membership included the names of many experts managing or advising areas of the wartime effort, such as the pre-war enthusiast Sir John Stirling Maxwell.34 F. D. Acland, who gave his name to the committee, also chaired the first timber body specifically established during the war, the Home Grown Timber Committee (HGTC). He had been pre-war Parliamentary Secretary to the BofAF and became Chairman of the committee on future forestry when it was established in 1916.35 The HGTC’s first director was John D. Sutherland. Formerly of the Scottish Office, he later held a high-level role in the Directorate of Timber Supplies at the War Office (DTS(WO)). Sutherland
30
31
32
33
34 35
Cd.8881, pp. 4–13; Memorandum ‘Forestry Administration’, Lord Lovat to War Cabinet, January 1918, pp. 1–4, TNA, CAB/24/39/19; LS, 20 June 1917, Lord Heneage, Cols. 545–7; LS, 26 June 1917, Earl Selbourne, Cols. 635–7; and see examples below. For example, see MofM Requirements and Statistics, memo DTS(WO) Branch III to MofM, 4 May 1917, memo paper still headed with ‘The Secretary HGTC’, TNA, MUN/4/ 3417. Numerous letters sent by DTS(WO) in March and April 1917 to other government departments requesting a representative to serve on the Consultative Committee, and their replies, TNA, BT/71/4/78217; note Rey to Smith on current pit-wood situation, 19 August 1914, TNA, LAB2/1488/LE37858/46/1914; Cd.7488, p. 5. Bird, The Supply, pp. 16–17 for full list of committee members. Ibid., pp. 2, 23; Cd.8881.
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would eventually be appointed Assistant Director of Forestry in France, with the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel.36 His replacement at the DTS(WO) illustrated the need, across the army as a whole, to utilise those trained in other parts of the empire. Hugh Murray took charge of increasing home-grown timber production having been Senior Conservator of Forests (Bombay). He maintained this role with the War Office and then the BofT until the end of the war.37 Sir Joseph Bampfylde-Fuller, the first and only Director of the DTS(WO), had run agricultural departments in Indian provinces and served as Lieutenant-Governor of Eastern Bengal and Assam.38 Although not a forester, the Controller of Timber Supplies at the BofT (CTS(BofT)), which replaced the DTS(WO) in early 1917, was Mr, later Sir, James B. Ball. He had been engineer-in-chief of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, his services being lent to the government.39 Major G. L. Courthope, M. C., M. P., became an Assistant Controller of Timber Supplies (ACTS), overseeing the TSD(BofT) Divisional Liaison Officers across the United Kingdom. He was ‘a leading authority on forestry questions’, as well as President of the English Forestry Association and of the Royal English Arboricultural Society.40 Those from higher education in government bodies and their related committees included Professor William Somerville of Oxford University.41 Leading forestry experts and landowners were also regular members: Lord Lovat, Lord Powis and Sir Hugh Shaw-Stuart. Many of them had advised the country’s Boards of Agriculture (BsofA) before the war, representing the interests of landowners and others concerned with the ‘disposal of standing timber’ or advising on general forestry issues to improve production.42 Although the pre-war calls for centralised control had achieved little, numerous bodies had been heavily involved in different aspects of the forestry and timber industries before the war. They therefore had to be included within, or consulted by, the early overarching organisations. The meetings and discussions, the committees and numerous sub-committees that led to the establishment of the pinnacle of forestry higher administrative bodies, the Timber Supply Department of the BofT (TSD(BofT), on 1 June 1917 can appear confusing, and bureaucratically complex. However, when the 36 37 38
39
40 41 42
Bird and Davies, The Canadian Forestry Corps, p. 7; Bird, The Supply, pp. 16–17. Ibid., pp. 202–3. The Times, ‘Controller of Timber: Sir Bampfylde Fuller’s War Post’, 20 February 1917, p. 9; LS, 26 June 1917, Cols. 635–6; LS, 20 June 1917, Cols. 545–7. LS, 26 June 1917, Col. 637; Note by A. H. Stanley (Pres. of BofT) 26 May 1917, TNA, BT/ 13/75; BofT Journal, 31 May 1917 as quoted in Bird, The Supply, p. 51. Bird and Davies, The Canadian Forestry Corps, pp. 12, 23. Minutes of War Cabinet Meeting 77, 21 February 1917, p. 2, TNA, CAB/23/1/77. LS, 26 June 1917, Cols. 635–36; Letter Bampfylde-Fuller to Robinson (BofAF), 12 May 1917, TNA, BT/71/4/78217; Bird, The Supply, p. 204.
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reasoning is studied, the alterations provide evidence of sensible streamlining in roles and administration. The first indication of centralisation was the appointment of a government timber buyer, Messrs Montague L. Meyer. The firm was employed, without a call for tenders, in October 1914 to buy supplies for all government departments from anywhere they could. During the war they made £50 million worth of purchases.43 The HGTC was not established until November/ December 1915 to encourage and facilitate production as pressure on imports grew.44 Lord Selborne, BofAF president, recognised the need. It functioned under the direction of his department, although it was closely linked with the BsofA in Scotland and Ireland, and it created numerous sub-committees to bring representatives together.45 The HGTC was dissolved on 31 March 1917, and its work passed to the DTS(WO), which the War Office had established early in 1916 to obtain supplies solely for military use.46 However, Germany’s adoption of unrestricted submarine warfare demanded greater control of private trade.47 The DTS(WO) therefore also absorbed the roles of the Office of Works and the government timber buyer, in order to secure supplies for the army.48 Most agreed that greater concentration of roles in a single authority was wise, and centralisation under the War Office seemed logical for numerous reasons, not
43 44
45
46
47
48
Ibid., pp. 7–10, 14. Ibid., p. 16; Stebbing, British Forestry, p. 203; CS, 6 December 1915, Col. 987 when a call for a committee of timber supplies was answered by Acland that he was hoping to make a statement to the house soon on the terms of reference and members of such a body. CS, 2 May 1917, Col. 339; Memorandum, October 1918, p. 2, TNA, BT/62/1/21; Notes of first meeting of Pit-wood Joint Sub-Committee (PJSC), 18 April 1916, TNA, BT/71/1/ 6564; WO, Statistics, p. 717; Stebbing, British Forestry, pp. xxv, 7, 21, 23–4; Bird and Davies, The Canadian Forestry Corps, pp. 6, 8, 18; Bird, The Supply, p. 2. ‘Administration Modifications in Commission’, letter Foreign Secretary to French Ambassador, 30 March 1917, TNA, FO/93/33/271; Bird, The Supply, p. 24. Ibid., pp. 32, 34–6, 40, 200; Interdepartmental Consultative Committee re: Establishing Timber Directorate, see Army Council Order of 4 February 1917, letter AC to CinC BEF, 10 February 1917, TNA, BT/71/4/78217; ‘Memo showing necessity for the control of timber at the beginning of the Submarine Campaign, and the extent to which restriction and controls have been removed since Armistice’, 22 March 1919, TNA, BT/71/3/55295; The Times ‘Controller’, 20 February 1917, p. 9; Bird and Davies, The Canadian Forestry Corps, p. 11. Ibid., pp. 3, 11; Bird, The Supply, pp. 35, 38, 40, 43n.(x), 48–51, 200; Letter AC to CinC BEF, 10 February 1917, and WO internal notification of the new body, such as WO Office Memorandum No. 913, 7 March 1917, TNA, BT/71/4/78217; The Times ‘Controller’; ‘Memo showing necessity for the control of timber at the beginning of submarine campaign . . .’, 22 March 1919, TNA, BT/71/3/55295; Minutes of War Cabinet Meeting 70, 16 February 1917, p. 3, TNA, CAB/23/1/70; letter Foreign Secretary to French Ambassador, 30 March 1917, TNA, FO/93/33/271.
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least because nearly 66 per cent of timber requirements in 1916 had been for military purposes. It was therefore what the War Cabinet wanted.49 Yet there were also valid reasons why the tasks of the DTS(WO) were so quickly taken on by the TSD(BofT), in May 1917.50 The army no longer had spare men for cutting, and therefore increased levels of British and foreign civilian labour were needed. More supplies for the western front were being sourced in France by the new Directorate of Forestry at GHQ, with the result that the War Office felt less inclined to control home-front production.51 Furthermore, additional restrictions, imposed by the BofT on imports to save shipping space, focused on timber because of its bulk.52 At the end of 1916, the BofT had started a survey of timber stocks held by private merchants, which led it to fear a timber ‘famine’ in the first few months of 1917.53 Timber prices had increased to three or four times their pre-war levels, negatively affecting the price of coal, and it was felt that they could best be controlled by the BofT.54 Both the War Office and the BofT agreed a transfer, which took place officially on 1 June 1917, so that the TSD(BofT) could control ‘all’ timber in the United Kingdom.55 As well as staff, the working structures of subsequent high-level bodies also bore striking resemblances despite changes in their names and managing 49
50
51
52
53 54 55
Minutes of War Cabinet Meeting 77, 21 February 1917, p. 2, TNA, CAB/23/1/77; Memo DTS(WO) to WO 26 February 1917, p. 11, TNA, BT/71/4/78217; Hansard Parliamentary Debates, Written Answers, House of Commons (WA(C)), 17 May 1917, Col. 1806; LS, 26 June 1917, Cols. 638–9; Bird, The Supply, p. 40; Maclean, Farming and Forestry, p. 96; Major-General H. L Pritchard (ed.), History of the Corps of Royal Engineers, Volume V: The Home Front, France, Flanders and Italy in the First World War (Chatham: The Institution of Royal Engineers, 1952), pp. 77–8, 562 LS, 20 June 1917, Lord Heneage, Cols. 545–47; LS, 26 June 1917, Earl Selbourne, Cols. 635–6; Bird, The Supply, p. 3. LS, 20 June 1917, Lord Heneage, Cols. 545–47; LS, 26 June 1917, Lord Curzon, Col. 639–40; Lord Curzon’s Committee on Timber Supplies (LCC), notes and minutes of all three meetings, TNA, CAB/21/80; Bird, The Supply, p. 48 The Times ‘Controller’, 20 February 1917, p. 9; WO Memo No. 913, 7 March 1917, p. 1, points 2 and 3, TNA, BT/71/4/78217; Minutes of War Cabinet Meeting 70, 16 February 1917, pp. 2, 3, TNA, CAB/23/1/70; Minutes of War Cabinet Meeting 74, 19 February 1917, pp. 1–2, TNA, CAB/23/1/74; Minutes of War Cabinet Meeting 77, 21 February 1917, pp. 1–2 and Appendix 1 pp. 6–7, TNA, CAB/23/1/77; see also numerous subsequent WC, LCC, and other meetings over the coming months, including TNA, CAB/21/ 80, Lord Curzon’s Committee on Timber Supplies, especially Report of First Meeting, 8 May 1917; Bird, The Supply, pp. 48–51 Ibid., pp. 33–4. LS, 26 June 1917, Viscount Haldane, Col. 637. Ibid., Cols. 636–37; Bird, The Supply, pp. 3, 4, 48–51 (copied from BofT Journal notice of 31 May 1917); Memo regarding the control of timber during the war, 24 March 1919, TNA, BT/71/3/55295; Minutes of War Cabinet 142, 22 May 1917, TNA, CAB/23/2/60; Memos, correspondence and reports from the Department of the Controller of Trading Accounts of the BofT, TNA, BT/62/1/21.
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organisations, helping to ensure greater efficiency. Higher organisations were often broken into teams or sections responsible for specific facets of the effort, reporting back to executive committees or controllers to make decisions if necessary. Common roles for such teams included collating stock levels, establishing and prioritising demands, purchasing home-grown or imported timber, buying standing timber and then arranging its conversion and transport to end-users, and administering control schemes. Organising their own works primarily included obtaining any skilled timbermen to lead operation sites and procuring as much labour as was available, such as German prisoners of war. Government bodies had their own field teams but also used private contractors and CFC units. They were responsible for securing and maintaining the necessary machinery, including sawmills, for anyone working under or for them. Similar team or department structures to manage these elements are evident in the HGTC, DTS(WO), Department of Timber Supplies at the Ministry of Munitions (DTS(MofM)), and TSD(BofT), although slight alterations in roles or working practices had to be made due to the changing context of the war.56 Fieldwork structures generally entailed dividing the country into administrative areas, each with officers responsible for purchasing timbered land and then arranging its working and the transport of the products. These areas could be altered, often becoming smaller as the war progressed. Operations in each grew in number and scale, and new divisional officers were found and employed.57 Communication between different teams, or between government bodies and forestry units, would normally be maintained by liaison officers stationed in operational areas but in contact with the management.58 As well as stability in high-level staff, and similarities in organisational structures, continuity can also be seen in personnel at these lower-level roles. Pre-war bodies or companies fed staff, including inspectors and administrative staff, into the government agencies. For instance, those BsofA forestry advisory officers, who had also been working with educational centres before the war, and who had not enlisted, were placed at the disposal of the HGTC and its successors.59 The HGTC began as a ‘few’ officers lent by the BsofA, but when it handed on responsibility it had 178 forestry officers and 56
57 58 59
LS, 26 June 1917, Cols. 637–8; Bird, The Supply, pp. 17, 24, 38, 51, 200–7; Letter AC to CinC BEF, 10 February 1917, Memo DTS(WO) to Sec WO, 26 February 1917, p. 11 and WO Memo No. 913, 7 March 1917, TNA, BT/71/4/78217; letter Foreign Secretary to French Ambassador, 30 March 1917, TNA, FO/93/33/271; DTS(MofM) Organisation and Functions as of 11 November 1918, TNA, MUN/5/31/263/23/35; Chart of Organisation of the DTS(MofM), c. August 1918 to January 1919, TNA, MUN/5/44/ 263/92/1. Bird, The Supply, p.18. Bird and Davies, The Canadian Forestry Corps, pp. 12, 23. Ibid., pp. 6, 7; Cd.8881, p. 13; Bird, The Supply, p. 18.
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administrative staff, nearly all of whom were taken on by the DTS(WO).60 Concerns over loss of expertise were further quashed as each of the heads of the new War Office Timber Sections had relevant experience for the work they were required to do, not only as professional foresters and timber trade employees but also as engineers and transport experts from civilian and military backgrounds. It was a similar story of appropriate staff moving with their roles as responsibility passed to the BofT, and within the DTS(MofM).61 Good examples of continuity can be found in the cases of Ireland and Scotland, which operated under separate BsofA. In Ireland, the DTS(WO) made no changes to the structure or staff. All work was left to civilian contractors and managed by A. C. Forbes. He had worked for the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, which loaned him to the HGTC; he was then taken on by the DTS(WO), and stayed in the role for the TSD(BofT) as the Assistant Controller Timber Supplies (Ireland).62 Although Forbes maintained his roles, nationalists used the amount of Irish timber being felled, and what they felt was a lack of Irish company representation on the relevant committees, to call for separate controls.63 In Scotland, managing bodies also retained the services of the officer in charge under the HGTC and utilised men such as Sir Stirling Maxwell, who later became Assistant Director of Forestry under Lord Lovat, to oversee the effort.64 Furthermore, all managing officers in Scotland were assisted by Dr Albert Borthwick, the pre-war forestry advisor to the Board of Agriculture for Scotland.65 These organisations also often relied on close interaction with several executive committees directing them, and with numerous advisory committees. Even though such committees were established, ended, reorganised or renamed as needs arose, cross-population and continuity were also visible in their memberships. Along with widespread circulation of minutes, this aided knowledge exchange and quickly identified duplication of work.66 The BofT 60 61
62 63
64 65 66
Ibid., p. 24; CS, 2 May 1917, Col. 339. The Times ‘Controller’, 20 February 1917, p. 9; LS, 1 May 1917, Cols. 996–8; LS, 20 June 1917, Cols. 546–7; LS, 26 June 1917, Cols. 635–36; Bird, The Supply, pp. 20, 201, 202, 205–7; James K. McDonell and Robert Bennett Campbell, Lords of the North (Ontario: General Store Publishing House, 1997), p. 147; DTS(MofM) Organisation and Functions as of 11 November 1918, TNA, MUN/5/31/263/23/35; Chart of Organisation of the DTS (MofM), circa August 1918 to January 1919, TNA, MUN/5/44/263/92/1. CS, 30 March 1917, Col. 765; Bird, The Supply, p. 203. WAC, 22 February 1917, Col. 1486; CS, 30 March 1917, Col. 765; WAC, 17 May 1917, Col. 1805; CS, 23 May 1917, Cols. 2280–1; CS, 23 July 1917, Col. 856. Bird, The Supply, p. 202. CS, 25 October 1917, Cols. 1034–5. Numerous letters sent by DTS(WO) in March and April 1917 to other government departments requesting a representative to serve on the Consultative Committee, and their replies, TNA, BT/71/4/78217; Appointment and General Correspondence of the
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recognised by mid-August 1914 that several of their employees were duplicating enquiries with BsofA departments. The subsequent agreement, including that the BofT would be responsible for pit-wood requirements and imports, whilst the BofAF would restrict itself to the possibilities of obtaining homegrown timber, meant these organisations ‘narrowly escaped’ duplicating work.67 Close liaison was to be maintained between the two, and employees of the BofT quickly established contacts with numerous organisations and individuals regarding availability, supply, prices, and preferred lines of communication. This trend continued into later government bodies.68 Interested landowners formed the Timber Advisory Committee, which was also passed on as government bodies changed, although membership or roles were occasionally amended slightly.69 High-level government committees responsible for directing these organisations included Lord Curzon’s Committee on Timber Supplies, deciding on suitable policies and the bodies best positioned to manage these.70 Although it only met three times, Curzon’s committee made some important decisions in the management of the timber effort, bringing together important figures including Bampfylde-Fuller, the DTS(WO), Lord Lovat, by then director of forestry at GHQ, the president and permanent secretary of the BofT, and the controller of mines.71
67
68
69
70
71
Timber Allocation Sub-Committee, for instance see letters from WPC, 22/23 November 1917, CTS(BofT) to Secretary WTC, 28 November 1917, WPC to Chair of TASC 23 September 1918, Colonel Byrne to Chairmen of all WPC Sub-Committees, 3 June 1918 and Secretary of the WPC to Chair TASC on 5 and 29 July 1918, TNA, CAB/40/23; Bird, The Supply, p. 35. Rey to Smith on pit-wood situation, 19 August 1914, TNA, LAB2/1488/LE37858/46/ 1914. Ibid.; notes and correspondence regarding supplies of pit-wood, August to October 1914, TNA, LAB2/1488/LE37858/18 (also 46,110,111 and 193)/1914; Cd.7488 (1914), p.5; Board of Trade, Cd. 7728: Reports to the Board of Trade upon the Supply of Imported Pit-Timber with Special Reference to the Resources of Newfoundland and the Maritime Provinces of Eastern Canada (1914), also see Cd.7729 for equivalent report on HGT capabilities for pit-timber; Letters and Memoranda, DTS(WO) to other governments departments requesting representatives and replies, March to May 1917, TNA, BT/71/4/ 78217; Bird, The Supply, pp. 67, 204, 207. LS, 1 May 1917, Earl Selbourne then Lord Derby, Cols. 996–8; LS, 26 June 1917, Cols. 635–6, 638; ‘Memo showing necessity for the control of timber at the beginning of the Submarine Campaign . . .’, 22 March 1919, TNA, BT/71/3/55295. Lord Curzon’s Committee on Timber Supplies, see minutes of all three meetings, TNA, CAB/21/80; LS 26 June 1917, Cols. 638–40; WAC, 17 May 1917, Col. 1806. David Gilmour, ‘Curzon, George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online edition, January 2011, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32680 (accessed 3/11/2014); LCC on Timber Supplies, Report of First Meeting, 8 May 1917, TNA, CAB/21/80; WAC, 17 May 1917, Col. 1806; LS, 26 June 1917, Cols. 638–9.
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There were also several inter-Allied liaison, advisory and overseeing committees, mainly based in London. In February 1916, a diplomatic agreement was reached between France, Belgium and Britain to establish the Commission Internationale des Achats de Bois, for purchasing wood.72 The War Timber Commission was formed by the British and French governments in November 1916, as a general overseer for the situation.73 Both, however, liaised directly with the forestry bodies in the United Kingdom over purchases, operations and policies.74 The Timber Allocation Sub-Committee of the War Priorities Committee provided an essential prioritising conduit between the TSD(BofT), the main utilizers, and the War Priorities Committee itself. In a post-armistice report on its work, Ball stressed that the major achievement of such bodies had been to provide close liaison between the priority users and the administrative organisations then responsible for purchasing, production and distribution.75 Timber trade associations were also, eventually, included in liaison networks. These trades were initially horrified by the government control orders which sprang forth in greater numbers from early 1917. They had not been consulted beforehand and they felt they were too numerous, and that some were confusing or ineffective.76 Government bodies occasionally had to issue explanatory circulars soon after publication to clarify exact details and meanings.77 As in other industries, such concerns led government departments increasingly to collaborate with the Timber Trades Federation when extending their administrative boundaries.78 For instance, the HGTC eventually agreed to utilise the Federation for several areas of expertise that it lacked, including setting fair maximum prices and the exact wording of control orders.79 Merchants’ advisory committees were established for imports, for
72
73
74 75
76
77
78
79
For original of agreement in French, TNA, WORK/6/745; also see Bird, The Supply, pp. 2, 26. For working copies and drafts in British and French, TNA, BT/71/6456; For signed agreement in French; TNA, FO/93/33/266. Bird and Davies, The Canadian Forestry Corps, pp. 10–11; Bird, The Supply, pp. 34–5. Report on the work of the TASC by Ball, sent to Secretary WPC, 21 November 1918, and numerous earlier and later correspondence regarding establishment and work of the TASC, TNA, CAB/40/23; Minutes and meetings of the Timber Allocation SubCommittee, passim, TNA, CAB/40/24; Department of Munitions Requirements and Statistics, letter 22 October 1918, and Memorandum on ‘Importation of Shooks’, 20 and 27 July 1917, TNA, MUN/4/3417. Latham, Timber Trade Federation, pp. 65–9, inc. Resolution No. 4 of TTF meeting of 17 October 1917, quoted on p. 69; TTF Report as quoted in Bird, The Supply, pp. 4–5. Ibid., pp. 6–7, 41–2, Appendix 1; Latham, Timber Trade Federation, p. 69; The Timber Control Order (1918), TNA, CAB/40/23. Turner, British Politics, pp. 12, 354; Resolution No. 1 of TTF meeting of 17 October 1917, as quoted in Latham, Timber Trade Federation, p. 68. Latham, Timber Trade Federation, pp. 65–7.
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home-grown timber, and for English and Scottish branches of the trade. Members and non-members of the Federation were commonly included in these bodies, as well as representatives of several important Chambers of Commerce, including London, Manchester, Glasgow, and Belfast.80 In October 1917, the Controller of Timber Supplies (BofT) agreed that a further committee with a representative from each trade-branch and region of the United Kingdom be nominated to advise him.81 Although the records can suggest that the details of orders and notices were largely between government departments, the trade was increasingly consulted.82
Measures Taken These higher bodies and their staffs had to establish firmer controls over the effort. Common measures included establishing requirements as early and accurately as possible, arguing for as much shipping as possible to be allocated for timber (alongside occasional bans on importing specific woods), increasing home production, controlling use, and encouraging economy. These objectives were mainly achieved through licence and permit schemes for imports, sales and purchases, and by government bodies buying and converting standing timber in Britain. Forestry had to be subjected to close government intervention, just as many other industries were.83 To enable tighter control of forestry the governmental agencies had to be legally empowered. Although powers allocated to forestry bodies were necessarily different in some of their wording, they were similar to those used to increase food production.84 The first powers specifically regarding timber were given on 12 April 1916. The Army Council was empowered to take land, trees, buildings, plant, water supply or ‘motive power’, for the purpose of ‘felling and converting timber’, including housing workers.85 Legally this had to be done through one of the ‘War Departments’, but it was put in place so that the HGTC had powers to encourage production.86 Controls implemented by the DTS(WO) and then the TSD(BofT) were also introduced under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), with much legal wrangling and rewording as responsibilities were transferred.87 80
81 82 83 84 85 86 87
Ibid., pp. 68–9; LS, 26 June 1917, Cols. 638; ‘Memo showing necessity . . .’, 22 March 1919, TNA, BT/71/3/55295; The Times ‘Controller’, 20 February 1917, p. 9; Letter Bampfylde-Fuller to Robinson (BofAF), 12 May 1917, TNA, BT/71/4/78217; Bird, The Supply, pp. 203, 204. Latham, Timber Trade Federation, pp. 69–71. ‘The Timber Order 1918’, various correspondence, TNA, BT/71/2/24847. Turner, British Politics, pp. 1, 2, 109; Swenarton, Homes, p. 189. As can be seen in Dewey, British Agriculture, pp. 92, 97–8. ‘Order No. 231’ of 12 April 1916. No.20 as listed in Bird, The Supply, Appendix 1, p. 1. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 51–2; correspondence between WO and BofT, June to August 1917, for instance memorandum BofT Solicitors Office to Sir Herbert Llewellyn Smith Permanent Secretary
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Figure 8.1 Miss S. I. Broderick, daughter of Dr Broderick of Taunton, and Jenner Clarke, both of the Women’s Land Army, sawing a log. Sport and General Press Agency. Imperial War Museum Q54598.
The administrative bodies were able to resort to several key devices for the ‘national good’ or ‘defence of the realm’ from April 1916. In April 1918, contraventions of forestry related BofT orders became summary offences.88 Government agencies could call for census returns of stocks, machinery, employees and any other ‘particulars’, from forestry or timber companies.89 As well as the right to enter and requisition land, stocks, machinery and buildings, they could regulate or prohibit the felling, converting, storing, transporting, removal or distribution of timber and trees [see Fig. 8.1]. They could also regulate or prohibit purchases, sales, or deliveries of timber and any
88
89
to the BofT, 2 June 1917, and letter Guedalla, WO Contracts Solicitor, to Ball, CTS(BofT), 7 June 1917, TNA, BT/13/75. Ibid., see especially BofT Solicitors Office to Sir Herbert Llewellyn Smith, Permanent Secretary to the BofT, 2 June 1917, C. W. Bird to CTS(BofT) 23 June and reply to Sir W. F. Marwood 25 June, Guedalla to Ball, 30 July 1917, and copy of Order in Council of 22 August 1917, pp. 1–3; Sir Charles Cook (ed.), Defence of the Realm Manual (6th Edition) Revised to August 31, 1918 (London: HMSO, 1918), pp. 46–7, 54 [notes of ‘revokes’ going past at least 25 November 1918]; Bird, The Supply, pp. 51–2 and Appendix 1, pp. 1–6. Letter Guedalla to Ball, 7 June 1917 and letter WO to BofT outlining DORA regulations that WO wanted BofT to administer (2b, 2c, 2e, 15c), 12 June 1917, TNA, BT/13/75.
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manufacturing processes using wood. Furthermore, they could legally fix prices and force people to sell at those prices. Finally, they were able to enforce prioritization schemes on those who were supplied with the available wood.90 In terms of numbers released, the range of forestry products covered, and the level of detail provided, controls increased from January 1917 onwards. They culminated in the Timber Control Order 1918, which replaced most of the preceding orders and notices. Written by the TSD(BofT) in conjunction with a trade committee, it defined ‘types’ of timber, instituted a new permit system, focused sales and purchases, set maximum prices, and essentially introduced a distribution scheme for imported softwoods that amounted to rationing.91 At its mid-October 1918 meeting the Timber Trades Federation felt that the government’s interventions were leading to ‘serious alarm’ and ‘grave apprehension’ at existing and proposed measures. Phrases such as ‘complete bondage’ were used, and the Federation’s hardwood branch felt itself ‘almost completely controlled by indirect methods’.92 Somewhat hypocritically, however, the Federation stated, following the armistice, that overall the TSD(BofT)had carried out controls in a ‘highly intelligent, fair and efficient manner’.93 Initially, in 1914, measures were taken to establish existing stocks and then the quantities required, the latter proving harder to anticipate accurately far enough in advance.94 The attempts in August 1914 to persuade stockholders to complete returns were centred on the BofT and the supply of pit-wood.95 The establishment of more centralised bodies enabled better-maintained records of all stock types.96 For instance in late November 1916 the newly established War Timber Commission decided that the BofT should carry out a further
90
91
92
93 94
95
96
Army Council Minute/Order, 25 April 1917, letter CTS(BofT) to Sir H. Llewellyn Smith (BofT), 29 May 1917, point 1, letter Guedalla to Ball, 7 June 1917, letter WO to BofT outlining DORA regulations that WO wanted BofT to administer, 12 June 1917, and Memorandum Guedalla to Ball, 30 July 1917, TNA, BT/13/75; Dewey, British Agriculture, pp. 94–5. TCO (1918), copy in TNA, CAB/40/23; Bird, The Supply, Appendix 1, pp. 6–7; ‘Memo showing the necessity . . .’, 1 January 1919, BT, 71/3/55295. Latham, Timber Trade Federation pp. 68–71, including ‘Resolution No. 2’ of the TTF meeting of 17 October 1917, as quoted on p. 68; Report of the Committee on Industrial and Commercial Efficiency, Federation of Business Industries circular, E.E.F microfilm papers, F137/148, as quoted and referenced in Turner, British Politics, p. 379. TTF Report as quoted in Bird, The Supply, pp. 4–5. Bird, The Supply, pp. 27, 32–4; Minutes of War Cabinet 116, 9 April 1917, TNA, CAB/23/ 3/34. Ibid., p. 14; note by C. F. Rey (Secretary at BofT) to Sir H. L. Smith (Permanent Secretary of BofT) on current pit-wood situation, 19 August 1914, and notes on obtaining pit-props c. late August 1914, TNA, LAB2/1488/LE37858/46/1914. Notes of first meeting of Pit-wood Joint Sub-Committee (PJSC), 18 April 1916, TNA, BT/ 71/1/6564; Bird, The Supply, pp. 2, 23.
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census of all stocks held by private merchants and consumers in Britain. This showed a potential supply of approximately 1.8 million tons, although this was not enough given import reductions in early 1917 and increases in timber use.97 In April 1917 an order required ‘all persons engaged in the purchase or sale of timber to furnish such particulars . . . as may be required’.98 From then onwards the certification needed for sales or purchasing meant that any amounts merchants could obtain had to be noted on application-to-sell-forms and post-sale notices.99 Later orders also required the submission of particulars, including the stocks, machinery and manpower available to the authorities, and the accuracy of such returns was liable to inspection.100 Collation of requirements was essential in order to prioritise supplies of resources of all sorts during the war.101 There is no evidence that collating wood requirements on a national level occurred early in the war, as competition was intense and departments or companies concentrated on collating their own needs.102 It was not until the DTS(WO) was established that attempts were made to collate estimates from all priority users, and relate these to supplies. In summer 1917, however, individual requirements and requests were still being sent by separate departments of the Ministry of Munitions to the War Cabinet. These were refused consideration and the ministry asked to collate estimates for all their operations and forward them to the Controller of Timber Supplies (BofT). Given all necessary information, he would send his allocation proposals to the War Cabinet for final agreement.103 Throughout the war, bodies had difficulties in providing satisfactory estimates of future needs. Important users, such as the War Office, the Ministry of Munitions and the Admiralty, often relied on sub-contractors who would send incomplete returns of requirements. All organisations were also likely to overestimate amounts needed in six months’ time in order to protect 97 98
99
100
101
102 103
Ibid., pp. 33–4, 38–9. Ibid., Appendix 1, p. 2; copy of AC Order from London Gazette, 3 April 1917 (n.p.), in TNA, BT/13/75. See example in The London Gazette, 16 April 1917, pp. 3569–70; Latham, Timber Trade Federation, p. 67; Bird, The Supply, Appendix 1, p. 2. Ibid. Appendix 1, p. 4; letter Guedalla to Ball, 7 June 1917, letter WO to BofT 12 June 1917, TNA, BT/13/75; The TCO (1918), TNA, CAB/40/23; The London Gazette, 16 April 1917, pp. 3569–70; Latham, Timber Trade Federation, p. 67. Grieves, Politics of Manpower, pp. 155–7; Appointment of the Timber Allocation SubCommittee and General Correspondence, for instance letter Secretary WPC to CTS (BofT) and Chairman TASC on 23 November 1917, TNA, CAB/40/23; minutes and correspondence of the meetings of Information Sub-Committee, passim, for instance letter 15 December 1917 from Secretary WPC to Secretary Information Sub-Committee, TNA, CAB/40/4. Maclean, Farming and Forestry, p. 96, and borne out by this research. Memo, ‘Importation of Shooks’, 27 July 1917, TNA, MUN/4/3417.
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themselves from the unknown features of future military operations or from supply emergencies.104 Departments were slow to prepare returns on their existing stores and future needs, if they were forthcoming at all, until well into 1918.105 Overall, the chances of accurately estimating future timber requirements were very slim, yet attempts to do so were made in order to help those managing supplies. Purchasing timber stocks in Britain and those that could be shipped to Britain or France remained important, as seen with the employment of the government timber buyer in October 1914, and such roles were passed to subsequent government bodies.106 To ensure foreign supplies could be obtained required close liaison with British representatives and foreign public or private staff in Canada, Newfoundland and the USA.107 The Standing Timber Order (1917) meant permits were needed to purchase British land containing most types of trees. To be approved, buyers had to show that they were able to start converting the resources quickly, and that the resultant timber was for specific purposes.108 Requisitioning as a means to obtain resources was more associated with occupying forces, as Germany did behind the eastern front in order to obtain timber.109 In the UK it was felt that the power to requisition was needed in order to encourage producers of home-grown timber, as it was in agriculture.110 In early February 1917 the DTS(WO) issued an order, through the Army Council, stating that it intended to take possession of all stocks of sawn softwood in the United Kingdom in order to safeguard the resource for military purposes and to prevent further price inflations.111 From then on the government essentially ‘requisitioned’ important stocks and supplies through permit schemes, directing supplies to contractors or to its own
104
105
106 107 108 109
110
111
Minutes of LCC meeting, 10 May 1917, pp. 2, 3, 7, pt. 10 ‘Admiralty Requirements’, note and estimates from Bampfylde Fuller, DTS(WO), to Secretary LCC, 15 May 1917, letter DofF to Lord Curzon, 15 May 1917, TNA, CAB/21/80; Minutes of Meetings of Information Sub-Committee, TNA, CAB/40/4. For instance, see notes of a meeting 19 January 1918 between Lieutenant J. X. Murphy of the WPC and Mr E. Batch Secretary of the TASC, and letter Chairman of TASC (Ball) to Secretary WPC, 15 March 1918, Reporting on timber situation, TNA, CAB/40/23. Also see Bird and Davies, The Canadian Forestry Corps, p. 6; Bird, The Supply, p. 16. Ibid., p. 207. Ibid., Appendix 1, pp. 4, 6–7; The TCO (1918), TNA, CAB/40/23. Vejas G Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I, Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 7, 61, 63, 64–8 (Quotes p. 66), 71, 72, 73, 95–6 (89–92 on the ‘Movement Policy’). Letter, WO to BofT, 12 June 1917, TNA, BT/13/75; Bird, The Supply, Appendix 1, pp. 1, 4; Dewey, British Agriculture, pp. 95, 96, 100, 101. For copies of notice, see TNA, BT/71/4/78217 or BT/13/75; Bird, The Supply, pp. 41–2.
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agencies working for the national good.112 For instance, any timber bought in Russia before 1 January 1917, that had not yet been shipped to Britain, was only to be sold to the DTS(WO) or their representatives at set prices.113 However, orders regarding specific types or stocks of wood could encourage merchants not to sell, and, rather than forced requisitioning, controls were generally reworded, updated or re-issued in conjunction with the trade, especially as central stocks became more sufficient.114 Compensation for requisitioned timber was provided under DORA.115 First, if a price had been set by a previous order, the compensation would be determined on that basis. If, however, a price had not been set, a grower or producer would be compensated based on the cost of production plus an amount equivalent to a ‘reasonable’ pre-war profit. If stock was requisitioned from a stockholder or ‘middle-man’, compensation was based on their actual costs plus a reasonable pre-war profit amount.116 However, calculating production costs was difficult under wartime conditions, and if the seller felt insufficiently reimbursed he could approach the Defence of the Realm Losses Commission.117 The poor overall state of the United Kingdom’s woodlands in 1914 is unquestionable; however – though they were relatively small and badly managed for timber extraction – forested areas did exist.118 Some principal species had been established in plantations, producing different timber types and sizes for local use, or in the ‘miniature woodlands’ of hedgerows sheltering agricultural land.119 In early 1917, at the height of the shipping crisis, the Curzon committee felt that there should still be enough timber in Britain and France to meet the needs of the war effort for several years, if adequate labour and haulage could be found.120 There were, therefore, several measures the government could adopt to encourage official home-grown timber production. 112
113
114
115 116 117
118
119 120
Ibid., Appendix 1, p. 3; AC Order of 7 May 1917, TNA, BT/13/75; Latham, Timber Trade Federation, p. 67. Note Guedalla to CTS(BofT), 25 June 1917, TNA, BT/13/75; Bird, The Supply, Appendix 1, p. 3. Notes on ‘Imported Softwood’, TNA, CAB/40/23; various correspondence, TNA, BT/13/ 75; Bird, The Supply, Appendix 1, pp. 4, 5; Latham, Timber Trade Federation, p. 67. Letter Guedalla to CTS(BofT), 7 June 1917, TNA, BT/13/75. Ibid. Memo Guedalla to Ball 30 July 1917, Correspondence WO to BofT June 1917, including letter WO Contracts Department to CTS(BofT) 7 June 1917, TNA, BT/13/75; Statutory Regulatory Order, No.886, 1(2), of 22 August 1917, TNA, BT/13/75; Bird, The Supply, Appendix 1, pp. 1, 4; Dewey, British Agriculture, pp. 94–6, 100. Cd.7488 (1914), pp. 7, 16–24 for an ‘Historical Note on the management of the Crown Forests and Woods’ which gives brief details of the history of the Crown Forests from William the Conqueror up to 1914. Miles, Forestry, pp. 33–4. LCC, see minutes of all three meetings, TNA, CAB/21/80; Bird, The Supply, pp. 38, 51.
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In August 1914, authorities looked to reduce transport rates and quickly forbade the unsanctioned cutting of timber by the numerous new military units being trained around Britain.121 However, the main methods were to use Office of Woods’ trees, to encourage and assist large landowners to exploit estates, and to purchase smaller parcels of private woodlands for conversion by any forestry expertise and labour they could obtain.122 Files show that at least 1,101 contracts to buy and convert standing timber were entered into solely by the HGTC between February and June 1916. They varied greatly in location and size of land, and the work was often completed by its successor departments.123 The ‘principal’ duties of TSD (BofT) field officers in May 1917 were to . . . make flying surveys to ascertain what forests are suitable for exploitation . . . value the timber and conduct preliminary negotiations with proprietors . . . draw up simple working plans in order to safeguard proprietors’ interests; and to see that these working plans are observed by the labour staff engaged on extraction.124
Labour for extraction was the biggest home-grown timber problem for the government agencies. They produced timber in the United Kingdom, but so did expert sawmills of private companies, and forestry units from Newfoundland, New England and especially Canada. However, as in agriculture and industry, parts of society not normally associated with forestry were mobilised. Men were brought back from retirement, and there were investigations, debates, and even ‘one or two’ trials, around using schoolboys in forestry in the summers of 1916 and 1917.125 Yet the most symbolic aspect of 121
122
123
124 125
Note by Rey, 24 August 1914, TNA, LAB2/1488/LE37858/18/1914; The TCO (1918), TNA, CAB/40/23; Bird, The Supply, Appendix 1, pp. 4, 6–7; John Swettenham, To Seize the Victory; the Canadian Corps in World War I (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1965), p. 52, example taken from Currie’s memoirs. MofM Requirements and Statistics, letter HGTC to OW 1 December 1916, TNA, MUN/ 4/3417; letter to CinC BEF from AC, 10 February 1917, TNA, BT/71/4/78217; The Times ‘Controller’, 20 February 1917, p. 9; LS, 1 May 1917, Lord Derby, Col. 998; ‘Memo showing necessity . . .’, 22 March 1919, TNA, BT/71/3/55295; Bird and Davies, The Canadian Forestry Corps p.11; Bird, The Supply, pp. 1, 40, 200, 205, 206, Appendix 1. HGTC contracts held in TNA, BT/71/5 to BT/71/20, contract numbers 1 to 1,101. Some numbers listed as missing but most there according to records; also see files for individual (generally larger) estates where wood felled such as TNA, BT/62/15/3 Claremont Estate requisitioned timber and TNA, BT/62/6/3, Thurstonfield Estate, commission to establish level of damages; Rodney Gunner, Canadian lumber Camp Eartham and Slindon: 1917 till 1919, www2.westsussex.gov.uk/learning-resources/LR/canadian_ lumber_camp_eartham_and_slindon10a2.pdf?docid=888517b6–083c-445e-a4b9-b98727 fae3e2&version=-1, pp. 1–12 (Last accessed 10/08/2016). LS, 1 May 1917, Col. 997. Various correspondence regarding organising squads of schoolboys to work in forestry, February 1917 to May 1918, see especially correspondence between National Service Department, Board of Agriculture, Board of Education, and regional H.M. School
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the home-front’s efforts to maintain timber supplies was the Women’s Forestry Service (WFS). Much has been written on the overall issue of obtaining more labour and directing it towards priority needs in the military, factories, fields or mines.126 Yet for most of the war, government lacked mechanisms to count employees, leaving certain trades to join either the forces or other areas of industry. This was certainly true for forestry, which was rarely considered a separate form of employment, and was more often included within agriculture. Therefore, exact figures for British foresters and woodsmen leaving, or returning to, their trades during the war have so far proven impossible to establish.127 Sections of the Timber Trades Federation spent a lot of time discussing which occupations in their fields should be reserved, and later protected from conscription. By the end of 1915, mill sawyers, timber carters, hauliers and wood fellers were considered reserved occupations and protected by Ministry of Munitions issued badges.128 Nonetheless, at least as late as February 1918 private firms were requesting that specific soldiers be released from duty for timber felling, although the government bodies were reluctant to release any from ‘heavier timber’ operations if they were already with a forestry unit.129 Debate continued between the Ministry of National Service and TSD
126
127
128
129
Inspectors, TNA, ED/12/26, it appears schoolboys sensibly used much more for safer agricultural work; National Service Department, National Service Department Agricultural Section, Arrangements for harvest and other work on the Land by Public and Secondary School Masters and Boys’ (London: The Avenue Press, 21 May 1917), forestry ‘squads’ only get one brief mention in this resultant document, and that to say some might be assembled if found to be needed, see point. 11. Grieves, Politics of Manpower, passim, for instance pp. 193–9; Noakes, Women in the British Army, pp. 61–2; Turner, British Politics, passim but for specific sections and examples, pp. 64–111 (esp. 80, 82, 84, 88), 107–8, 128–9, 165–70, 171, 174–6, 191–2, 262–4, 267, 344, 368–88, 369n120; Dewey, British Agriculture, pp. 2, 5, 17, 38–40, 48–51, 83–7, 99–103, 106, 107, 109; Swenarton, Homes, pp. 50, 74, 203n18; Latham, Timber Trade Federation, p. 64; TSD(BofT) purchasing timber in the UK, TNA, BT/13/84, for instance, E35241 & E32690 BofT men affected by Military Service Act 1918; Peter Dewey, War and Progress: Britain 1914–1945 (Harlow: Longman, 1997), pp. 40–1; Nicholson, Canadian Expeditionary Force, pp. 215–19, 221, 231, 342–6; Tim Cook, Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917–1918 (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2008), p. 369 The Board of Trade, Cd.9164 Report of the Board of Trade on the Increased Employment of Women during the War in the United Kingdom. With Statistics up to April 1918, [actually July in the case of Agriculture], passim, for instance pp. 3–4, 6, 12, 14; Dewey, British Agriculture, pp. 38, 40–3, 45–7, 51, 55, 57n15, 85, 86; LS, 23 May 1917, ‘Forestry labour in UK to save on timber import tonnage’, Col. 288. Latham, Timber Trade Federation, p. 64; discussions over specific role exemptions for forestry and the timber trades, TNA, NATS/1/1150 and 1151 and NATS/1/1323. Letter, Stirling Maxwell (ACTS) to Ball (CTS), 26 February 1918 and letter, Ball (CTS) to Sir Richard Redmayne, 28 February 1918 [Redmayne at this stage was chief technical advisor to the Controller of Coal Mines], TNA, BT/71/2/24668.
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(BofT) on the exact roles of employees in what were classed as ‘composite’ firms, i.e. those with several roles in the timber industry. Eventually, by July 1918, strict guidelines were set for TSD(BofT) Labour Inspectors to follow, detailing what roles constituted a valid exemption from national service.130 Unskilled labour for forestry operations was drawn from German prisoners of war, civilian labourers from Spain, Portugal, Scandinavia and the Baltic regions, and Chinese labourers employed by the allies.131 Whilst there were eleven Royal Engineers Forestry Companies working in France by the end of the war, the one specifically British forestry unit established, trained and set to work in the United Kingdom was the WFS.132 Surprisingly little has been written about it, despite the great deal of research on the changing roles and perceptions of women in the workplace.133 This is especially surprising given the traditional manly image of ‘lumberjacks’, which was so far removed from traditional spheres of female employment [see Fig. 8.2]. Early committees on women’s employment in agriculture investigated light-weight roles, such as vegetable preserving or jam-making, with no mention of forestry.134 However, by March 1915 women had started work in Scotland, cutting and preparing 130
131
132
133
134
Letter E. H. Blakesley, TSD(BofT) to Major Peterson, Labour Supply Department (MofM), 19 July 1918. See note that TSD Labour Inspectors would follow the lines of demarcation for employee roles in composite firms as set out in STA.7D para. 7, TNA, BT/71/4/72058. For instance, for Portuguese, Danish, Finns (essentially surplus Scandinavian seaman), see TNA, BT/71/2/13716, BT/71/3/32197, BT/71/3/34124, BT71/4/72122 and NATS1/ 412 and 413, for recruitment, postings, terms, conditions, and medical arrangements whilst in UK; Minutes of War Cabinet Meeting 77, 21 February 1917, p. 2, request for Dominion and Finnish labour for wood cutting, TNA, CAB/23/1/77; German POWs being used for timber-felling, TNA, CAB/37/144/39 and CAB/41/37/11; Chinese labour for forestry in UK, TNA, LAB/2/892/ED17699/13/1918; Looking to get labour from Malta, Cyprus, Australia, Newfoundland and NZ, TNA, CO/323/757/560–565; Potential recruitment of lumbermen in India, CAB/24/16/10 and CAB/24/13/29, although no evidence this actioned for use in UK or French forests, probably due to establishment of CFC. Pritchard, Royal Engineers, pp. 38–42; Addison, Work of the Royal Engineers, pp. 23–4, 61–71 (especially 62, 64–5, 68–9); Ministry of Reconstruction, Cd.9228: Final Report of the Civil War Workers’, Committee Substitute Labour (London: HMSO, 1918), pp. 3–4; Cd.9164, pp. 14, 16; Report, Lovat to Curzon, 15 May 1917, p. 2, TNA, CAB/21/80; Dewey, British Agriculture, pp. 43, 45, 46, 51, 55, 75–6, 109; Noakes, Women in the British Army, passim, e.g., pp. 1–19, 45–6, 51, 53, 63, 68, 73, 75–7, 79–81; Emma Vickers, ‘The Forgotten Army of the Woods: The Women’s Timber Corps during the Second World War’, Agricultural History Review, 59 (2011), pp. 101–3, Vickers gets most of her First World War information from TNA, ‘F18/230, C. W. Bird, ‘Supply and Control’ which seems to be a copy of the document I have used under TNA, BT/71/21, Bird, Supply, circa. 1922; Moira Petty, ‘They Came, They Sawed, They Played Conkers: Women’s Timber Corps 1942–1946’, Saga Magazine (November 2012), pp. 40–5. Central Committee on Women’s Employment, Cd 7848, Interim Report, 1915, pp. 9–42.
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Figure 8.2 Women’s Forestry Service measuring and cutting props for dugouts. Photo by Horace Nicholls for the Ministry of Information. Imperial War Museum Q 30698.
large quantities of hazel rods for the navy. By mid-1915 the Arboricultural Society and the advisory committee of the National Relief Fund in Scotland were also investigating whether women could be used in other forestry work.135 At the beginning of 1916, however, many voluntary organisations were still trying to break down anti-feminine bias in order to broaden recruitment.136 In March 1916, when male conscription was being introduced, debates over the use of women were changing, and the BoAF and BofT pushed for the WFS to be established as a sub-section of the Women’s National Land Army (WNLA).137
135
136 137
Scottish Advisory Committee on the Administration of the National Relief Fund in Scotland, Cd.8129, Report up to 31 March 1915, pp. 9, 10. Dewey, British Agriculture, pp. 52, 55; Cd.9164, passim. Noakes, Women in the British Army, pp. 1–19, 61–4, for instance Noakes uses TNA, WO/162/30, Sir George Newman: Report of the Women’s Services Committee, 14 December 1916, p. 6; Report Lovat to Curzon, 15 May 1917, p. 2, TNA, CAB/21/ 80; CS, 13 August 1917, Cols. 857–858, Addison, Work of the Royal Engineers, pp. 23–4; Vickers, ‘Forgotten Army’, p. 103.
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Agricultural work was often not popular amongst women, and so recruiting was slow.138 Although seemingly an appealing and healthy choice when compared with factories, work in the countryside was recognised as hard for anyone not accustomed to it, and other occupations in high demand provided better pay and conditions.139 Nonetheless, the WNLA grew from earlier voluntary organisations, and aimed to provide more systematic and rigorous recruitment, definite terms of employment and better training. It was hoped that it would constitute a permanent, skilled, and mobile force for both agriculture and forestry.140 Women recruited to it were sent to one of three services: to the War Office Forage Section; to farms where they were employed by individual farmers but remained under their BsofA control; or to the ‘Timber Cutting Section’ under the BofT.141 Recruitment into forestry and timber-cutting roles became more active in the summer of 1917, the BofT confirming both a high demand for, and scarcity of, timber workers in Britain. They ‘experimentally’ trained women in the relatively light roles of timber measurers, pit-wood or top cutters and clerks.142 The WFS was officially formed on 1 August 1917, under the Department for National Service, but consisted of just twenty-five measurers and twenty timber-cutters.143 Experienced men over military age were utilised alongside them for ‘work of a more arduous nature for which women are unfitted.’144 However, the push to recruit female forest workers was put forward as one of the reasons for a slight decrease in casual female workers in agriculture in summer 1917, suggesting the WFS was recruiting more. Yet this could also be due to better organised male ‘seasonal’ agricultural labourers, including soldiers still in the UK, prisoner of wars and schoolboys.145 Included in agricultural figures were somewhere between 16,000 and 28,000 members of the WNLA by November 1918. They had been recruited from various classes and occupations and were working mainly on farms, with only ‘a small cohort’ directed to the WFS.146 Those employed in forestry roles by
138 139 140 141
142 143 144 145 146
Noakes, Women in the British Army, pp. 52–9, 64, 172n20 and 21. Dewey, British Agriculture, pp. 50, 51, 55; Cd.9164, p. 13. Cd.9164, p. 13 Ibid., CS, 13 August 1917, Cols. 857–858; Report, Lovat to Curzon, 15 May 1917, p. 2, TNA, CAB/21/80; Addison, Work of the Royal Engineers, pp. 23–4; Vickers, ‘Forgotten Army’, p. 103; Cd.9164, p. 13; Ian Beckett, The First World War: The Essential Guide to Sources in the UK National Archives (London: Public Records Office, 2002), p. 207; ‘Women’s Forestry Corps’ www.1914–1918.net (accessed 17/2/ 2012), n.p. Ibid., all sources in above footnote. Vickers, ‘Forgotten Army’, p. 103. CS, 13 August 1917, Cols. 857–858. Cd.9164, p. 14. Vickers, ‘Forgotten Army’, p. 103; Cd.9228, p.5; Cd.9164, p. 13 ‘Women’s Forestry Corps’ www.1914–1918.net (accessed 17/2/2012), n.p.; Beckett, TNA, p. 207.
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the WFS were not always covered separately by BofT or BsofA reports, as they were not employed by farmers, which makes establishing their exact numbers difficult.147 Yet Emma Vickers states that approximately 3,000 women carried out some form of forestry work for the WFS, either officially or non-registered, from August 1917 to the end of the war.148 Increases can also be seen in the use of women in roles in private timber firms. Once again figures are blurred by the vague classifications of the ‘wood trades’, but many took on roles in sawmills, as well as in offices and on the work floors of furniture or ammunition box manufacturers.149 Females working in the ‘wood trades’ rose from 44,000 in July 1914 to 78,000 by April 1918.150 Just 1,500 were shown as employed in ‘sawmilling’ in 1914, most probably in clerical roles. Yet this figure grew to 8,000 by April 1918, of which some 5,100 had taken on roles previously held by males, suggesting women were likely to be carrying out manual roles in the sawmills of private firms.151 These 5,100 women ‘potentially’ converting wood to timber, can therefore be considered to have aided those approximately 3,000 working under the WFS, giving a large overall female contribution to the forestry effort.152
Conclusions Whilst, understandably, not everyone was happy with all aspects of the effects of the forestry effort on British woodlands, the lack of serious shortages, the generation of surplus supplies and then the creation of the Forestry Commission and regular Empire Forestry Conferences in the immediate post-war period, with similar aims to the wartime agencies, illustrate the good results which were achieved on the home front regarding production. Management bodies had to be gradually rationalised and centralised. The TSD(BofT) and Timber Allocation Sub-Committee were the pinnacles of home-front management organisations that evolved, were reorganised, updated and rationalized from earlier bodies as needs became apparent. Major changes reflected higher political machinations, especially in late 1916 and early 1917, but the use of civilian expertise proved effective and was maintained by successive management bodies as tighter controls were
147 148 149
150 151 152
Cd.9164, pp. 3–6, 14, for an example of complicated nature of calculating exact figures. Vickers, ‘Forgotten Army’, p. 103. Cd.9164, pp. 6, 8, 14, just for England, Wales and Scotland as Irish figures were not then available; Cd.9228, pp. 3–4; Dewey, British Agriculture, pp. 54, 55. Cd.9164, pp. 5–9, 12–14. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 4, 5, 8, 9, 13, 14; Vickers, ‘Forgotten Army’, pp. 103, 104; Bird and Davies, The Canadian Forestry Corps, pp. 12, 22, 23.
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introduced. Furthermore, additional sources of forestry labour were sought in what could be termed the ‘usual places’ for the home front between 1914 and 1918, especially in utilising and protecting men in important forestry roles and in mobilising women. Although the forestry effort can appear at times to fit the image of an overly complicated bureaucratic model, a great deal of work was undertaken to create and develop a system that was as efficient as possible. Given the particularly small and disjointed beginnings from which this system grew, Charles Wesley Bird of the Timber Supply Committee of the Board of Trade was right to conclude that ‘one of the most individualistic branches of trade and commerce was brought under close but not inharmonious control’.153
153
Bird, The Supply, p. 1.
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9 Fishing
Introduction This chapter, which draws on an extensive range of primary and secondary sources, first attempts to assess the scale and scope of the fisheries of the British Isles immediately prior to the outbreak of the war before discussing the various facets of the fish trade’s involvement and response to the conflict. Finally, it seeks to examine something of the longer-term impact that the First World War had on the nature, structure and subsequent direction of this somewhat unique activity
The Fishing Industries of the British Isles on the Eve of War In the immediate pre-war epoch, if taken as a whole, British Isles fishery operations were the largest and most technologically advanced in the world. Although a diverse range of catching operations were carried out from a vast array of large and small fishing stations scattered around the extensive coastlines of the British Isles, the steam trawling and herring trades dominated the national industry whether measured by levels of capital investment, by workforce size or by overall quantities and value of output. The trawling trade deployed substantial fleets of steel-hulled steam trawlers to take white fish – cod, haddock, plaice and other similar species – for the domestic market. Over the previous couple of decades, steam had largely displaced sail in this sector, a shift that was accompanied by considerable structural change. Steam trawling had become a highly capitalised affair by contemporary fish trade standards and was increasingly concentrated on a small number of the major fishing ports, the largest of which were Hull and Grimsby in England, Aberdeen in Scotland and Milford Haven in Wales. Dublin also possessed a small steam trawling fleet. Steam trawlers were typically owned and operated by joint stock limited liability companies who engaged an experienced workforce consisting of certificated skippers and mates, working trawlermen and engine room staff. Unlike the sailing smacks
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which they had largely, though not completely replaced, few steam trawlers were owned by working fishermen.1 Although Aberdeen was a very significant player, most, but not all, other major steam trawling centres were based south of the border. But in the case of the other leading sector, the herring trade, the opposite was more evidently the case. Herring fishing was a markedly mobile and seasonal affair, different ‘races’ of herring shoaled at different times off different coasts of the British Isles, and these shoals were exploited by fleets of drifters – vessels which voyaged around the coasts to work the various seasons and caught the fish by the gills in curtains of drift nets that hung almost vertically in the sea. During the previous few years there had been a considerable investment in steam drifters at the expense of older designs of sailing craft, but these new steamers were not on quite the same scale, power or cost as their trawling equivalents; most were still owned and operated by working fishermen. Whilst herring drifters were registered at many ports along the length and breadth of the nation’s coastline, and the East Anglian towns of Yarmouth and Lowestoft were major English players, Scottish ports were very much in the ascendancy, and Scottish processing firms also dominated the curing sector of this somewhat itinerant trade. The sector’s main products were barrels of salt cured herring destined for central and eastern European markets, and, to a marginally lesser extent, lightly smoked herring – principally kippers – intended for British breakfast tables.2 In contrast, Irish fisheries were, by all measures, of a somewhat smaller scale. Although a small number of steam trawlers and drifters had been purchased in the years immediately preceding the war, and most notably in the case of trawling centred on Dublin, the most important fisheries on the other side of the Irish Sea, in terms of both volume and value, were the various seasonal mackerel and herring fisheries exploited by a myriad of mainly smallsized vessels. Sails and oars were dominant, but the Irish Fishery Board had been a pioneer in the introduction of motor power in the fleets falling under its remit. Although the leading sectors of the British industry had grown rapidly over previous decades, the same could not be said of the Irish fisheries. Whilst the herring and mackerel fisheries were both notoriously variable in terms of annual yields, Irish fishery board reports for the period 1900–13 suggest no consistent pattern of either increase or decrease in landings. Domestic market demand had never fully recovered from the 1840s potato famine and the 1
2
Robb Robinson, Trawling: The Rise and Fall of the British Trawl Fishery (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1996), pp. 112–14. Robb Robinson, ‘War, Public Intervention and Structural Changes in the British Fishing Industry, 1914–1930’, in R. Ertesvag, D. J. Starkey and A. T. Austbe (eds.), Maritime Industries and Public Intervention, The Fourth North Sea History Conference Proceedings (Stavanger: Stavanger Maritime Museum, 1995), p. 124.
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subsequent long-term diminution of Ireland’s population. By 1913, a substantial portion of the Irish herring and mackerel catch was being cured and exported. Although the trawl and herring trades were the leading sectors of the British Isles fisheries, there were still an almost infinite variety of other fishermen around, mostly taking fish in inshore waters from small, often undecked, wooden sailing craft and working out of the villages and harbours found on every coast of the British Isles. For many, fishing was a more or less full-time pursuit, their income perhaps augmented by taking summer tourists on trips from English seaside resorts, but others, most notably those based in the Scottish highlands and islands, combined crofting and fishing.3 Many smaller fisheries, including the seasonal pilchard fisheries of southwest England, were notoriously undercapitalised and in long-term decline.4 Inshore fishing made an increasingly marginal contribution to both the national fish trade and the wider British coastal economy. But, although their landings were small when compared with the trawl and herring sectors, they still formed an important if diminishing component of the seafaring labour force. Most inshore fishermen possessed a comprehensive knowledge of their coastal waters, often inherited from many earlier generations of catchers as well as sometimes years of practical personal seafaring experience.5 The inshore and Irish fisheries notwithstanding, the fishing industry of the British Isles, if viewed holistically, boomed in the immediate pre-war years, and 1913 proved no exception. Most previous performance indicators in both the steam trawling and herring fisheries were surpassed. Total fish landings at British ports that year were well over the 16 million hundredweight (or 112 pounds) mark, attracting a revenue of more than £10 million;6 in contrast, the figures for Ireland were 676,392 hundredweight and just under £ 295,000 respectively.7 Overall numbers of fishermen had been falling for several decades as fishing became increasingly concentrated on the trawl and herring sectors. However, the official reports of the different fishery boards for 1913 show that there were still 45,382 full or part-time fishermen working from English and Welsh ports, 3
4
5
6 7
James Coull, The Sea Fisheries of Scotland: A Historical Geography (Edinburgh: John Donald 1996), pp. 187–8. Crofting is a form of subsistence farming practised in Scotland. Tony Pawlyn, ‘Fisheries of the West Country’, in D. J. Starkey, C. Reid and N. Ashcroft (eds.), England’s Sea Fisheries (London: Conway, 2000), pp. 197–8. Robb Robinson, ‘The North Sea Littoral and the British Isles’ in David J. Starkey and Ingo Heidbrink (eds.), A History of the North Atlantic Fisheries, Volume 2 from the 1850s to Early Twenty-First Century (Bremen: Hauschild, 2012), p. 328. Robinson, Trawling, p. 141. British Parliamentary Papers, Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, Report of the Sea and Inland Fisheries for Ireland for 1913 Cd. 7751 XXII.275, vol. 22, p. vii.
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38,262 engaged in similar ways in Scotland and at least 17,823 earned their livelihood from fishing for at least part of the year in Ireland. All told, when places such as the Channel Islands were taken into account, there were in the region 102,000 individuals who were described as fishermen in the British Isles when war broke out. They formed a substantial reservoir of maritime skills and went to sea in an armada of vessels, there being no less than 7,271 fishing vessels working English, Welsh and Scottish ports alone in 1913, not counting a substantial number which were not always recorded. The larger modern steam vessels, of course, formed a much smaller component of this figure, but the fleet sizes were still impressive. The combined steam trawling fleet of England, Scotland and Wales alone in 1913 was in the region of 1,657 vessels and the equivalent steam drifter fleets boasted a total of 1,555 vessels.8
The Outbreak of War Like every sector of the home front, the war posed serious challenges for the fishing industry. Fishermen possessed a unique range of maritime skills that were to prove invaluable to the Admiralty, and the most up-to-date steam vessels were to be taken up and armed for military service, whilst at the same time the industry was required to help maintain the beleaguered nation’s food supplies. Last but by no means least, most civilian fishing activity during the war took place on the high seas, in waters that soon proved to be on the front line of the maritime conflict. Yet the actual outbreak of hostilities took the fish trade by surprise. For much of 1914 there was every prospect that the prosperity of recent years would be maintained and indeed, when Britain declared war on 4 August, many sectors of the trade were still working at full stretch. The seas around British Isles were alive with fish and covered with the fishermen who made their living from them. The initial Admiralty response was to clear the North Sea of fishing vessels. These waters were expected to be on the front line of the maritime war, no place, the naval authorities reasoned, for civilian fishing vessels. It was also thought very difficult to protect and monitor unfettered fishing vessels working offshore. There was also a worry that they posed a security risk: that agents and saboteurs might use the cover of fishery operations to slip into the country. Back in 1911 the Admiralty had created the Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) (Trawler) Section to carry out minesweeping operations in any future war. By 8
British Parliamentary Paper (BPP), Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, Annual Report on Sea Fisheries for the Year 1913, 66–7 and 74, and Annual Report of the Fishery Board for Scotland for the Year 1913, pp. xiv–xv and 169. British Parliamentary Papers, Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, Report of the Sea and Inland Fisheries for Ireland for 1913 Cd. 7751 XXII.275, vol. 22, pp. i–vi.
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the summer of 1914 this consisted of around 142 steam trawlers and 1,278 fishermen who could be called up at short notice.9 Countless other fishermen, most notably in Scotland and southwest England, were members of the mainstream RNR. Almost as soon as the war was declared it was evident that the Admiralty would require the services of many more fishermen and fishing vessels, not only for traditional naval work and minesweeping duties but also for a whole range of war-time naval security commitments, most notably antisubmarine patrols. Indeed, those who already had RNR obligations were swiftly mobilised, and this caused immediate and major effects for both the industry and coastal communities: on the Isle of Lewis, for example, 2,000 fishermen, a substantial proportion of the male population, were already in the Royal Naval Reserve.10 Ireland soon lost half of its steam trawling fleet to the Royal Navy.11 By the end of October 1914, 246 steam trawlers had been hired for minesweeping duties, and a further 137 had been taken into service and armed for patrol work. Although it was originally envisaged that only trawlers would be required for military duties, large numbers of the less powerful drifters were also hired. Admiralty demand for fishermen and fishing vessels proved voracious for the remainder of the war. By the cessation of hostilities, 1,467 steam trawlers and 1,502 drifters were on Admiralty service, mainly as part of the Auxiliary Patrol. More than 39,000 fishermen had been taken into the RNR (Trawler Section) and thousands more saw service in other branches of the Royal Navy as well as an unknown number in the army. It is beyond the remit of this chapter to talk in detail about Royal Naval operations, but it is worth noting that, whilst a great deal of academic discussion surrounding the Great War at sea still tends to be focused on capital ships and Jutland, far less attention has been devoted to the crucial role played by the fishing industry and coastal communities, even though fishermen and armed fishing vessels on naval service were almost continually on the maritime front line. Throughout the war they formed the backbone of the Auxiliary Patrol and were engaged in the struggle against mines and U-boats in the North Sea, around the coasts of the British Isles and far beyond.12 9 10
11
12
NA, ADM 186/604, History of British Minesweeping, pp. 4–5. David T. Jones, ‘Scottish Fisheries during the War’, in D. T. Jones, J. F. Duncan, H. M. Conacher and W. R. Scott (eds.), Rural Scotland during the War (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), p. 32. All of Ireland’s steam drifter fleet were also to be taken into military service. British Parliamentary Papers, Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, Report of the Sea and Inland Fisheries for Ireland for 1918 Cmd. 601, XVI 901, 16, p. iv. For further discussion of the role of these vessels during the Great War, see Antony Firth, East Coast War Channels in the First and Second World Wars: A Report for English Heritage (Tisbury: Fjordr Marine and Historic Environment Consulting, 2014), https:// research.historicengland.org.uk/Report.aspx?i=15801 (accessed 3/10/2018) and Robb Robinson, ‘A Forgotten Navy: Fish, Fishermen, Fishing Vessels and the Great War at
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Figure 9.1 Discharging fish at Grimsby. Ministry of Information official photograph. Imperial War Museum Q 19025.
The immediate cessation of fishing along the British east coast had an early economic impact. The bulk of the nation’s fish were caught in the North Sea, and these supplies dried up. Not only were fishermen and fishing vessels laid up, but thousands of ancillary workers were thrown out of work along the east coast of Britain. Large numbers of women employed by Scottish herring curers found themselves unemployed during the very part of the year when their potential earning opportunities were usually at their greatest. In trawling ports such as Hull and Grimsby, where large numbers of vessels were normally always at sea, it was difficult to find berths when all the vessels returned together [see Fig. 9.1]. Fishermen and fishing vessels were soon anxious to return to their employment, but by then there was also the problem of obtaining insurance, as underwriters withdrew cover.13 The Board of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Scottish Fishery Board entered into discussions with the Admiralty. After a series of what were described as ‘long and anxious conferences’,14 fishing vessels returned to North Sea grounds, although for many of the larger vessels the insurance issues still required clarification which delayed numerous sailings for a short while longer. The Admiralty formulated an extensive series of naval
13 14
Sea’, Journal for Maritime Research, 19:1 (2017), pp. 47–61, DOI: 10.1080/ 21533369.2017.1334850, BPP, Report on the Sea Fisheries, England and Wales, 1915–1918, pp. xxi and 75. Ibid., p. 2.
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regulations in an attempt to control fishing vessels’ movements, and to ensure that they steered clear of sensitive or dangerous areas, including newly sown minefields. Such rules were not always adhered to by the fishermen.15 A number of vessels were lost after returning to fishing during August 1914; in most cases, these were captured by German surface craft in the course of other North Sea naval operations, and their crews were taken prisoner and mainly held for the duration. Such actions apart, most of the other vessels lost whilst fishing during the remainder of 1914 and early 1915 succumbed to enemy mines. Indeed, of twenty-two craft sunk between the months of September 1914 and March 1915 inclusive, nineteen were blown up by mines and no less than eighty-one fishermen were lost with them.16 Before April 1915 most working fishing vessel losses seem to have been more collateral damage than the result of being directly targeted by the enemy, and none had been victims of U-boat attacks. After this date, with their first phase of unrestricted submarine warfare well underway, the U-boats turned their attentions towards civilian fishing vessels. On 1 April 1915, the steam trawlers Jason, Gloxinia and Nellie were stopped and sunk in the North Sea by a U-boat. In each case the submarine surfaced nearby and, after firing shots across their bows, ordered the trawler crews to row over to the German vessel in their open boat. Afterwards, the crews were eventually allowed to row away to freedom once their trawlers were dealt with by either explosive charges or gunfire. The manner in which these unarmed trawlers were stopped and sunk was to be copied in many subsequent attacks on the United Kingdom’s fishing fleets. Although mines continued to send fishing vessels to the bottom throughout the rest of the conflict, and although there were occasional sinkings by surface raiders, most fishing vessels lost between April 1915 and the Armistice were captured and sunk by enemy submarines. At least eighty vessels out of a total of ninety-two fishing craft eliminated during May and June 1915, for example, were first captured and then sunk by U-boats, and in almost every instance their crews survived, after being permitted to row away from the sinkings in their open boats.17 The Germans evidently perceived fish as a strategic resource to be targeted. They sought not only to reduce Britain’s food supply but also to remove the trawlers and drifters left fishing before they might be taken up and armed by the Admiralty. Before the Armistice in November 1918 at least 574 fishing vessels whilst on fishing trips had been sunk in this way by U-boats and, although the pattern of such sinkings was scattered and encompassed every coast of the British Isles and beyond, the North Sea was the primary focus for such attacks. For the first couple of years German U-boats seem to have 15 16 17
Ibid., pp. ix–x. Anon, British Vessels Lost at Sea (London: HMSO, 1919), pp. 99–101. Ibid., 102–5.
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mainly targeted vessels sailing from British ports; it was not until May 1917 when a U-boat destroyed seven vessels off Baltimore but allowed their crews to row away from the sinkings, that the first Irish fishing boats seem to have been deliberately attacked in similar fashion.18 There was now no doubt that the great waters in which non-combatant fishermen pursued their livelihood was essentially the military front line of the war at sea. Civilian fishermen were often involved in rescuing survivors of other vessels sunk by enemy action. In May 1915, for example, the crew of the Isle of Man fishing vessel Wanderer were working close to where the liner Lusitania was torpedoed off the south coast of Ireland. They pulled 160 desperate survivors onto their small craft and took two full lifeboats under tow.19 Fishermen also saved a countless number of colleagues whose fishing vessels had been sunk by the German submarines. Enemy attacks on fishing vessels continued throughout the rest of the war and not until late spring 1917 was an effective response devised. Henceforward, civilian fishing vessels working offshore from many North Sea ports were placed under naval control and ordered to fish in groups. Some trawlers in each group were armed, and in time wireless communications were provided. Such craft were considered to be commissioned and, although fishing, they flew the White Ensign and their crews were eventually placed in a newly created Special Fishery Reserve. These fishing vessels came under the command of the Senior Naval Officer responsible for their operational port and were, in many respects, regarded as units of the Auxiliary Patrol. Although the Senior Naval Officer was advised by key members of the local fishing industry, he had the final say on where fishing took place and, in theory at least, on their times of arrival and departure from port.20 Such arrangements were not confined to fishing vessels working out in the North Sea or voyaging to Iceland or Faroe. In southwest England, a somewhat similar system of protection was introduced for sailing trawlers, which were accompanied to sea by armed auxiliary powered smacks. Brixham’s two largest fleets were protected by a couple of armed smacks whilst the operations of a fleet of smaller vessels were restricted to inshore waters. Two armed smacks were deployed to guard Plymouth-based vessels.21 Many problems were encountered during the early months of this new operational structure. Maintaining some degree of naval discipline proved an immediate problem, particularly amongst the steam trawler sections voyaging 18
19
20 21
Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, Report of the Sea and Inland Fisheries for Ireland for 1918, Cmd. 601, XVI 901, 16, p. v. David Ramsey, The Lusitania Saga and Myth (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Maritime, 2015), p. 72. BPP, Report on the Sea Fisheries, England and Wales, 1915–1918, p. 15. Ibid., p. 17.
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to distant water grounds off Faroe and Iceland. Initially, many protecting trawlers were too lightly armed, and in July 1917 a group of eight distantwater Grimsby fishing vessels, sailing between the Pentland Firth and Faroe Islands, were captured and destroyed by U-boats.22 The distant-water section system was temporarily suspended until the escorting vessels could be fitted with larger 12 pounder guns, but the northern voyages resumed in early September. By November 1917 these sections usually consisted of six trawlers, five of which were armed, two with 12 pounders and one with a wireless. Once the initial teething troubles were ironed out and better armament was provided, the new arrangements proved effective. Fishing vessel losses fell dramatically. During the first six months of 1917, U-boats had destroyed 185 civilian fishing vessels, sinking 43 such craft in March alone. In the second half of the year, only 35 such craft were lost in a similar fashion. The new armed arrangements were reported to be particularly effective amongst Humber-based trawlers fishing in the North Sea, the groups there having been reinforced on occasions by more heavily armed orthodox Auxiliary Patrol trawlers. In November 1917, the Senior Naval Officer Humber reported that trawlers in the North Sea sections had completed 4,000 fishing voyages, covering a total of 1,200,000 miles – whilst working on the fishing grounds or steaming to and from port – since the system had been introduced. During that time, these sections had engaged in seventeen separate actions with enemy vessels and suffered the loss of only one trawler. A total of 288 fishing vessels had been involved in voyages to Iceland, with a further thirty-two trips being made to Faroe by the Humber trawlers.23 Certainly, the effectiveness of the new Fishery Reserve arrangements in terms of the distant-water sections or groups was most clearly demonstrated in the early summer of 1918 when a section of six trawlers returning to the Humber after a trip to Iceland was confronted by a large German U-boat, apparently the U-53, around fifty-five or so miles to the southwards of the Faroe Islands. The attacking U-boat was eventually driven off after a long and damaging exchange; many of the fishermen involved were later decorated for their role in the action. The removal of so many steam trawlers and drifters from the catching sector due to the combination of Admiralty service requirements and enemy depredation meant that the inshore and sailing fisheries assumed a more important role in maintaining national food supplies. We have noted above that the majority of the smaller inshore ports had experienced years of decline. In England their plight had encouraged the creation of several district sea fisheries committees in the 1880s and 1890s: these had powers to formulate 22
23
Ibid., NA, ADM 137/719, Auxiliary Patrol Humber, Auxiliary Patrol Humber, 14 July 1917. NA, ADM 137/720, Auxiliary Patrol Humber, 10 November 1917.
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by-laws regulating close seasons and types of fishing gear, the overall intention being to conserve fishing stocks in the territorial waters under their jurisdiction. During the war, several strategies were adopted aimed at enhancing the short-term yield from British inshore fisheries, and these included easing back on a number of these conservation measures – such as the prohibition of inshore trawling off some sections of the English coast – for the duration of hostilities. In 1915 and 1916, for example, the North-Eastern District Sea Fisheries Committee, which oversaw fishing in territorial waters from the Tees down to Donna Nook in Lincolnshire, conceded to petitions from various groups of local fishermen and eased restrictions on inshore trawling for the duration.24 Motorisation was another means of improving the catching efficiency of inshore fishing craft. Before the war, few inshore fishing vessels were mechanically powered. An innate conservatism amongst inshore communities was no doubt partly to blame, but chronic shortages of capital, an aversion to debt and the scarcity of appropriately skilled labour were also important factors. Even so, some progress had been made: the Irish Fishery Board had taken an early lead in providing motorisation loans25 and in the southwest of England, Stephen Reynolds (1881–1919), a Sidmouth fisherman, as well as author and influential champion of the inshore fisheries, had built his own motor vessel, Puffin. Although his small craft was swiftly taken into Admiralty service, Reynolds subsequently played a key role in organising an early government project that provided £2,000 to pump-prime the fitting of auxiliary engines in some classes of sailing trawlers.26 Previously, Reynolds had served on a government committee investigating inshore fisheries that had recommended, amongst other things, fitting small craft with engines. This process probably commenced in the southwest with the aid of a loan from the Development Commissioners but acquired a national dimension when a Motor Loan Committee, under the chairmanship of Cecil Harmsworth, was created after the Fishery Board was awarded a grant of £50,000 from the Development Commissioners. By early 1919 a total of 152 loans amounting to £28,350 were made by the Committee.27 But even 24
25
26
27
Humberside County Record Office (herewith HCRO), North Eastern District Sea Fisheries Committee (NEDSFC) Minutes, 11 November 1914, 28 July 1915, 10 November 1915, 9 February 1916 and 11 May 1916. British Parliamentary Papers, Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, Report of the Sea and Inland Fisheries for Ireland for 1907, Cmd. 4298, XIV.I, vol. 14, pp. v–vi. Samantha Little, ‘The Brixham Fishing Fleet in the Great War’, in H. French (ed.), Food, Farming and Fishing in Devon during the First World War (Exeter: Short Run Press, 2017), p. 83. BPP, Report on the Sea Fisheries, England and Wales, 1915–1918, 63.
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before the Motor Loans Committee made a mark, some inshore fishermen moved ahead on their own with motorisation. A number of inshore vessels operating from the Yorkshire coast, for example, installed engines during the summer war broke out,28 and by the end of 1915 it was noted that a considerable number of motor boats were already fishing.29 Many hurdles had to be overcome to embed effective mechanical propulsion across the inshore sector. Engines able to cope with the rigours of sea fishing from small boats had to be procured, and personnel identified and trained to install them in varied designs of inshore craft. Ways had to be found to overcome the innate conservatism and ingrained aversion to borrowing money – to debt. Then finally, as more and more vessels began using engines, there was the problem of providing sufficient fuel and not only because of wartime shortages; this was an age when the use of internal combustion engines of any sort was still comparatively scarce in rural districts. The fishery board in Scotland sought to overcome such challenges by making advanced estimates of fuel required by motorised vessels fishing north of the border, which were in due course directed to the wartime Petrol Control Committee whose remit was to oversee and prioritise the distribution of supplies. This approach seemingly met with some degree of success.30 But the main factor which encouraged the diffusion of motorisation in the inshore sector, after a small core of vessels had been mechanised, was their war-time profitability. Day in day out, mechanised craft demonstrated their greater efficiency: they could voyage to and from the fishing banks more swiftly than sailing vessels, their range was greater, and they could haul fishing gear more quickly. One not untypical example, later quoted in the English Fishery Board’s post-war report on developments, was of a vessel working on the southwest coast that had towed a similar sized sailing craft out to the fishing grounds. When both returned, the catch made by the motorised craft sold for £310 whilst the sailing craft made £50. Although these were larger offshore fishing vessels, such differences in profitability must have made an impression on local fishermen. Other examples reinforced the message: the first couple of inshore motor vessels to commence fishing from Poole in Dorset, for example, were reported to have sold their catches from one day’s fishing for over £10 each whilst none of the port’s sailing vessels made more than ten shillings for their landings that day.31 Other examples were reported on other coasts and, by the time the war had ended, the long-term 28 29 30
31
HCRO, NEDSFC Minutes, 11 November 1914. Ibid., 31 December 1915. David T. Jones, ‘Scottish Fisheries during the War’ in D. T. Jones, J. F. Duncan, H. M. Conacher and W. R. Scott (eds.), Rural Scotland during the War (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), p. 63. BPP, Report on the Sea Fisheries, England and Wales, 1915–1918, p. 60.
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displacement of sail and oar by mechanical propulsion was well underway in most inshore fishing sectors. An enduring problem facing inshore fisheries, like other sectors, was the chronic shortage of labour. The immediate, albeit temporary, suspension of North Sea fisheries when hostilities opened in August 1914 created widespread unemployment amongst fishermen and ancillary workers and, like others across the nation, a substantive number of the men responded to early calls to join the army and were lost to both the fish trade and the Royal Navy. Those already in the RNR had been immediately mobilised, and a number of other fishermen in the major trawling ports were also in the new RNR (Trawler Section) or else followed their vessels into active service when they were hired by the Admiralty for minesweeping and patrol duties. The introduction of conscription, which covered all single, medically fit men between eighteen and forty-one years of age, in January 1916, aggravated the British fishing industry’s labour problems, especially in the inshore sector. Whilst fishing was classified as an essential occupation, fishermen were still called before Military Service Tribunals in order to secure exemption and, if their claim was rejected, they could be taken for either naval or army service. The new tribunal system was soon perceived by parts of the fish trade as being rather unpredictable, and its operations fuelled further tensions between the Fishery Board and the military.32 Fishermen had skills which were of particular value in maintaining food supplies or for fighting the war at sea but, if not immediately required for naval service when taken before a tribunal, they could be directed into the army. This was clearly not the best way to make use of a shrinking core of experienced seafarers whose skills by then had already proved to be so valuable in the Auxiliary Patrol and the maritime war against mines and U-boats. The English and Scottish fishery boards played a key role in pushing for the adoption of the principle that no fishermen should be taken by the army if willing to serve in the Auxiliary Patrol when required. This also made sense because the naval recruiting authorities, anxious not to lose the services of the diminishing pool of fishermen to the army, were seen as being inclined to take up more eligible fishermen than they immediately needed, and then train and keep them in barracks until required. This was also a wasteful use of scarce resources and thanks largely to the fishery boards’ pressure a sensible way forward was eventually devised.33 The outcome was the creation of Section Y of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. Fishermen and other seamen opting for this section, accepted liability for military service but were allowed to pursue their civilian occupation until 32
33
N. Hyman, ‘Inshore Fisheries in Wartime Devon’, in H. French (ed.), Food, Farming and Fishing in Devon during the First World War (Exeter: Short Run Press, 2017), pp. 77–8. Jones, ‘Scottish Fisheries during the War’, pp. 38–9.
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required for Royal Navy duties. It provided a way of reducing the possibility of seafarers being directed into the army on conscription. The English and Scottish fishery boards oversaw this process, which also allowed fishermen enrolled in Section Y to delay call up until local fishery officers reported on the wider impact of their removal from the fisheries. One intention was to ensure that men considered essential to maintaining fishery operations in a fishing station could keep fishing. The procedure also ensured that the most efficient vessels left fishing could find sufficient crew to maintain operations and usually proved a means of preventing the wholesale collapse of small fishing stations through the removal of all the remaining fishermen of military age.34 These new military recruitment arrangements meant that the fishery boards of England and Scotland could limit the detrimental impact that future military demands had on national fish supplies and the longer-term vitality of fishing stations. Issues remained: some Devon fishermen, for example, complained about what they described as ‘inappropriate conscription’ when directed for training in Devonport Barracks when they felt they should have been left fishing.35 However, this ‘pocket from which the navy drew men for the trawler section when required’ worked reasonably well.36 Despite the large-scale vessel losses, a severely depleted labour force and all the problems associated with working on the maritime front line, the British fishing industry remained operational throughout the war. By the armistice there were less than 14,000 civilian fishermen left working, and out of this figure over 8,000 were above military service age whilst 400 were below. A substantial proportion of the remaining crews were fishermen past the normal retirement age, sometimes leavened with a few boys getting their first taste of the sea. According to a post-war government report there was at least one occasion when a trawler went to sea with a crew that were all over seventy years old. The situation across the Irish Sea was somewhat different. In 1913 there had been 17,823 fishermen working from Irish fishing stations and in 1918 the numbers were only slightly lower at 17,502.37 Whilst a number of Irish fishermen reservists had been mobilised in the first months of the war and others had taken up more lucrative employment elsewhere, the high potential returns from fishing as prices rose and the absence of effective conscription in Ireland encouraged people back to the trade, and meant labour shortages were avoided. 34 35 36 37
Ibid. Hyman, ‘Inshore Fisheries in Wartime Devon’, pp. 78–9. Jones, ‘Scottish Fisheries during the War’, p. 38. British Parliamentary Papers, Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland – Report of the Sea and Inland Fisheries for Ireland for 1918, Cmd. 601, XVI 901, 16, p. vi.
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Figure 9.2 Fishermen carrying baskets of fish to the sheds at Grimsby. Ministry of Information official photograph. Imperial War Museum Q 19029.
Whilst most accounts and descriptions of war-time fisheries talk about fishermen, there were evidently a few women and girls working in the catching sector. The case of Ella Trout provides an all-too infrequent view of their involvement. Twenty-year-old Ella lived in what remained of the village of Hallsands in Devon, much of which had been swept away by the sea during a great storm in January 1917. Ella and her sister Patience went fishing to help sustain her widowed mother and siblings and, whilst at sea on 8 September 1917, Ella and her ten-year-old cousin, William Trout, saved a black sailor when the SS Newholme of Newcastle was torpedoed by the UC-39, an action which led to her being awarded the Order of the British Empire.38 Not surprisingly, British fish landings declined dramatically during the Great War. Annual landings in England and Wales, for example, during the years 1909–1913 inclusive had averaged 14, 451,200 hundredweight, but during the years 1915–1918 the average fell to 4,690,000 hundredweight [see Fig. 9.2]. Despite shortages, fish was never rationed, even though the excess of demand over supply was evident in the marked rise in fish prices. Although the amount of fish landed in England and Wales in 1918 was only about a third of the figures for 1913, the value of this much diminished catch almost
38
BPP, Report on the Sea Fisheries, England and Wales, 1915–1918, p. 50.
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doubled, and similar trends were evident in Scotland.39 The average return per hundredweight was influenced not only by inflation caused by straightforward supply reductions but also by shifts in the proportions of different species of fish landed: far less herring and other cheaper varieties, which in peacetime were primarily intended for the export market, were pursued; a greater part of the remaining landings comprised the more valuable white fish species preferred by domestic consumers.40 In Ireland the trends were somewhat different. Although a somewhat similar levels of price inflation were evident, catch levels did not experience the same overall decline, and in 1918 were actually over 8 per cent higher than 1913 figures.41 The British also saw fish as a strategic resource and throughout much of the war sought to deny supplies to Germany, not only by the maintenance of the naval blockade on foodstuffs and raw materials, but also by trying to restrict their acquisition of fish most notably from neutral Holland, Denmark and Norway. By early autumn 1914 British fishing vessels were forbidden to land at Ymuiden, not only because of the risk of capture but also from the assumption that such catches might find their way to Germany.42 From early in the conflict Germany became a heavy purchaser of fish in neutral markets, and the British sought to counter this, in the case, of Norway in particular, by purchasing fish supplies and raising the price of any fish which continued to make its way to Germany. They also put pressure on neutral governments and their fishing industries which were or became heavily dependent on essential imports such as coal and fishing gear, much of which they relied on the United Kingdom to provide. The responsibility for denying neutral fish supplies to Germany eventually came under the remit of a special branch of the Ministry of Blockade and sometimes covered other fish products such as Norwegian hydrogenated fish oil which might be used in the production of margarine.43 By the winter of 1917, according to Jenny Sarrazin, the reductions in the flow of fish imports into Germany were considerable, and with devastating results.44 These efforts to restrict supplies not unnaturally caused considerable
39
40 41
42 43 44
Robb Robinson, ‘War, Public Intervention and Structural Changes in the British Fishing Industry, 1914 – 1930’, in D. J. Starkey and A. T. Tove Austbe (eds.), Maritime Industries and Public Intervention, Fourth North Sea History Conference (Stavanger: Maritime Museum, 1995), p. 126. Ibid., pp. 126–7. British Parliamentary Papers, Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, Report of the Sea and Inland Fisheries for Ireland for 1918, Cmd. 601, XVI 901, 16, pp. i–vi BPP, Report on the Sea Fisheries, England and Wales, 1915–1918, pp. 108–9. NA, CAB 39/107 War Trade Advisory Committee, 11 September 1916. Jenny Sarrazin, ‘War, Public Intervention and Structural Change in the German Fishing Industry 1914–1930’, in R. Ertesvag, D. J. Starkey and Anne Tove Austbe (eds.), Maritime Industries and Public Intervention (Stavanger, 1995), pp. 146–7.
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tensions and problems for a neutral country’s relationships with belligerents on both sides. Whilst wartime deep-sea fishing was clearly hazardous the potential returns were lucrative as the scarcity inflated fish prices. As early as 1915, Scarborough trawlers were reported to be regularly grossing more than £200 from a single night’s fishing.45 Such returns were unheard of before the war and the profitability of the remaining steam trawlers meant that by 1917 some skippers were said to have earned up to £15,000 over the previous two years despite taking only 10 per cent of the catch values.46 Fishing vessel returns continued to rise, leading to disquiet about potential profiteering, and within a month of reports being made to the Admiralty in February 1918 that some Humber skippers were earning between £200 and £300 each week, price controls were finally introduced by the government.47 The Fishery Board for England and Wales claimed in its 1920 report that no group of workers contributed more to the various facets of the war effort than fishermen, and certainly those still fishing seem to have performed well in relative terms despite the problems they encountered. Although landings slumped, the British fishing industry seems to have substantially outperformed its German counterpart: by 1917, for example, the British and German landings stood respectively at 31 per cent and 9 per cent of their 1913 figures.48 The fishing industry of the British Isles made an invaluable contribution to the national food supply throughout more than four years of hostilities. During the war, a total of 672 fishing vessels and 416 fishermen were lost, and 3,338 skippers and ratings were lost whilst serving with in the RNR (Trawler Section): further fishing vessels were lost whilst on Admiralty service. It is not known how many fishermen were lost whilst serving the mainstream RNR.49 By early July 1919, over 1,000 English and Welsh fishing vessels had been returned from Admiralty service. Many Scottish vessels had also been demobilised, with just 131 craft being left on military service by the end of the year.50 Most wartime fisheries restrictions were lifted soon after the armistice, but it took until the end of 1919 for some grounds to be made sufficiently safe 45
46 47 48 49 50
For more details of overseas fish trade restriction issues see also H. Hamre, ‘War, Public Intervention and Structural Change in the Norwegian Fishing Industry 1914 – 1930’ and F. R. Loomeijer, ‘Public Intervention and Structural Change in the Dutch Fishing Industry 1914–1930’ in Ertesvag, Starkey and Austbe, Maritime Industries and Public Intervention. Robinson, Trawling, p. 142. ADM 137/721, 2 February 1918. Sarrazin, ‘War, Public Intervention’, p. 147. Robinson, ‘A Forgotten Navy’, pp. 47–61, DOI: 10.1080/21533369.2017.1334850, 58. BPP, Thirty-Eighth Annual Report of the Fishery Board for Scotland Being for the Year 1919, 1920, Cmd. 833 XVI.1041, vi.
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for fishing. The seabed around the British Isles was covered with wrecks and other war debris, much of which was uncharted and created all sorts of hazards. Indeed, stray mines took a toll on fishermen and merchant seamen for several years to come. It took time for fishermen to become familiar with fishing on these former maritime battlefields and much fishing gear was lost or damaged in the process.51 It was soon clear that post-war fishing was being pursued in a markedly different environment. The political and economic contexts in which various sectors of the industry traded had been transformed and not usually for the better. Not only did the November 1917 revolution in Russia eventually remove many Russian connections, but the markedly nationalistic policies pursued by newly independent European states sometimes meant a focus on nurturing their own trades and industries, often through the use of subsidies and tariffs. The export-led salt-cured herring trade was most immediately affected, having to contend not only with the loss of the Russian market and the other ramifications of the new continental European landscape but also increased competition from Norway in its remaining markets. The herring trade never recovered its pre-war buoyancy, and never again approached the record levels of landings and production reached in 1913. Despite occasional false dawns it had entered a gradual, although unrelenting, long-term decline that lasted into the 1950s. The trawling trade, the other leading sector of the pre-war British fishing industry, also faced problems adjusting to the post-war environment. In the short-term, the trade boomed despite several internal labour disputes as well as railway and coal strikes. Catches were initially high, a result no doubt of the easing of pressure on fish stocks during more than four years of unintended conservation caused by the conflict. Although the time taken to demobilise fishermen and fishing vessels caused problems in 1919. Landings that year were almost double the war-time average, and in 1920 were more than 14 per cent higher than the 1913 figure.52 But the economic outlook soon darkened: white fish prices declined rapidly during 1919, entering a long-term downward trend that lasted until the later 1930s. Although trawler operating costs fell, fish prices dropped even more rapidly. Trawling company profit margins were squeezed, leading to relentless pressures to cut labour costs in a sector where, unlike the herring and inshore fisheries, fishermen relied more heavily on the weekly wage than a share of the proceeds.53 The effects were profound. In 1924 the port of Boston in Lincolnshire, whose fleet had been much depleted by war-time sinkings, lost most of its 51 52 53
Robinson, Trawling, p. 145. Ibid., p. 146. Ibid.
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remaining steam trawlers when the Boston Deep Sea Fishing and Ice Company moved operations to the Humber estuary.54 Many other trawling ports experienced a dearth in investment: no newly built trawlers joined the North Shields fleet between 1919 and 1929, and by 1930 at least 30 per cent of the trawlers there were more than twenty-one years old. Though Granton still boasted a fleet of over eighty trawlers in the early 1930s, Scottish trawling operations were increasingly concentrated on Aberdeen but the fleet there was also aging rapidly: over 60 per cent of the port’s steam trawlers being over twenty years old by 1934.55 Many smaller inshore coastal communities were enmeshed in a vicious combination of falling prices and declining yields and, although motors improved vessel productivity for some craft, others found it difficult at times to cover even fuel costs. The pre-war decline noted in many inshore communities resumed. By 1935, inshore communities contributed only 1 per cent of English and Welsh white fish landings, and around 15 per cent of Scottish landings. Such underlying post-war economic problems for the fishing industry were reflected in an overall diminution on the size of the national labour force. The numbers of English and Welsh fishermen declined from 42, 555 in 1919 to 29,013 by 1936, and in Scotland they fell from 30,762 in 1921 to 21,480 in 1936.56 The southern Irish fisheries, despite removal from British governance, fared little better. Although Arthur Griffiths, President of the second Dail Eireann, had been a long-term advocate of developing Irish fisheries, no other political leader took up the cudgels for the trade after his untimely death in August 1922.57 For the remaining inter-war years Irish fishing interests were marginalised and support peripheral when compared with the new state’s concentration on nurturing agrarian interests. The numbers of fishermen in the Irish Free State fell dramatically during the inter-war years. For much of the inter-war period the English port of Hull proved the only real exception to the rule. The port’s trawler owners invested heavily in distant-water trawling. They maintained a long-term programme of building more cost-efficient and ever larger trawlers, opening and exploiting new grounds in the Arctic, and focused on taking cheaper and sometimes coarser varieties of white fish then supplied to the still rapidly expanding domestic fish and chip trade. Their lead was eventually emulated by their neighbours in
54 55
56 57
BPP, Report on English and Welsh Fisheries, 1924–1926, p. 76. R. K. Kelsall, H. Hamilton, F. A. Wells and K. C. Edwards, ‘The White Fish Industry’, in M. P. Fogerty (ed.), Further Studies in Industrial Organisation (London: Methuen, 1948) pp. 108–15. Robinson, Trawling, p. 146. Jim Mac Laughlin, Troubled Waters: A Social and Cultural History of Ireland’s Sea Fisheries (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010), p. 350.
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Grimsby, who restarted a substantial programme of new trawler investment from the mid-1930s after the opening of a new fish dock.58 Hull’s and Grimsby’s modern fleets were to prove much in demand by the Admiralty once more when the Second World War started in 1939 and the nation’s fishermen were again called up for military service. 58
Robinson, Trawling, p. 156.
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10 Agriculture
In 1915 J. Albert Frost wondered whether his book The Shire Horse in Peace and War was timely. He told how ‘the War horse of the olden days became the Old English Cart Horse’.1 Shire mares and geldings hauled heavy guns in France but, he apologetically concluded, ‘What is the good of talking about such a peaceful occupation as that of agriculture while the nation is fighting for its very existence’.2 Horsemen, stockmen and ploughmen with knowledge of animal power, tillage methods, soils, climate, seeds and traditional customs were still connected to immemorial cultures. A lifetime spent interviewing the old rural community in East Anglia and analysing their use of farm tools and domestic equipment, led George Ewart Evans to conclude that the ‘last carriers’ of abundant lore were born in the years 1885–95.3 In 1915 agricultural scenes and, more broadly, the ‘country round’ offered tranquil sense impressions that stood apart from the clamorous excitement of munitions centres, transport hubs and military spectacle. The ‘echoes of the Great War’ in Andrew Clark’s diary came from beyond the village. In Great Leighs, Essex, he drew solace from, ‘peaceful rural operations, cutting hedges, breaking clods, spreading manure. Not a sign that a soldier had ever been in the district’.4 In 1917 Robert Saunders, Headmaster of Fletching National School, Sussex, heard the sound of guns, ‘forcing you to remember we are at War & taking your attention from Country sights and sounds’.5 C. P. Scott, editor of The Manchester Guardian, directed that the Country Diary should convey ‘lasting things’ by avoiding the topic of war. The column was sustained because a settled rural world was the hallmark of a future peace. One contributor, Captain Basil de Selincourt, feared that friends would think that writing
1 2 3
4
5
J. A. Frost, The Shire Horse in Peace and War (London: Vinton & Company, 1915), p. 2. Frost, The Shire Horse in Peace and War, p.121. G. E. Evans, The Pattern under the Plough (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), pp. 23, 18, 259. J. Munson (ed.), Echoes of the Great War: The Diary of the Rev Andrew Clark 1914–1919 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 12, 3. IWM Saunders mss. 79/15/1, letter, 29 April 1917.
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about the countryside was ‘trivial’.6 Alongside photographs of rustic carts, ponies and children in a Dartmoor farmyard, a letter to Country Life in 1915 used the language of Alfred Austin’s post-South African War tour of the English countryside in 1902, ‘It is pleasant in war-time to be reminded that there are still some homes of ancient peace’.7 In the Cotswolds, Sir William Rothenstein busied himself with painting portraits of village neighbours, whose unlettered wisdom and longevity of family residence captivated him. The noted hedger and thatcher, Eli Gardiner, ‘knew his Bible, the Old Testament especially, and could interpret the sign of the skies – the sun, clouds and the flight of birds – and he knew the secret life of field and hedgerow’.8 Perhaps advice on farming from Virgil still pertained in early twentieth-century Britain and Ireland, ‘to learn the ways and habits of that locality – what’s bound to flourish there, and what to fail’.9 The impact of war was ‘initially muted’ in ‘small and remarkably self-sufficient worlds’, where traditional social equilibrium and mentalities prevailed within preciselydefined locales.10 This chapter focuses on food producers on the British home front, whose customary practices and intact old cultures were apart from the state, which readied for war without the need to value fieldwork. The ‘normal’ conditions of 1914–16, enlistment for military service from farms and political interest in ploughing-up for ‘food safety’ are examined. Agriculture eventually became an essential war industry, and knowledge of high farming and an earlier great European war mattered. Agricultural labour supply as the limiting factor in cereal production will be examined, alongside essential and continuing supplies of foreign wheat. In 1917 sounds of war on the home front, of farm soldiers and their machinery, disrupted the peace-evoking country round from which discharged and demobilised soldiers and sailors were supposed to benefit. State responsibility for agricultural prices, wages and rents arose without a durable commitment to a permanent plough policy and without the capacity to enact the restorative dream of social and economic renewal in the countryside. The chapter ends as it begins, with local rural societies in diverse landscapes whose resilient adaptation to social and economic change was unaccompanied by full state endorsement of ‘Better farming, better business, better living’ in the British and Irish countryside.11 ‘Nature’s social 6 7
8 9 10
11
M. Wainwright (ed.), Wartime Country Diaries (London: Guardian Books, 2007), p. 57. Country Life, letter, ‘Peace in War’, 18 December 1915, p. 862; A. Austin, Haunts of Ancient Peace (London: Macmillan, 1902), pp. 16, 161. W. Rothenstein, Men and Memories 1900–1922 (London, Faber and Faber, 1934), p. 341. Virgil, Georgics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), Book One p. 7, lines 54–55. A. Howkins, The Death of Rural England: A Social History of the Countryside Since 1900 (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 20, 14. H. Plunkett, Oxford and the Rural Problem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921), p. 13.
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union’ was rediscovered in war but small producers, in search of peace and contentment, encountered financially insecure land settlement schemes, which were unmatched to the demand for agricultural training and plots of land ‘in a country worth fighting for’.12 Wartime critiques of British and Irish agriculture highlighted its residual political and economic significance by 1914; ‘the farmer’s interest is not the interest of the nation’.13 From 50 shillings per quarter in the 1870s, the average price for corn in the seven years ending in 1913 was 32s 9d whereas, ‘In grazing the farmer does not tempt fortune’.14 Arable land, defined as tillage and temporary grass, was converted to permanent grass land on over 3.5 million acres in the years 1871–1911.15 Without crop tillage, rotation or temporary grass became de facto permanent pasture, which was charted in agricultural censuses from 1892.16 The ‘Down Corn, Up Horn’ end to Victorian high farming was summarised in the sentence, ‘A manufacturing nation prayed “God speed the plough on every soil but our own”’.17 Arable land acreage declined less markedly in Ireland and Scotland in the years 1870–1915. Irish land purchase legislation enabled farm incomes to recover and ended food dependency on Britain. Treasury loans for owner-occupancy facilitated specialisation in livestock farming and 20 per cent of agricultural output was dairying by 1910.18 Land transfer from 10,000 proprietors provided 566,000 agricultural holdings, of which 349,000 became owneroccupied. Eighty-five per cent of agricultural holdings were under 50 acres. In Scotland three-quarters of agricultural land utilisation comprised rough
12
13
14 15
16
17 18
Plunkett, Oxford and the Rural Problem, p. 18; The Tramp, The South Downs (London: London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, undated [1919]) p. 79. E. G. Strutt, L. Scott and G. H. Roberts, British Agriculture: The Nation’s Opportunity. Being the Minority Report of the Departmental Committee on the Employment of Sailors and Soldiers on the Land (London: John Murray, 1917), p. 28. Strutt, Scott and Roberts, British Agriculture, pp. 5, 28. Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, Report of the Departmental Committee on Food Production in Ireland, Cd. 8046 (London: HMSO, 1915), p. 4; Strutt, Scott and Roberts, British Agriculture, p. 85; On the imprecise statistical distinction between permanent grass, temporary grass and rough grazing see E. H. Whetham, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 8, 1914–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 117. Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, A Century of Agricultural Statistics. Great Britain 1866–1966 (London: HMSO, 1968), p. 7. Lord Ernle, English Farming. Past and Present, 5th ed. (London: Longmans, 1936), p. 394. M. Turner. After the Famine: Irish Agriculture 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 10–12, 205; C. O Grada, ‘Irish Agriculture after the Land War’, University College Dublin, Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series, 2004, www.ucd.ie/economics/research/papers/2004/WP0406.pdf, pp. 22–23 (accessed 18/ 10/2018).
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grazing.19 In the United Kingdom stock for meat and milk grazed on 36 million acres of grass, with a net annual value of £151 million, and wheat and potatoes were grown on just under 3 million acres with a value of £26.25 million, when averaged for the years 1909–13.20 Of all the larger grain producing countries, ‘only Britain retrenched so completely’ in the decades after 1880.21 The capital value of agricultural land declined by 50 per cent in the years 1875–94 and A. D. Hall concluded in 1916 that, ‘British agriculture had ceased to be a matter of any account in the national economy’.22 Food imports to the United Kingdom in 1914 included 80 per cent of wheat requirements and 40 per cent of beef and mutton. The British Isles imported 58 million quintals (equivalent to a hundredweight or 112 pounds) of wheat and produced 15 million quintals.23 The nation’s prosperity, indeed the nation’s security, had no place for home food production. Defence measures included a wheat reserve, but naval supremacy would guarantee the supply of plentiful cereals. Jesse Collings MP, President of the Rural League, awakened the nation to agriculture’s importance and challenged the Admiralty’s reassurance that everyone could ‘sleep quietly in our beds’.24 ‘Business as usual’ restricted government intervention to export prohibitions on feedstuffs, cereals and fertilisers. Stock returns of wheat and flour, meat, oilseeds, cake and fertilisers were established for the first time by the Board of Agriculture, where eight inspectors reported on regional agricultural conditions.25 Cereal imports in 1915 matched 1913 levels, but their cost rose by £85 million. The price of ammonia sulphate rose by 29 per cent in two years to February 1916, but liberal manuring was strongly advised by the Board of Agriculture. The national interest was served by heavy top dressings, which farmers would find were ‘unusually profitable’.26
19 20
21
22 23 24
25
26
Ministry of Agriculture, A Century of Agricultural Statistics, p. 11. T. Middleton, ‘Farming of the UK in Peace and in War: The Plough Policy and Its Results’, The Journal of the Ministry of Agriculture, 26:12 (1920), pp. 1192–204, at p. 1194. A. Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 84, 86; L. M. Barnett, British Food Policy during the First World War (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1985), pp. 60–1. A. D. Hall, preface, in Strutt, Scott and Roberts, British Agriculture, p. 1. Strutt, Scott and Roberts, British Agriculture, p. 12. J. Collings, The Great War. Its Lessons and Its Warnings (London: The Rural World Publishing Company, [1915]), p. 2; J. Collings The Life of the Rt.Hon. Jesse Collings (London: Longmans, Green, 1920), p. 292. ‘Report on the Work of the Special Enquiries Branch for the First Twelve Months of the War’, The Journal of the Board of Agriculture 22: 9 (1915), pp. 833–40, at pp. 834–6. ‘The Use of Sulphate of Ammonia as Manure’, The Journal of the Board of Agriculture, 22:12 (1916), pp. 1267–70, at p. 1268, and ‘The Manuring of Corn in the Spring of 1916’, The Journal of the Board of Agriculture, 22:12 (1916), p. 1274.
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Drastic measures were recommended by departmental committees for England, Scotland and Ireland to improve food supply beyond the harvest in 1916. The English committee was chaired by Lord Milner, who was dismayed by the loss of a land tradition.27 In June 1915 he advised the Board of Agriculture to adopt, ‘Emergency measures, emergency men’ to ensure the nation’s ‘power of endurance in the long struggle’.28 His interim report proposed that 1 million acres of grass land were recovered for arable farming, while maintaining sufficient livestock for meat and milk supply. It sought a guaranteed minimum wheat price, scientific manuring, improved seeds, labour-saving machinery, improved milk records and reduced crop rotation cycles.29 The Irish committee’s report recommended the permanent cultivation of second- and third-rate grass land.30 The Wason committee in Scotland was more circumspect on minimum cereal price mechanisms.31 In Ireland, Scotland and northern England oats were expected to remain the staple grain crop. Improved breeding stock, machinery and implement distribution and manure supply in Ireland required agricultural organisation. Sir Horace Plunkett’s minority report warned that, ‘the controlling of agriculture would be a much more formidable task than the controlling of munition factories’.32 Lord Selborne, president of the Board of Agriculture, circulated Milner’s interim report to senior cabinet members on 22 July 1915. He proposed a four-year minimum price of 45 shillings per quarter for home-grown wheat in England and Wales, provided that farmers increased their arable acreage by one-fifth.33 Selborne highlighted the vulnerability of the eight-week wheat reserve, but H. H. Asquith, the prime minister, had previously asserted, ‘In my opinion there is not the least fear that any probable or conceivable development of German submarine activity can be a serious menace to our
27 28
29
30
31
32
33
Undated speech by Lord Milner in Collings, The Great War, Appendix II, pp. 107–8. G. Boyce (ed.), The Crisis of British Unionism: Lord Selborne’s Domestic Political Papers 1885–1922 ( London: The Historians’ Press, 1987), Lord Milner to Lord Selborne, 6 June 1915, pp. 128–9. TNA MAF 42/9 Departmental (Milner) Committee, Interim and Final reports (England and Wales), 1915; Strutt, Scott and Roberts, British Agriculture, p. 114. Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, Report of the Departmental Committee on Food Production in Ireland, p. 3. H. M. Conacher, ‘Scottish Agriculture with Special Reference to Food Production’, in D. T. Jones, J. F. Duncan, H. M. Conacher and W. R. Scott (eds.), Rural Scotland during the War (London: Humphrey Milford, 1926), pp. 130–210, at p. 163. Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, Report of the Departmental Committee on Food Production in Ireland, Minority Report by Sir Horace Plunkett, pp. 12–17, at pp. 12–13. Boyce, The Crisis of British Unionism, Lord Selborne, Memorandum, July 1915, pp. 136–41.
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food supply’.34 The subject remained too contentious and Selborne was beleaguered; ‘fanatical Cobdenism on one side and the dislike of any interference with landlords and farmers on the other’.35 Where lay the dutiful war service of farm workers until the National Register ‘starred’ skilled agricultural labourers in October 1915? In August 1914 farm horses were swiftly requisitioned, barns sheltered recruits on military training and new hutments encroached on wheat fields because the empire’s sea lanes delivered imported cereals. Eight per cent of horses used for agricultural work in Ireland were requisitioned in the twelve months ending June 1915, and farm horse numbers in Britain did not return to pre-war levels until 1917.36 In Devon, farmers encouraged sole skilled agriculturalists to remain after the harvest in 1914 to sow and till winter wheat and then to await labour substitution schemes.37 More generally, customary hiring practices, including six- and twelve-month contracts for single and married men, and separate cottage rental agreements, denied farm workers the liberty of immediate departure. This calculated act of hesitation was a ‘sense of detachment, rather than opposition, to the war’.38 In Wexford, a predominantly Catholic and nationalist county, two-thirds of the occupied male population worked in agriculture. Their ‘duty’ to remain on the farms was disputed by enlisted townsmen, who had no ‘land worth fighting for’.39 In Ireland 54 per cent of all occupied males were agricultural workers in 1911, of whom twothirds were familial relations compared to 11 per cent in Great Britain. Decisions to enlist in Ireland took place in ‘stable and well-organised workforces’, where political and religious group loyalties facilitated the ‘collective sacrifice of life and comfort’.40 But farm organisation did not provide a compelling infrastructure for collective sacrifice. Instead, a recruiting poster depicted a ploughman, with a vision of St Patrick and the ruins of Rheims
34
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36
37
38
39
40
Boyce, The Crisis of British Unionism, H. H. Asquith to Lord Selborne, 16 July 1915, p. 135. Boyce, The Crisis of British Unionism, Lord Selborne to Robert Palmer, 6 August 1915, p. 142. Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, Report of the Departmental Committee on Food Production in Ireland, p. 3; E. H. Whetham, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 8, pp. 72–4. B. White, ‘Feeding the War Effort: Agricultural Experiences in First World War Devon, 1914–17’, Agricultural History Review, 58: 1 (2010), pp. 95–112 at pp. 103, 95. C. Pennell, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 152. J. Codd, ‘Recruiting and Responses to the War in Wexford’, in D. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Ireland and the Great War (Dublin: Trinity College Workshop, 1986), pp. 15–26 at pp. 23, 25. D. Fitzpatrick, ‘The Logic of Collective Sacrifice: Ireland and the British Army, 1914–1918’, The Historical Journal, 38: 4 (1995), pp. 1017–30, at pp. 1030, 1023.
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Cathedral, who was exhorted, ‘Can You any longer resist the Call?’41 Unequivocally, the only field of battle was in France. In correspondence with Walter Long on recruitment in Wiltshire, Lord Lansdowne noted, ‘I agree with you that we must not bleed the villages too severely’.42 Long observed, ‘more men cannot be spared unless agriculture is to come to a standstill’.43 He wanted conscription because men unfit for military service should work on the land. In Sussex, diverse expressions of private patriotism among landowners included Lady Mackworth’s initiative to open Post Office Savings Bank accounts for enlisted men; whereas, Lord Hythe’s luggage car propelled estate workers towards enlistment, because no man of military age would remain in his employment.44 Reservists rejoined Highland regiments from Caithness and Sutherland: ‘It was thus all through the ages that the clans had mustered, and it was thus that the women, the grandfathers, and the children had sent their men to war’.45 The mobilisation of military manpower by gentlemanly influence was barely altered by the railway, except to hasten departure across a landscape scattered with cottage lights. In some traditional rural communities, farm workers had little agency in 1914, ‘We was contented, because we didn’t know any different. We didn’t expect anything, because if you did you didn’t get it’.46 The self-contained oblivion of country folk was also evident in Akenfield. The farm labourer, Davie, aged eighty-one years and called up in 1917, was interviewed, ‘He has never had to protest or state his case because it seems never to have occurred to him that he has a case’.47 Andrew Clark depicted the ‘village mind’ and wondered if enlistment in Great Leighs was ‘voluntary’.48 In 1915, farmers sought protection for head carters, horsemen, head stockmen, foremen, and engine drivers.49 Shortages of ploughmen, mechanics and
41
42 43
44
45
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Imperial War Museum Collections, www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/31635, Art IWM PST 13637, Can You Any Longer Resist the Call? [recruiting poster], Department of Recruiting for Ireland, 1915 (accessed 18/10/2018). BLL Long mss. 62403, Lord Lansdowne to W. Long, 28 January 1915. Boyce, The Crisis of British Unionism, W. H. Long to Lord Selborne, 27 January 1915, p. 123; BLL Long Add. Ms. 62404, W. H. Long to A. Bonar Law, 16 May 1915. K. Grieves, ‘“Lowther’s Lambs”: Rural Paternalism and Voluntary Recruitment in the First World War’, Rural History, 4:1 (1993), pp. 55–75, at p. 57; K. Grieves (ed.), Sussex in the First World War, Sussex Record Society: Lewes, 2004, Lord Hythe to Mr Edwards, head gardener, 21 August 1914, p. 19. J. P. Maxton, ‘Rural Scotland during the War’, The Economic Journal, 37:145 (1927), pp. 68–75 at p. 69. M. Winstanley, ‘Voices from the Past: Rural Kent at the Close of an Era’, in G. E. Mingay (ed.), The Victorian Countryside, vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 1981), pp. 626–38, at p. 636. R. Blythe, Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (London: Penguin, 1972), pp. 21–2. Munson, Echoes of the Great War, 13 May 1915, p. 62. International Institute of Agriculture, J. K. Montgomery, The Maintenance of the Agricultural Labour Supply in England and Wales during the War (Rome: International Institute of Agriculture, 1922), pp. 3–4.
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horsemen on small family farms in Devon reduced by 29,000 acres cereal and potato production in 1916, compared to 1915. Farmers and agricultural engineers became ‘indispensable’ in 1916, but ploughing-up remained implausible because one additional labourer and two horses were needed for every 50 acres.50 In the winter months of 1916–17, the relevance of past agricultural conditions was insistently voiced, ‘Back to the Seventies’ and ‘All hands to the plough’.51 The record home wheat yield of 20 million quintals in 1915 fell to 16.5 million quintals in 1916, amid the poor North American grain harvest, a European potato crisis and reduced winter sown wheat at home. The Royal Commission on Wheat Supplies assumed full responsibility for ensuring sufficient imports in October 1916.52 Suddenly, the ‘danger spots’ were breadstuffs, winter milk and winter meat.53 Thomas Middleton, Assistant Secretary at the Board of Agriculture, highlighted the calorie as a unit of energy value, and tillage over grass gained a scientific rationale. Normal exercise required 3,000-3,500 calories per day, whereas only 2,500 calories were needed for very light work, such as walking to a classroom and listening to a lecture. Using calorific value, Middleton calculated that 100 acres under wheat provided energy for 200 persons, oats for 150 persons and potatoes for 400 persons. If used for mangolds, or meadow hay for livestock feedstuffs, the number of persons fed per 100 acres fell to forty and fourteen respectively.54 Comparison with German agricultural productivity suggested that farms in Great Britain and Ireland should not remain individualistic, under-valued and peripheral to conceptualisations of ‘national safety’.55 Shortly after becoming prime minister in December 1916 David Lloyd George appointed Rowland Prothero to be President of the Board of Agriculture. Lloyd George remembered ‘the man I called the Duke of Bedford’s butler’ during the People’s Budget.56 Ministerial life held little appeal for Prothero, who thought that, ‘The Board itself was not equipped to help the industry to increase production’.57 His scholarship of farming practices tended towards mellow, weatherworn and reposeful scenes; ‘Nature refuses to be 50
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Montgomery, The Maintenance of Agricultural Labour Supply in England and Wales during the War, p. 7. Ernle, English Farming, p. 398. R. H. Rew, Food Supplies in Peace and War (London: Longmans, Green, 1920), p. 45; K. Burk ‘Wheat and the State during the First World War’, in Dockrill, M. and French, D. (eds.), Strategy and Intelligence. British Policy during the First World War (London: The Hambledon Press, 1996), pp. 119–38, at pp. 124–5. Lord Ernle, ‘The Food Campaign of 1916–18’, The Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, 82 (1921), pp. 1–48, at p. 5. Middleton, ‘Farming of the UK in Peace and in War’, pp. 1195, 1197. Strutt, Scott and Roberts, British Agriculture, pp. 109, 50; Ernle, English Farming, p. 393. D. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 2 vols., vol. 1 (London: Odhams Press, 1938), p. 642. Ernle, ‘The Food Campaign of 1916–18’, p. 8.
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hustled by mechanics’.58 A Fordson tractor on a Roman road was a shocking sight. Prothero and Middleton understood the landed interest’s defence of the capital value of grass land, especially in the west and south of England, which ‘had saved many farmers from financial ruin’.59 On 11 February 1917, Lloyd George privately stated, ‘The nation knows that food, ships, coal and transport are vital, and that we have now reached the point when these industries can be no further depleted’.60 Within the Board of Agriculture, the Food Production Department (FPD) was created on 1 January 1917, which Prothero described, ‘As the last comer in the field of national effort’.61 Unloved by influential Unionist landowners, its dynamic and politically insecure director-general, Arthur Lee, faced the herculean task of securing sufficient bread, margarine and milk output.62 The Cultivation of Lands Order was the new statutory instrument for breaking up grass land under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA). The powers conferred to the Board of Agriculture were delegated to County War Agricultural Executive Committees (CWAEC) and included permission to requisition and cultivate unoccupied fields.63 Committee members knew local conditions, surveyed uncultivated land, and supplied labour and agricultural implements. In Gwynedd the CWAEC bulk-purchased farm supplies, seed potatoes and fertilisers, and loaned horses, tractors and implements to farmers.64 In Sussex the CWAEC itemised four fields at West Lavant Farm for ‘breaking up’ and unceremoniously informed Goodwood estate office of its inspection visit in October 1917.65 Whereas the irascible Wilfrid Scawen Blunt met the committee and argued that ploughing-up poor Wealden land would be ‘stupidity’; ‘they ended by suggesting that I should try it on 20 acres out of 500 & by way of giving a good example’.66 Ploughing orders were often mediated by discretionary decision-making on the spot. If precept made little sense, an appeal for exemplary action might work.
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Lord Ernle, ‘The Countryside’, in G. M. Trevelyan (ed.), Fifty Years: Memories and Contrasts (London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1932), pp. 190–5, at pp. 192–3. Middleton, ‘Farming of the UK in Peace and in War’, p. 1193. Lord Riddell, War Diary 1914–1918 (London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1933), 11 February 1917, p. 239. TNA CO 323/761/9, Food supplies and Shipping, Parliamentary Debates, 23 February 1917, with Part 1, Agricultural Policy Sub-committee Report of the Reconstruction Committee, February 1917; Ernle, English Farming, p. 403. Middleton, ‘Farming of the UK in Peace and in War’, p. 1194. The Times, 9 January 1917, Speeding Up on the Farm, p. 4; Ernle ‘The Food Campaign of 1916–18’, p. 7. C. Parry, ‘Gwynedd and the Great War, 1914–1918’, The Welsh History Review, 14:1 (1988), pp. 78–117, at p. 100. Grieves, Sussex in the First World War, Frederick Stride to R. Hussey-Freke, 4 October 1917, p. 220. WSRO Blunt mss. 64, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt to Lady Anne Blunt, 18 August 1917.
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Agriculture was too organisationally complex to be managed from London, Edinburgh and Dublin. In 1915 there were 453,000 agricultural holdings in England and Wales, of which 119,000 were over 50 acres and 17,000 were over 300 acres. In Scotland 77,108 holdings included 45,000 that did not exceed thirty acres.67 In 1917 Middleton, now FRD deputy director-general, collated farmers’ experiences of ploughing-up grass land. Practical cropping knowledge and regional maxims were mobilised to establish new seed beds. An example from Cumberland stated, 20 acres Oats SOWN IN April on heavy land tractor-ploughed in March and April out of grass 42 years old. Disc harrowed after ploughing. The farmer remarked that ploughing 4 ½ – 5 inches deep was a risky proceeding; he could not get the ‘government men to plough it to a proper depth’. It was subsequently pressed and disc harrowed: to this and to ‘practical common sense’ the successful crop was attributed.68
In mid-1917 ‘the politics of food and the agricultural interest dominated parliamentary calculations’.69 Milner coordinated the tillage programme from May 1917 to April 1918 in bilateral meetings between the Board of Agriculture and the War Office. But Long directed his tenants that productive grass land would not be ploughed, whereas meats, dairies and eggs were ‘very essential’.70 Lloyd George’s War Memoirs contained a ‘scathing rebuke’.71 Lord Derby, ‘King of Lancashire’, also warned Milner that ‘present methods’ would have a disastrous effect. He forwarded a letter from the Unionist peer, Lord Ancaster, who advised from Lincolnshire, ‘I feel perfectly certain that the land will not grow enough corn to replace the seed, and the corn consumed by the horses required to work it’.72 Discontented landowners in the eastern corn-growing counties wondered whether sufficient labour, horses and steam and motor traction were available for vital harvesting weeks in 1917. The Corn Production Act intensified food production policy.73 In August 1917 it guaranteed minimum prices for wheat and oats, accompanied by 67 68
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Ministry of Agriculture, A Century of Agricultural Statistics, p. 18. Food Production Department, Report on the Breaking Up of Grass Land in England and Wales in the Harvest Year, 1916–17 (London: HMSO, 1917), pp. 12, 15. J. Turner, British Politics and the Great War: Coalition and Conflict 1915–1918 (London: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 214. UBL Austen Chamberlain mss. 16/1/13, Copy Memorandum, W. H. Long, 20 January 1917; Turner, British Politics and the Great War, p. 215. TNA CAB 24/23/65, Memorandum, Corn Production Bill, W. H. Long, 18 August 1917; Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 767–9. BLO Ms Milner dep. 45, Lord Derby to Lord Milner, 31 May 1917, with enclosure, Lord Ancaster to Lord Derby, 29 May 1917. TNA CAB 29/9/42, Memorandum, Notes on Part 1 of Corn Production Bill, J. R. Campbell, 2 April 1917; Howkins, Reshaping Rural England: A Social History 1850–1925 (London: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 267.
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minimum wage rates for agricultural workers and rent controls. Some pamphleteers concluded that farm and nation had become one.74 Sceptical members of the Central Land Association were advised by their new president, Selborne, that stable incomes and the revival of rural life would soon follow.75 Food security also necessitated bread economy by closely regulating the subsidised 9d quartern loaf. Reduced wheat milling ratios and potato admixtures in bread confirmed that neither crumb nor crust could be wasted. In October 1917 food control committees started to regulate the consumption of meat, sugar and flour and prepared for rationing as food supply and distribution became the critical test of endurance on the British home front.76 Structural change in agricultural output and wages under the Corn Production Act was less apparent in Scotland. In 1913 the decline in arable cultivation of mainly oats with some wheat and barley, using the comparator of 1888, was 10 per cent, compared to 25 per cent in England. Extensive dairy herds in west and southwest Scotland on protected grass land had secure home markets. The shortening of six-year rotations of temporary grass, or ‘lea’, was less labourintensive than breaking-up permanent grass. Oats production increased by 200,000 acres, or 25 per cent in 1918, compared to 1917. Mountain and hill grazing increased by an additional 500,000 acres in 1918, and shepherds remained on the farms.77 Moreover, compulsory wages boards were resisted by the Scottish Farm Servants Union and the National Farmers Union Scotland, which continued to negotiate local agreements.78 In the lowland region, skilled farm servants benefited from the stable high wage economy, unlike the ‘“glad-to-take-anything” approach of English labour’.79 The ‘recognition and esteem’ of agricultural labourers in Wales was enhanced by the guaranteed minimum wage.80 In the Highlands crofters and cottars found ‘spaces of assertion’. Extended grazing rights for sheep runs in deer forests were sometimes acquired through DORA. Dismantled boundary fences in congested crofting districts seemed 74 75 76
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J. Porter, The Farm and the Nation (Hereford: Jakeman and Carver, 1918), p. 1. The Times, 21 July 1917, Victory Linked with the Harvest, p. 3. The Times, 6 October 1917, Potatoes in Bread, p. 6; The Times, 27 October 1917, Mr Prothero on the Food Shortage, p. 3. J. P. Maxton, ‘Rural Scotland during the War’, p. 71; Conacher, ‘Scottish Agriculture with Special Reference to Food Production’, pp. 132, 169, 173–4; C. H. Lee, ‘The Scottish Economy and the First World War’, in C. M. M. Macdonald and E. W. McFarland (eds.), Scotland and the Great War, (East Linton, East Lothian: Tuckwell Press, 1999), pp. 11–35, at pp. 15, 17. R. Anthony, ‘The Scottish Agricultural Labour Market, 1900–1939: A Case of Institutional Intervention’, The Economic History Review, 46:3 (1993), pp. 558–74 at pp. 563–4. Maxton, ‘Rural Scotland during the War’. p. 73. K. O. Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation: Wales 1880–1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 172.
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but a quickening of the Small Landholders (Scotland) Act (1911), as the Board of Agriculture for Scotland started to establish land settlements.81 In the longer chronology of land expropriation and restitution in the Scottish Highlands, crofters and cottars expected land acquisition to follow enlistment, ‘We were promised these farms when we fought and bled for it’.82 On the British home front ‘Speeding up on the farm’ became a stateendorsed duty. In January 1917 the Agricultural Machinery branch of the Ministry of Munitions began to coordinate labour supply. Its advisory committee for ‘Field munitions’ included E. C. Ransome of Ipswich, R. H. Fowler of Leeds and Percival Perry of British Ford.83 Lee’s celebrated telegraph order for 10,000 Ministry of Munitions tractors from Henry Ford and Company, which built a new factory at Detroit for the purpose, reflected the government’s purchasing power, import controls and promotion of innovatory practice.84 By April 1918, 5,000 tractors were supplied to the Ministry of Munitions. The Fordson Model F tractor was subsequently assembled at Trafford Park, using components which were shipped across the North Atlantic. Dependent on automobile parts of varying reliability, a large radiator helped to keep the vehicle on the ground, which pulled a two-furrow plough. In 1917–18 the FRD Cultivation Branch deployed 4,200 tractors, 66 steam tackle sets, 438 threshing machines, 4,720 reapers and binders, and 10,000 horses.85 Yet in 1917, Sir William Rothenstein’s lithograph Ploughing in his series Work on the Land featured time-honoured two-horse teams, supplemented by a steam locomotive. A commentary on the exhibition of the series The Great War and Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, at the National Museum of Wales in 2014, in which Rothenstein’s prints were included said, ‘These works are simple and understated, in contrast to the busyness and modernity of war shown in many of the other prints in the series.’ Later in 1917, he tried to paint a steel works in Sheffield, but ‘the noise and heat defeated me’.86
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I. J. M. Robertson, ‘Spaces of Assertion: Informal land Occupations in the Scottish Highlands after 1914’, Journal of Historical Geography, 53 (2016), pp. 45–53, at pp. 49–52. E. A. Cameron and I. J. M. Robertson, ‘Fighting and Bleeding for the Land: the Scottish Highlands and the Great War’ in C. M. M. Macdonald and E. W. McFarland (eds.), Scotland and the Great War, pp. 81–102, at p. 97. The Times, 10 January 1917, Field ‘Munitions’, p. 5; P. E. Dewey, British Agriculture in the First World War (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 149. A. Clark (ed.), ‘A Good Innings’. The Private Papers of Viscount Lee of Fareham (London: John Murray, 1974), p. 167. Ernle, English Farming, p. 404; Middleton, ‘Farming of the UK in Peace and in War’, p. 1201. Rothenstein, Men and Memories 1900–1922, p. 346; National Museum of Wales exhibition 2014, The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, https://museum.wales/articles/ 2014–08-02/The-Great-War-and-Britains_Efforts-and-Ideals (accessed 18/10/2018).
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Figure 10.1 On the land: ploughing, lithograph by Archibald Standish Hartrick, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 55, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917.
The limiting factors for harvesting were agricultural labour supply and weather conditions [see Fig. 10.1]. In 1917, ‘good corn day[s], wind and sun’ were assiduously reported by country diarists.87 Prothero calculated that agricultural labour depletion was much greater in the German war than it had been in the Napoleonic Wars.88 In June 1916, the Board of Agriculture summarised that one-third, or 300,000 farm workers, left farm work after August 1914.89 In Scotland 28 per cent of farm workers enlisted by July 1917, and 36 per cent by July 1918.90 Precise calculations varied, but there were shortages of ploughmen, shepherds and horsemen and scarcities of
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Phizackerley, G. (ed.), The Diaries of Maria Gyte of Sheldon Derbyshire 1913–1920 (Cromford: Scarthin Books, 1999), 21 September 1917, p. 145. Ernle, English Farming, p. 399; Ernle, ‘The Food Campaign of 1916–18’, p. 9. Strutt, Scott and Roberts, British Agriculture, pp. 87, 75. Conacher, ‘Scottish Agriculture with Special Reference to Food Production’, p. 204.
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blacksmiths, harness-makers, wheelwrights and saddlers. In Ireland, sufficient agricultural labour in 1917–18 arose from the non-application of Military Service legislation, decreased emigration and homeward bound small-holders.91 Tillage increased in Ireland in 1917 by 637,402 acres over 1916 and in 1918 by 839,167 acres.92 In June 1917, Milner announced that 70,000 soldiers already lent to agriculture from the Home Army remained available for late sowing and the hay and corn harvests.93 These ‘farm soldiers’ were deployed in agricultural companies, each of 250 men, with government reaper-binders. A Shropshire farmer reported, ‘one of the men I got was a piano tuner, I could knock nothing into him’.94 Additionally, the CWAEC urged farmers to employ prisoners of war, ‘resident village women’, the Women’s Land Army (WLA) and school-leavers. Resident village women were the largest source of non-government replacement labour and the least well documented. They were seasonally or hourly paid, without boot or clothes allowances, and worked on the land before 1914 despite the ‘respectability’ ideology, which condemned fieldwork and emphasised the ‘lighter branches of agriculture’, such as dairying and fruitgrowing.95 A decline by one-quarter of women who were permanently employed in agriculture from July 1914 to July 1915 reflected better conditions and higher pay in market towns, where agricultural engineering works produced munitions. Village women were reluctant to register with the Women’s War Agricultural Committees, which were formed by the County War Agricultural Committees in February 1916. The bottle green armlet, with scarlet crown, issued to land workers appeared not to have been prized. Female employment included hoeing, weeding, root pulling and carting, hedging and ditching, stacking and threshing corn.96 In November 1918, 14 per cent of the agricultural workforce were women, compared to 10 per cent in July 1914.97 Milner acknowledged the vital role of women land 91
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International Institute of Agriculture, ‘The Maintenance of the Agricultural Labour Supply in Ireland’ [T. P. Gill], International Review of Agricultural Economics, 11 (1922), pp. 777–93, at p. 777. International Institute of Agriculture, ‘The Maintenance of the Agricultural Labour Supply in Ireland’, p. 779. TNA CAB 23/3/17 War Cabinet minutes, 26 June 1917; TNA CAB 23/3/18 War Cabinet minutes, 27 June 1917; The Times 28 June 1917, Labour for the Land, p. 6. N. Mansfield, English Farmworkers and Local Patriotism, 1900–1930 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), p. 125. Anon. ‘Women’s Work in Agriculture in Peace and War’, The Journal of the Board of Agriculture, 22:9 (1915), pp. 859–66, at pp. 865–6. N. Verdon, ‘Left Out in the Cold: Village Women and Agricultural Labour in England and Wales during the First World War’, Twentieth Century British History, 27: 1 (2016), pp. 1–25, at p. 24. D. Thom, ‘Women and Work in Wartime Britain’, in R. Wall and J. Winter (eds.), The Upheaval of War: Family Work and Welfare in Europe 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 297–326: p. 319.
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workers, when he appealed for an additional 20,000–30,000 volunteers in June 1917. The WLA is more prominently located in the historiography of the British home front, although an appeal in January 1917 for 40,000 full-time volunteers was never entirely fulfilled. It numbered 16,000 in September 1918.98 Uniformed female workers on national minimum wages, away from their urban homes, became the embodiment of rural reconstruction.99 A literature of incredulity and whimsicality depicted Land Girls in khaki breeches, overcoats and boots and wrote of their specialist skills in thatching, threshing, the care of horses and motor mechanics. Complete official records of substitute labour on farms are problematic, but the Labour Branch of the Board of Agriculture claimed to have supplied 72,247 soldiers, 30,405 prisoners of war, 3,904 War agricultural volunteers, 15,000 public schoolboys and 430 other labourers for a total of 121,986 by the armistice.100 The Women’s Division provided 300,000 part-time workers, in addition to the WLA. Auxiliary labour has received much attention, but the significance of family labour productivity on small farms has also emerged in microhistories of farm and parish records. On upland farms near Penrith, resourcefulness and adaptability ‘kept the wheels of the farm in motion’. Labour-intensive wheat, oats, barley and potato production involved long working hours, dual employment and capital depreciation.101 In his search for ‘golden cornfields’ in 1917, A. H. Savory, tenant farmer and pamphleteer, was distracted by dilapidated farm buildings, which belonged to a bygone age.102 Severe labour shortages on upland farms were exacerbated by ploughing-up fields in isolated locations, but reluctance to accept substitution did not diminish in these local worlds.103 Other sources of agricultural labour included 11,794 old age pensioners, 2,000 aliens and 200 conscientious objectors. Six hundred thousand children over twelve years were released early for farm work by 1917.104 Nature studies turned into foraging work and adjusted school holidays facilitated haymaking, harvesting and potato picking. Harvesting by spade increased the number of allotments from 530,000 in 1917 to 1,400,000 in 1918 through part-time cultivation. The ploughing-up 98 99
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Verdon, ‘Left Out in the Cold’, p. 5; Howkins, Reshaping Rural England, p. 264. S. R. Grayzel, ‘Nostalgia, Gender, and the Countryside: Placing the “Land Girl” in First World War Britain’, Rural History, 10:2 (1999), pp. 155–70, at pp. 167–8. Middleton, ‘Farming of the UK in Peace and in War’, p. 1201; P. Dewey, ‘Agricultural Labour Supply in England and Wales during the First World War’, Economic History Review, 28 (1975), pp. 100–12, at pp. 107, 109. H. Crowe, ‘“Keeping the Wheels of the Farm in Motion”: Labour Shortages in the Uplands during the First World War’, Rural History, 19:2 (2008), pp. 201–16, at p. 212. A. H. Savory, The Nakedness of the Land (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1917), p. 70. H. Crowe, ‘Profitable Ploughing of the Uplands? The Food Production Campaign in the First World War’, Agricultural History Review, 55:2 (2007), pp. 205–28, at p. 226. Howkins, Reshaping Rural England, p. 270.
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of commons, roadside waste, playing fields and village greens generated local debates on the effects of attritional war. In December 1917, the Cabinet Committee on Manpower concluded that labour priority for food production, shipbuilding, forestry, the navy and air force restricted the supply of Category ‘A’ Men to the army to 100,000, whereas 615,000 were sought by the War Office.105 Skilled ploughmen of military age became vital war workers, akin to aeronautical engineers, coal miners and hull construction workers. But the ‘strain of war’ at the FRD in March 1918 was the ‘deadliest secret of the war’.106 An imperilled western front demanded that agriculturalists join the army. Milner asserted, ‘I look on food as I do Ships & coal as among the indispensables.’ He feared that 3 million acres of ploughed-up grass land might not ‘grow something’.107 Resurgent opposition from ‘Die-hard Landlords’ deemed the 1918 programme ‘impracticable’ and the ‘full Forward Programme’ for additional arable acreage in 1919 was suspended in July 1918.108 Lee’s resignation followed and Prothero concluded that the strain in mid-1918 exceeded that of the Napoleonic War.109 Fifty-two per cent more wheat, 41 per cent more oats and 57 per cent more potatoes were grown in England and Wales in 1918, when compared to 1905–14.110 But fodder for stock and hay output fell, meat production was reduced by 90,000–110,000 tons and livestock product rationing ensued.111 The area under tillage in Great Britain increased from 10.23 million acres in 1916 to 12.36 million in 1918. Permanent grass land was reduced by 9 per cent and temporary grass by 20 per cent during these years. Wheat production was extended from 1.97 million acres in 1917 to 2.64 million acres in 1918 to reach the highest recorded extent since 1882.112 Oat production was extended from 3.07 million acres in 1917 to 4.02 million acres in 1918. Prothero highlighted the achievement of increased home food output, with a diminished agricultural labour force.113 War-like activity on British hilltops remained dissonant scenes. On a tour to inspect National Trust properties in 1918, Canon Rawnsley climbed Kymin
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W. Robertson, Soldiers and Statesmen, 2 vols., vol. 1 (London: Cassell, 1926), Cabinet Committee on Manpower, December 1917, p.317. Clark, A Good Innings, p. 176. CCAC Hankey mss. HNKY 4/10, Lord Milner to M. Hankey, 25 April 1918. BLO Milner mss. Dep. 45, Arthur Lee to Lord Milner, 1 June 1917; TNA WO 32/9557, R. E. Prothero to Lord Milner, 7 May 1918 & A. C. Geddes to Lord Milner, 4 May 1918. Clark, A Good Innings, diary entries, 13 June 1918, p. 179 and 14 July 1918, pp. 180–1. Lord Ernle, ‘Agriculture during Two Great Wars: 1793–1815 and 1914–18’, The Journal of the Ministry of Agriculture, 27:3 (1920), pp. 227–40, at p. 239. Middleton, ‘Farming of the UK in Peace and in War’, p. 1202. Ernle, English Farming, p. 407. Ibid., p. 405; Howkins, Reshaping Rural England, p. 267. Ernle, ‘Agriculture during Two Great Wars’, p. 239.
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Hill, Monmouth, ‘Tranquil as the panorama was, a note of war was sounded by the rose-pink newly-ploughed lands high upon the ridge of Buck Holt Hill’.114 Food producers, both country dwellers and labour substitutes, weathered a war of long duration by facing the timeless daily realities of climate, environment and disease and lived ‘on the very edge of nature’.115 The ‘country worth fighting for’, so evident in recruiting posters in 1915, had renewed significance in 1918 as county councils and war-suffused benefactors founded farm colonies and rededicated amenity landscapes in remembrance of the fallen. Land settlement schemes presumed that ex-servicemen and women returned to their home districts, no longer trespassers in the countryside.116 Discharged soldiers and sailors wanted small-holdings, agricultural training and sanitary cottages to pursue the natural life.117 Agricultural co-operatives, such as Vanguard Farm near Maidstone, proposed to realise the ex-soldiers’ dream [see Fig. 10.2]. War experience brought heightened awareness of nature and a widely acknowledged entitlement to become small producers, who would possess their own trenches.118 However, political disunity on the purpose and duration of the Corn Production Act denied an agrarian settlement which transcended war and peace. News from farms, parishes and districts informed the politics of cereal production, the rediscovery of harvesting by political institutions and the evidence base available to agricultural ‘leading hustlers’. The ‘old culture’ of farm size, soil conditions, hierarchical social relations and abundant lore were confronted by new war bureaucracies, such as CWAEC and food control committees, but ‘Blighty’ was a differentiated place.119 Sense-making through local belonging and decision-making in country districts remained intact. Negotiations at field margins translated the peaceful activity of tillage into essential war work and the shared experiential knowledge of ploughing-up became instruments of national food safety. Useful historical knowledge at the Board of Agriculture facilitated the long view. Agriculturalists warned that food production should not be forgotten in ‘next war’ planning. In this respect the relationship of country dwellers to their districts had changed. George 114 115
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H. D. Rawnsley, A Nation’s Heritage (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1920), p. 40. C. Phythian-Adams, ‘Rural Culture’, in G. E. Mingay (ed.), The Victorian Countryside, 2 vols., vol. 2, pp. 621–5, at p. 623, p. 621. Mrs Humphry Ward, England’s Effort: Six Letters to an American Friend (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1916), p. 98; Country Life, 18 May 1918, p. 456. Strutt, Scott and Roberts, British Agriculture, p. 41; J. Galsworthy, The Land: A Plea (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1918), p. 10; Munson, Echoes of the Great War, 10 April 1917, p. 189. C. Dakers, The Countryside at War 1914–18 (London: Constable, 1987), p. 197; G. L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 107. D. Matless, Landscape and Englishness (London: Reaktion Books, 1998), pp. 16–17.
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Figure 10.2 His dream realised, lithograph by Winifred Russell Roberts, 1918, for the Vanguard Farm for our severely disabled soldiers and sailors. Imperial War Museum PST 10831.
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Sturt, the wheelwright diarist near Farnham, wrote presciently on 11 November 1914, ‘after the war, we shall turn to the country (shall we not?) in an altered mood, no longer as loving parishioners, but as citizens of the world, doomed to look upon the valleys with a keener eye to their use to the Nation’.120
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E. D. Mackerness (ed.), The Journals of George Sturt 1890–1927, 2 vols., vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 11 November 1914, p. 711.
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11 Coal
The British coal industry was central to the war effort. Industry, including most crucially the manufacture of munitions, needed coal. The railways shifted its products and were essential for the movement of troops. Military operations depended on coal, most notably the provision of South Wales steam coal to the fleet. A reliable and affordable supply for household consumption was vital for both warmth and morale. Much of the export market had vanished in August 1914, but coal was provided to the French whose own coalfields were largely under German occupation. The challenge for the government and the industry is evident in the basic statistics. Production had peaked in 1913 at 287 million tons produced by a workforce of 1,118,000. By 1918, production was 60 million tons less, a drop only partially compensated for by a halving of the output exported. The workforce had fallen by over 100,000; output per man-shift had declined from 20.32 cwt to 17.75. The average selling price at the pithead had doubled. Rumours abounded of fabulous profits. State intervention was inevitable. Any effective response to the problem of output necessitated the co-operation of the workforce and the involvement of its trade union representatives.1 On 3 May 1915, Herbert Asquith, in his final days as the last Liberal prime minister, became involved reluctantly in wage negotiations within the coal industry. He did not want to burn his fingers in ‘that very combustible milieu’. He reflected ruefully that whatever decision he made would be unpopular with one side and probably with both.2 Nine months into the war the state was increasingly involved in the industry. The railways had come under state control at the start of hostilities: in contrast the state’s intervention in coal was an example of disjointed incrementalism.
1
2
Barry Supple, The History of the British Coal Industry Vol 4 1913–1946 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), ch. 2–4. For earlier studies see G. D. H. Cole, Labour in the Coal Mining Industry 1914–1921 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923); R. A. S Redmayne, The British Coal Industry in the War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923). H.H. Asquith to Venetia Stanley, 3 May 1915, H.H. Asquith: Letters to Venetia Stanley, Michael and Eleanor Brock (eds.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 581.
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Behind the aggregate figures the most remarkable characteristic of the industry was its diversity. Some coalfields such as Lancashire were ageing; in contrast in south Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire companies were sinking new deep pits with high capital investment.3 Miners in Fife, the northeast and South Wales were heavily involved in production for export. Elsewhere the output fuelled domestic industry, the railways and households. The tyranny of geology meant huge variations in working conditions. Thin seams with narrow cramped headroom meant that life for face workers could be claustrophobic. Mechanisation at the face was as yet very limited. Most coal production depended on the strength and pit craft of the hewers. Productivity was a problem, falling year on year with increased output achieved through the expansion of the workforce. Wage costs became an increasingly sensitive issue not least in South Wales where geology was unpredictable and price fluctuations in export markets were endemic. Employers were predictably in favour of the existing system where wages and conditions were determined at District level through Conciliation Boards. Power lay therefore with their District organisations; the Mining Association of Great Britain was largely confined to the role of publicist. The industry’s diversity similarly shaped the pattern of trade union organisation. The Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (hereafter MFGB) officials were few and part-time. Post holders were employed by District unions. This pattern reflected the basis of mining trade unionism. Most of the funds raised from members stayed with the District unions with their numerous full-time officials and judiciously accumulated resources. The peculiar features of each coalfield shaped the work experiences and expectations of miners. They addressed the challenges of geology and management through distinctive working practices; their wages determined at District level were shaped by a history that incorporated the conflicts and accommodations of past decades. For the less advantaged Districts a powerful MFGB could appear attractive; prosperous Districts could fear that a more centralised union and policy could threaten their comparative advantage. The MFGB had held its first national strike on the principle of a national minimum wage early in 1912. D. H. Lawrence, returning briefly to strikebound Eastwood in the relatively prosperous Nottinghamshire coalfield captured this tension in a brief piece, “The Miner at Home.” Gertie Bower confronts her husband who is supportive of the proposed stoppage. ‘It’s them blessed Yorkshire an’ Welsh colliers as does it . . . what wi’ talkin’ an’ spoutin’,
3
For the Yorkshire case, see Carolyn Baylies, The History of the Yorkshire Miners1881–1918 (London: Routledge, 1993), ch. 10.
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they hardly know which side their back-side hangs’.4 The 1912 strike demonstrated, however, that across the diversity, solidarity was possible. The Asquith government legislated to establish the principle of a minimum wage. But substantive negotiations would occur at District level. In August 1914, movement towards national wage bargaining was a priority for the MFGB. Robert Smillie, the Federation’s first socialist President had succeeded the genial Liberal Enoch Edwards in 1912 and could be seen as personifying a more assertive agenda. He was thoroughly committed to the ethical socialism of the Independent Labour Party. His socialism was complemented by the legacy of his early years as a trade unionist in Lanarkshire. He had experienced how ethnic and religious differences eroded miners’ solidarity; in consequence he developed a keen awareness that unity was always brittle and must be protected and nurtured with sensitivity. He applied this concept to his Presidency of the MFGB with its multiple and sometimes contumacious identities. The wartime imperative for high output was confronted by the impact of miners’ patriotism. By the end of February 1915, 18 per cent of the pre-war workforce had volunteered for military service. The proportion for the nineteen to thirty-eight age group was 40 per cent. The ranks of the young productive miners central to the winning of coal were depleted. Their skills were not easily replaceable. After a year of war, enlistment from the industry was around 250,000. The consequences were all too apparent. By 1915 employment in the industry had fallen to less than 954,000. Productivity increased but output fell from 265.7 million tons in 1914 to 253.2 million the following year. This thoroughly patriotic response was combined with a robust defence of established and often hard-won conditions. The legislative eight -hour day for underground workers had been secured in 1908; pressure for miners’ flexibility on the principle was unsuccessful. The rising cost of living and evidence of coal owners’ escalating profits precipitated a wage demand by the MFGB in spring 1915. Since inflation affected all miners equally, any wage demand based on the cost of living inevitably raised the issue of national as opposed to District settlements. Predictably the owners rejected any hint of a national settlement; eventually the Federation agreed to accept the reluctant Asquith as arbitrator. The prime minister’s decision dismayed the MFGB; he felt a wage increase was justified but ruled that this should be determined at District level. The subsequent bargaining produced increases averaging 10 per cent but with significant variations between Districts. The South Wales Miners’ Federation (hereafter SWMF) had acquiesced reluctantly in the MFGB’s acceptance of arbitration. They stood by their 4
D. H. Lawrence, ‘The Miner at Home’, in Love Among the Haystacks and Other Stories (London: Penguin 1996), p. 125. The piece was originally published in The Nation, 16 March 1912.
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demand for an extensive new agreement. The coalfield had become more polarised in the immediate pre-war years with the growth of large amalgamations whose impersonal managements were keen to hold down labour costs. The consequential confrontations, most famously at Tonypandy, had engendered an image of South Wales as a radicalising coalfield where young miners were inspired by doctrines promulgated through Plebs League classes. The League was associated with the Central Labour College that had been formed as a breakaway from Ruskin College Oxford in 1909. The CLC and the League offered a self-consciously working-class education in response to what radicals dismissed as the bourgeois compromises of Ruskin. Yet their influence within the SWMF was limited. The union’s older leaders were impeccably respectable, personified by sartorially elegant William Brace, a recent appointment to the Asquith coalition government. Younger officials such as Vernon Hartshorn were emerging as community leaders, articulating a socialist commitment within the effective employment of rule governed procedures.5 The SWMF members who pushed for their programme were no less patriotic than their counterparts in other coalfields. Their resolve was inspired essentially by a demand for decent treatment, a demand they pursued against the opposition of both local union officials and the wider MFGB. The deadlock in South Wales was complicated by wider political developments. David Lloyd George, with the formation of the coalition had moved from the Treasury, to become Minister of Munitions. His Munitions of War Act became law on 2 July 1915. This legislation outlawed strikes and imposed compulsory arbitration in industries central to the war effort. The MFGB was opposed to compulsory arbitration; they were prepared to make a voluntary commitment. The Act meant that any strike in the coal industry was vulnerable to prosecution. On 12 July a SWMF conference voted decisively against the advice of the union’s officials to strike in three days’ time. The next day the government proclaimed the strike illegal. The futility of this intervention was clear when 200,000 miners stopped work. Whatever the hostility of politicians and the press and the uneasiness of their own officials, the strikers held the trump card. The coalfield supplied steam coal to the fleet. Lloyd George hurried to Cardiff and the miners won their main demands. When ambiguous elements in the settlement were clarified they achieved further gains. The need
5
The complexities are addressed in Hywel Francis and David Smith, The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980), ch. 1; Peter Stead, ‘The Language of Edwardian Politics’, in David Smith(ed.), A People and a Proletariat Essays in the History of Wales 1780–1980 (London: Pluto, 1980), pp. 148–65; Eddie May, ‘The Mosaic of Labour Politics 1900–1918” and Richard Lewis “Political Culture and Ideology 1900–1918’, in Duncan Tanner, Chris Williams and Deian Hopkin (eds.), The Labour Party in Wales 1900–2000 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press Cardiff, 2000), pp. 61–85, 86–109.
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for coal, the inflexibility of the South Wales owners and the effectiveness of the miners’ demand for fair treatment had produced a ministerial climb down with Lloyd George’s panache acting as cosmetic.6 The drama demonstrated to the MFGB that the industry’s importance gave the union a strong hand in any negotiations. For ministers, the intervention was perhaps a decisive moment in the state’s growing responsibility for the industry. Involvement had begun early in 1915 with the Coal Mining Organisation Committee. This initiative was purely advisory with three members each from the Mining Association of Great Britain and the MFGB with a neutral chair. Discussions were inevitably couched in national terms rather than reflecting the fragmentation that characterised the industry. Throughout 1916, industrial relations problems continued in South Wales. At the end of November that strategically vital coalfield came under state control, one of the last acts of the Asquith coalition. State control of the entire industry was announced by the Lloyd George coalition on 19 December.7 The justification was efficiency of supply. The coal controller, Guy Calthrop, general manager of the London and North-Western Railway, headed a small organisation within the Board of Trade. An Advisory Board brought together representatives of the Miners Association of Great Britain and the MFGB. The direct running of the industry remained the preserve of the employers. The crucial advance for the MFGB was that negotiations over wages and conditions would be with the coal controller. Progress on a wage demand was slow through the summer of 1917 but in September, following the hint of a strike, the MFGB settled for a cost-of-living increase of 1s6d. The Federation had achieved a national settlement for the first time. The increase applied to all workers across all coalfields. Since the justification was the cost of living, the financial circumstances of specific Districts were irrelevant. Excess profits were taken from prosperous Districts to help fund increases elsewhere through the creation of a profits pool. In June 1918, the MFGB demanded a doubling of this cost-of-living bonus. An initial offer of 6d was dismissed by the Federation. Smillie suggested that this would lead to ‘collieries stopping and mass meetings being held outside of our influence altogether’.8 The MFGB demand was rapidly agreed. These advances on a national cash basis which also narrowed differentials were presided over by a president who continued to maintain his internationalism, and opposed conscription and militarism, whatever its source. He focused on the union’s
6 7
8
Supple, History of the British Coal Industry, pp. 62–70. A MFGB deputation met Lloyd George on 22 December 1916. The discussion can be found in MFGB Records 1916 (National Union of Mineworkers Offices, Barnsley). Smillie’s comment was at a meeting with the Coal Controller on 25 June 1918, Minutes are in MFGB Records 1918.
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industrial objectives, and divisive issues around the war had to be effectively marginalised. This strategy became more challenging when the MFGB confronted issues of military conscription and manpower. The introduction of the Military Service Bill early in 1916 posed problems within the MFGB, as it did across the entire labour movement. The extension of conscription to married men deepened the divisions. A Nottinghamshire official, George Spencer, suggested that a patriotic membership found their views poorly represented in the MFGB’s discussions ‘Any man who knows the rank and file knows that it is the leaders and not the rank and file who want converting’. Smillie might warn of the growth of British militarism, but he also warned South Walians against organising protests should the Bill become law. ‘The Federation in matters of this kind ought to act as a whole’.9 Smillie’s maxim would be thoroughly tested over the persistent military demand for more men. The Military Service Acts had resulted in the exemption from conscription of miners in key sectors. Yet the pressure from the military continued. In January 1917 unskilled surface workers and all who had entered the industry since August 1915 became eligible for military service. Socalled habitual absentees were pursued. MFGB objections produced a twomonth grace period. Further pressure in June led to the Federation accepting a ‘comb out’ of men who had entered the industry since the outbreak of war. In January 1918, the Minister for National Service, Auckland Geddes, demanded 50,000 more men from the coal industry, backed by a further 50,000 in reserve. Some including the president had always opposed conscription; others backed any demand that might hasten an Allied victory. Many sought a compromise. A Federation conference at the end of February exposed the fissures that had been subordinated to the MFGB’s industrial agenda. The SWMF opposed the Government’s demand. One of its delegates responded to forceful advocacy of the ‘comb out’. ‘We have got back into the region of hysteria’.10 Delegates decided by a narrow margin to ballot the membership on the acceptability of the ‘comb-out’. The MFGB conference reconvened on 21 March, just as a major German offensive began in France. The ballot intended to resolve a deadlock had offered no solution. The ‘comb out’ was rejected by a narrow margin – 250,721 to 221,152. Officials discovered that positions they had presented on behalf of their Districts were not necessarily shared by their members. South Wales opposed the ‘comb out’ but only by a majority of just over 2,000 in a total vote of over 124,000. Lancashire officials had supported the ‘comb out’; their members rejected the policy by over two to one. In a military crisis and
9 10
MFGB Conference, 9, 10 May 1916, Spencer’s comment at p. 62, Smillie’s at p. 91. MFGB Conference 27 February 1918, comment at p. 43 by George Barker.
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lacking a basis for effective resistance, the Federation Executive recommended acquiescence in government policy.11 These military demands for more men were directed to a strategically vital industry in which output was declining. The workforce had increased from the nadir of 1915 to around a million in each of the three subsequent years. Output, having risen slightly in 1916, fell to 248.5 million tonnes in 1917 and would be down to 227.5 million in 1918. The response of the state controlled railways to such demands was to cut unprofitable facilities, ration duplicating competitive services and lower maintenance standards. The coal industry lacked equivalent options. The Coal Controller responded to these demands with one of his own – the return to the pits of 25,000 qualified miners. In October 1918, with the Central Powers’ resistance disintegrating, the government agreed to the release of 50,000 miners; the alternative would have been industrial coal rationing. In what proved to be the final months of the war, miners could feel optimistic about the future. State control had given their union an enhanced status in Whitehall, and coal’s strategic importance had facilitated the union’s industrial agenda. Established workplace customs had been protected, wage increases had been substantial (albeit not fully compensating for inflation), and these increases had been national not District awards. For many, state involvement was seen not as a temporary wartime measure but as the foundation for public ownership of the industry. The MFGB annual conference in July 1918 carried a South Wales resolution not just for public ownership but for joint control; delegates also demanded that the eight-hour day be reduced to six and that all wartime wage increases should be retained. Optimism was reflected in the MFGB’s increased membership, 673,000 in 1914, almost 100,000 more four years later and still on an upward curve. The Federation’s institutional response was to strengthen its central organisation. The Federation office moved from Manchester to London and the presidency and secretaryship became fulltime positions. Smillie remained as president, but Thomas Ashton, a thoroughly competent, if taciturn, Lancastrian, retired as secretary. He had held the post since the MFGB’s foundation in 1889. He had no interest in visionary agendas. His objective was simply ‘to see these lads right’.12 In contrast, Ashton’s elected replacement, Frank Hodges from South Wales was fluent and self-confident. Thirty-one years old, his meteoric rise contrasted with the characteristically slow ascent of union officials from underground through lodge to District office. He had won a scholarship to Ruskin College, transferred to the more radical Central Labour College in London, and spent three months at the Foyeur de l’Ouvrier (a socialist 11
12
The ballot result by District and the subsequent discussions are in MFGB Special Conference, 20 and 22 March 1918. Manchester Guardian, 14 January 1927.
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educational hostel) in Paris. Returning to South Wales he was elected as a miners’ agent aged twenty-five. Hodges could be seen as a personification of radical South Wales, but his position was complex. A strong supporter of the July 1915 strike he had been highly visible on recruiting platforms. In late 1918, whatever his complexities, he could seem expressive of the MFGB’s forward agenda.13 The Federation programme referred to co-operation with the Labour Party to ensure passage of the necessary legislation on public ownership. The District Unions had always been committed to political action for the furtherance of appropriate legislation. The 1884 Reform Act had enfranchised many miners and from the following year, District Unions, especially in the northeast, South Wales and Yorkshire had had some success in returning MPs under Liberal auspices. These achievements made most Districts reluctant to support independent Labour initiatives. The only exceptions were in Lancashire and Scotland where sectarian divisions hampered the election of Liberal Miners’ candidates. Industrial tensions and Liberal inflexibility towards more Miners’ candidates produced two ballots on whether the MFGB should affiliate to the Labour Party. The second, in October 1908, showed a majority in favour and the Federation duly affiliated from New Year’s Day 1909. Liberal Miners’ MPs were expected to shift to Labour. Three in the northeast refused; several others transferred in name only. A few were subsequently expelled from the Labour Party. The problem for the Federation and the Party was that the ballot majority owed much to shifts of opinion in South Wales and Yorkshire. The Midlands coalfields remained hostile or apathetic. Even in coalfields where the miners’ union backed the Labour Party, by-elections suggested that many miners did not. When miners voted in 1913 to establish a political fund under the Trade Union Act, the vote in favour of 261,643 to 194,800 demonstrated a sizeable minority opposed to what was widely understood as the funding of Labour candidates. Whatever the doubts amongst the membership, by 1914 the MFGB Executive was dominated by advocates – both enthusiasts and pragmatists – of Labour candidacies. In the absence of war an election would have been held by December 1915. The MFGB seemed likely to fund twenty-one candidates with perhaps a few more funded by the District.14 The Federation’s political ambitions were heightened by the experiences of war. Two Miners’ Members, William Brace and, later, Stephen Walsh, became Coalition Ministers. Union officials became involved in consultations with ministers and civil servants. At every level of the union’s work its members felt 13
14
Chris Williams, ‘The Odyssey of Frank Hodges’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion 1998, 5 (1999), pp. 110–30. Roy Gregory, The Miners and British Politics 1906–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968); Ross McKibbin, The Evolution of the Labour Party 1910–1924 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 54–62.
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Figure 11.1 Female pit brow workers at a Lancashire coal mine, September 1918. Photograph by George P. Lewis for the Ministry of Information. Imperial War Museum Q28302.
empowered. The wartime expansion of the franchise to include practically all men over twenty-one and most women over thirty was accompanied by a radical revision of constituency boundaries, the first since the mid-1880s. The outcome reflected demographic shifts that included the growth in the mining workforce and the geographical expansion of some coalfields. The number of seats where mining was a dominant occupation increased, especially in South Wales and Yorkshire. One estimate suggests that in 1921, twenty-nine constituencies had over 50 per cent of their male population over twelve employed in mining. If the qualification was lowered to 40 per cent. the number rose to forty-five.15 In some coalfields, most notably Lancashire, women worked on the pit-top, but overall paid employment for coalfield women was sparse [see Fig. 11.1]. Many acted as de facto unpaid employees of the coal companies. Their lives were dominated by the timetable of pit work. They provided baths and meals for husbands and sons. Work and often leisure were deeply
15
Michael Kinnear, The British Voter an Atlas and Survey since 1885 (London: Batsford 1981), pp. 118–20.
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gendered but in politics, men and women could act together to vote for a man who was one of their own. When Arthur Henderson resigned from the Lloyd George coalition in August 1917, he returned full-time to his post as Labour Party general secretary. Encouraged by franchise expansion, the prospect (never realised) of the alternative vote, and wartime growth in trade union membership, he sponsored and negotiated a major reconstruction of Labour Party institutions and programme. In meetings with the MFGB Executive and District Unions he urged that they play a full part in the funding of candidacies. The miners’ unions responded positively. The timing and circumstances of any election remained obscure. Henderson’s exit from the coalition had not ended Labour participation. Eight Labour Members including Brace and Walsh, remained in the Government. The MFGB played a significant role in the eventual separation between the Labour Party and the coalition. Charles Fenwick had represented Wansbeck as a Northumberland Miners’ Member since 1885. He had sat as a Liberal through to his death in May 1918. The Northumberland Miners claimed the right to nominate a successor and chose Ebby Edwards, an unambiguous supporter of the Labour Party. Continuity of miners’ representation mattered more than party label. The Northumberland Miners asked the Labour Party for its endorsement; the Party, supportive of the wartime by-election truce, refused support on the ground that Wansbeck was a Liberal seat16. Edwards stood as a Miners’ candidate backed by the local Labour organisation losing narrowly. The episode’s legacy proved to have far more than Northumbrian significance. A Labour Party conference on 30 June 1918 debated a recommendation from the Party executive that the truce be ended. Several trade unions, including the MFGB, backed the proposition. Smillie argued not only that the truce should be abandoned but that the party would be stronger outside the coalition.17 The proposal as such did not entail this step, but its passage predictably upset Labour ministers. As the war entered its final stages the issue of the Labour Party’s relationship to the coalition in an increasingly imminent election became urgent. Labour Ministers, including Brace and Walsh, and a majority of Labour MPs, favoured continuing support until the signing of a peace treaty. The latter included several Miners’ Members, not least Willie Adamson, chair of the parliamentary party. In contrast many within the wider party including influential figures in the miners’ unions favoured the party fighting any election as an independent force. A special party conference was called for 14 November to make a decision. A MFGB conference discussed the issue a week earlier. William Brace was initially optimistic that he would remain in 16
17
MFGB Executive 7 May 1918; Labour Party National Executive Committee 8, 9 May 1918. (People’s History Museum, Manchester). Labour Party Conference, 30 June 1918, Smillie at p. 33.
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government. He discussed his prospects with two sympathetic South Wales colleagues, Tom Richards and Vernon Hartshorn. They bolstered his optimism.18 Their expectations were misguided. Smillie’s ruling to delegates was that union policy was to contest the forthcoming election as an independent party. He was supported by James Winstone, from South Wales. ‘For years and years we have been advising and persuading our men. We have been asking them to pay money for the purpose of building up a Labour Party, and now it is coolly suggested by certain Members of Parliament – some of whom have positions in the capitalist Government – that we should give up everything we have been teaching and give the Coalition another five years of life.’ Herbert Smith spoke for the Yorkshire Miners. ‘Delay is dangerous. . .If this is not the time to push forward there never will be a time.’ Smillie’s chairmanship shaped the outcome but more significantly the MFGB had a credible expectation of expanding its parliamentary representation.19 The decision of the Labour Party conference to break with the coalition, bolstered by the MFGB vote, presented Brace and Walsh with a choice. Brace acted quickly; he resigned from the government, having made clear his continuing support for the idea of coalition but emphasising that for him the MFGB position was decisive.20 In contrast, Walsh rejected the party decision and insisted that as an employee of the Lancashire Miners, he would be guided by their position. Before the election a Lancashire Miners’ conference appeared to give him an acceptable degree of freedom. His only opponent in the Ince constituency was a member of the revolutionary Socialist Labour Party. His attacks on the left were uninhibited. Diatribes against Bolshevism were predictable, attacks on parliamentary colleagues such as Ramsay MacDonald and Phillip Snowden less so. He dismissed the idea propagated by Henderson and others, that the Labour programme offered an alternative to revolution. Rather it ‘is making for bloodshed and revolution. . .I for one will not be associated with it.’ He received over 87 per cent of the vote, but his rhetoric and backing for the coalition had aroused criticism in his District union. At a further conference, a resolution to give him three months’ notice as Agent was very narrowly lost on a card vote. Walsh had been offered a place in the post-election coalition. Following the Lancashire vote, he turned it down.21 The MFGB came out of the December 1918 election with twenty-five sponsored Members. Seven had sat in the wartime parliament. South Wales 18
19 20 21
Brace to Lloyd Gorge 8 November 1918, Lloyd George Papers F 5/64 (Parliamentary Archive, House of Lords Record Office). MFGB Conference, 9 November 1918, pp. 77–84, Winstone and Smith at p. 83. Brace to Lloyd George, 23 November 1918, Lloyd George Papers 5/6/6. Walsh’s response can be followed in Wigan Observer, 21 November 1918–18, January 1919.
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and Yorkshire showed the most significant advances, from four to eight and from two to five. Five of the South Wales Members were returned unopposed, perhaps as much an indication of their respectability as of the futility of opposition in constituencies dominated by coal. The most disappointing outcome for the MFGB was in Durham where several seats with significant mining populations were won by coalition supporters. In contrast, Nottinghamshire which had shown minimal interest in Labour representation before the war saw successes for two District officials. They were typical of the 1918 victors, and more broadly of many District officials, impeccably moderate men well integrated into rule governed procedures in a variety of institutions – trade union, local government and nonconformist. Playing by and mastering the rules could be effective as the MFGB ‘s wartime strategy had demonstrated. Such characteristics predictably produced criticism especially from some younger miners. They were impatient with cautious officials whose lifestyle protected them from the rigours of life in the pit. Some seemed too close to the employers. The 1912 pamphlet, The Miners’ Next Step, was the outcome of discussions amongst a group of talented South Wales activists. They argued that the democratisation of the SWMF would end the dominance of conservative officials. A chapter heading proclaimed, ‘Workmen the Bosses, Leaders the Servants.’ They believed that the ending of the officials’ oligarchy would lead to more radical policies.22 Although these sentiments secured some support in South Wales, and to a limited degree in some other coalfields, this reform movement stagnated in the year before the outbreak of war. Once the war began, South Wales radicals, with very few exceptions, were diplomatically silent on the issue of British involvement. The left in the coalfield began to revive after the July 1915 stoppage. Its influence grew with the threat of conscription and the subsequent controversy over the “comb out”. A. J. Cook, a SWMF activist within the Lewis-Merthyr combine, became increasingly outspoken. ‘As a worker I have more regard for the interests of my class than any nation. The interests of my class are not benefitted by this war, hence my opposition’.23 Such sentiments were also evident in Lanarkshire and Fife where Reform Committees became active. Early in 1918 the Lanarkshire Reform Committee instigated the removal of David Gilmour, the ultra-patriotic and long-established General Secretary of the Lanarkshire Union.24 Even in traditionally cautious 22
23 24
David Egan, ‘The Unofficial Reform Committee and the Miners’ Next Step’, Llafur, 2:3 summer (1978), pp. 64–80. Cited in Paul Davies, A. J. Cook (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), p. 27. For Scottish Reform Committees, see Alan Campbell, The Scottish Miners 1874–1939 Volume Two: Trade Unions and Politic (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), ch. 3: the Gilmour case is covered in Hamilton Advertiser, 23 February and 6 July 1918. For Durham, see
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Nottinghamshire a diverse network of socialists campaigned against their selfconsciously respectable officials. Radical rhetoric could mobilise significant support on specific issues; officials could respond with concessions, sometimes substantive, sometimes cosmetic.25 Support for such initiatives often proved evanescent. Cook’s attack on the ‘comb out’ was charged with radical optimism. ‘Comrades, let us take heart, there are thousands of miners in Wales who are prepared to fight for their class. War against war must be the workers’ cry’.26 The eventual MFGB ballot on the ‘comb-out’ of 50,000 miners revealed a South Wales coalfield evenly divided. The complexities of South Wales miners’ politics were apparent in the Rhondda.27 The redistribution of constituencies had given a second seat to the borough. In December 1918, both returned Labour members unopposed. W. J. Abraham, commonly known as Mabon, had been the Rhondda Member since 1885. His titular transfer from Liberal to Labour had left no mark on his politics. Within the SWMF he personified the consensual strategy condemned by radicals and viewed sceptically by many more. The second constituency returned David Watts Morgan, a SWMF agent. His organisational work to expand working-class representation in local government had meant conflict with the Rhondda’s increasingly beleaguered Liberal middle class. Such conflict for position did not entail an ideological rupture. Watts Morgan enlisted as a private soldier in 1914. He was rapidly commissioned, was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and was promoted to lieutenant colonel on his retirement. Rumours claimed that both candidates would be endorsed by the coalition. They confirmed that they were standing as Labour candidates, inevitable given that they were backed by the SWMF. Following his election to Westminster, Watts Morgan resigned as SWMF agent. By the time the election for a replacement was held in September 1919, Rhondda miners were perhaps increasingly supportive of industrial radicals. Cook emerged as the winner in an exhaustive ballot from a field of seventeen candidates. Noah Rees, the runner-up had been one of those responsible for The Miners’ Next Step. An earlier episode in the coalfield offered a route into the relationship between industrial solidarity and demonstrations of fervent pro-war sentiment. Four months after the SWMF strike victory in July 1915, a by-election was held in Merthyr Boroughs. The vacancy resulted from Keir Hardie’s death. The constituency returned two members. Hardie’s four victories had owed
25
26 27
Lewis H. Mates, The Great Labour Unrest Rank-and-File Movements and Political Change in the Durham Coalfield (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016). Martyn Ives, Reform Revolution and Direct Action amongst British Miners: The Struggle for the Charter in 1919 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), ch. 3–5. Davies, Cook, p. 27. Chris Williams, Democratic Rhondda Politics and Society 1885–1951 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996).
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much to the diversity within Liberalism and the weakness of Conservatism. He benefited from a coalition of trade unionists, socialists and those Liberals attracted by his Radical pedigree. Under the electoral truce the new Labour nominee could anticipate an unopposed return. The chosen candidate, James Winstone, was President of the SWMF and a pro-war member of the Independent Labour Party (hereafter ILP). His rival for the nomination was Charles Stanton, the miners’ agent for Aberdare. He resigned his union post to oppose Winstone. Before the war he had been an outspoken critic of the SWMF hierarchy. In 1914, the invective previously directed at employers and consensual trade union officials was turned against Germany and anyone within Britain who could be characterised as soft on the war. Locally his outrage was directed at the ILP. He caricatured his opponent as pro-German on account of his membership of the party. Their only substantive point of significant difference was conscription; like many within the labour movement in November 1915, Winstone was opposed. Stanton’s hyperbole and dishonesty constructed a misleading choice. He secured almost 63 per cent of the vote. The constituency’s complex electoral history hampered interpretation of the result. Stanton abjured complexity. He presented the outcome as a statement by authentic working-class voters whose views had allegedly been misrepresented by Labour leaders.28 Stanton proclaimed that ‘the boys in the trenches will be glad’, and brought what he insisted were the emotions of Merthyr and Aberdare to Westminster.29 In February 1916 he intervened in a debate on the possibility of a negotiated peace initiated by Phillip Snowden of the ILP. The move was backed by some sympathetic Liberals. In response, Stanton attacked those ‘permitted to spend their weekends in traducing their fellow countrymen and in belittling and besmirching the national Flag . . . These people ought to be muzzled . . . in their speeches they are simply breathing treachery. In the House of Commons there shall be no room for men who are doing anything of that sort.’ He was supported, albeit in more discreet terms, by the Miners’ Member, Stephen Walsh.30 The understanding of the Merthyr result as a statement of working-class patriotism was a potent factor in the formation of the British Workers’ League. This organisation, founded in March 1916, built upon the strongly patriotic Socialist Defence Committee. That body, with its vehemently pro-war trade unionists, had vigorously backed Stanton. The British Workers’ League enjoyed the enthusiastic support of Lord Milner. His vision of a reinvigorated 28
29 30
Merthyr Express, 6 November–27 November 1915; Anthony Mor-O’Brien, ‘The Merthyr Borough Election November 1915’, Welsh History Review (1985), pp. 76–104; for Stanton pre-war, see Stead ‘Language of Edwardian Politics’, pp. 161–4. Merthyr Express, 4 December 1915. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 23 February 1916, Col. 775; Walsh at Cols. 744–49.
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Conservatism, pursuing an agenda of modernisation from above, necessitated the weaning of patriotic Labour away from its Liberal roots. He successfully approached Waldorf Astor for funding. The League’s programme embraced unconditional support for the war, enthusiasm for empire and an agenda of domestic amelioration. Enemies at home included the Independent Labour Party, Liberals sceptical about the merits of all-out victory, and strikers. From 1917 Bolshevism would be a prominent addition. The British Workers’ League enrolled several trade union officials as vice-presidents. Miners’ officials were prominent – Stephen Walsh, David Gilmour and W. J. Abraham, James Robson from Durham, John Wadsworth from Yorkshire, and John Hancock, a Nottinghamshire official who sat in the Commons as a Liberal. In some coalfields, Nottinghamshire, south Yorkshire and Durham, the British Workers’ League established credible branches. Miners’ officials speaking on League platforms attacked positions taken by others within the MFGB, most notably their president.31 Such acrimony contrasted with the solidarity achieved by the MFGB on industrial issues and demonstrated how deeply the war had divided some mining communities. The ILP, pre-war, had won some support amongst younger Durham miners. Those who remained committed to the Party, advocating peace by negotiation and insisting on the rights of conscientious objectors, found their meetings disrupted. Within the Durham Miners’ Association there were moves to expel those who expressed sympathy with conscientious objectors. The fragmentation within communities extended to funerals, traditionally the most basic statement of community identity and solidarity. J. G. Winter, a conscientious objector, died in prison. When his body returned to the Deerness valley, only ILP members attended the funeral. Stones were thrown at the coffin; at the internment mourners sang the Red Flag to a chorus of catcalls.32 Miners’ officials’ formal involvement in the League ended because of its political agenda. For some such as Milner, the British Workers’ League had always offered the prospect of a realignment whereby a Labour split could mean patriotic Labour forming an alliance with modernising Conservatives. 31
32
Roy Douglas, ‘The National Democratic Party and the British Workers’ League’, Historical Journal 15 (1972), pp. 533–52; J. O. Stubbs, ‘Lord Milner and Patriotic Labour 1914–18’, English Historical Review (1972), pp. 717–54; David Howell, ‘The British Workers’ League (the National Democratic and Labour Party)’, in Keith Gildart and David Howell (eds.), Dictionary of Labour Biography Volume XV (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), pp. 271–87. The episode is from Robert Moore, Pit-Men, Preachers and Politics: The Effects of Methodism in a Durham Mining Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 196–202. For context, see Huw Beynon and Terry Austrin, Masters and Servants: Class and Patronage in the Making of a Labour Organisation: The Durham Miners and the English Political Tradition (London: Rivers Oram, 1994).
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The League began promoting candidacies in June 1917, initially against critics of the government. In December, however, the League announced its intention to contest Rother Valley, a new constituency in south Yorkshire. Their prospective candidate, Samuel Featherstone, a Yorkshire Miners’ Association (hereafter YMA) member for many years, was branch secretary at Aldwarke colliery and a member both of the Rotherham Board of Guardians and of the town’s Military Tribunal. Victor Fisher of the British Workers’ League wrote to the Yorkshire Miners’ General Secretary – ironically John Wadsworth, a British Workers’ League vice president – requesting that the union not block Featherstone’s candidacy.33 The reaction from the YMA was robust. The union was keen to increase their parliamentary representation. Rother Valley with its heavy concentration of miners was a natural target. The District union raised the issue within the MFGB who in turn contacted Arthur Henderson for a statement of the Labour Party’s position. The Federation also wrote to its three Labour MPs who were British Workers’ League vice-presidents. The issue was not doctrinal but constitutional – their position as officeholders in an organisation prepared to oppose candidates backed by the MFGB and the Labour Party. The position was put with characteristic bluntness by Herbert Smith at the January 1918 party conference: ‘In Yorkshire the Miners had selected a constituency and proceeded to put down a Labour candidate and then the British Workers’ League had the audacity to put down in opposition one of the Miners’ own men. He hoped that the Conference would express its opinion about the League in no uncertain language’.34 The Miners’ officials who had been British Workers’ League vice-presidents resigned. Their views on the war and on those within the union who disagreed with them remained unchanged. Such differences were subordinated to union solidarity in pursuit of greater parliamentary representation. In Rother Valley the Labour candidate, Thomas Grundy of the YMA, shared Featherstone’s views on the war; he too was an established and respectable figure in Rotherham politics. Featherstone withdrew, claiming that YMA pressure had made his position impossible. Despite this setback, British Workers’ League strategists pressed ahead transforming it into the National Democratic Party in May 1918. Negotiations with Conservative Party managers were influenced by uncertainty about the impact of a massive franchise expansion. In the December 1918 election, seventeen out of the National Democratic Party’s twenty-five candidates were awarded the coalition coupon. Only one couponed candidate faced Conservative opposition. 33 34
British Citizen, 24 November 1917. YMA Council, 19 November, 20 December 1917 (National Union of Mineworkers Offices, Barnsley); MFGB Executive 4 December 1917; for Smith, Labour Party Conference Report January 1918, p. 109.
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Two of the National Democratic Party’s nine victories were in mining seats. Stanton, in the new Aberdare constituency, faced a Labour candidate T. E. Nicholas, a pacifist minister of religion and a supporter of the Bolshevik Revolution. He was an ideal opponent for Stanton, who won over 78 per cent of the vote. In contrast, the Labour candidate in Don Valley in south Yorkshire was Edward Hough, sponsored by the YMA. The National Democratic Party candidate, James Walton, worked at Manvers Main Colliery near Mexborough. He was a delegate to the YMA Council and secretary of the Mexborough Trades Council. His ambition to stand for parliament under YMA auspices remained unfulfilled. Within and beyond his union he was an aggressive advocate of a fight to the finish. He attended the Leeds Convention in June 1917 as Mexborough Trades Council delegate. The Convention chaired by Smillie expressed liberal and socialist optimism in the wake of the February Revolution in Russia. Walton returned home outraged by the support for peace by negotiation. Frustrated ambition and patriotic zeal combined when the YMA sponsored Edward Hough as their Don Valley candidate. Hough had been an early member of the ILP; Walton attacked him as a pacifist and withdrew from Don Valley’s nascent Labour organisation; he appeared on NDP platforms from the summer of 1918.35 This political shift was accompanied by marginalisation within the Yorkshire Miners’ organisation. Barnburgh Colliery was owned by the Manvers Main Colliery Company. The pit ballot for the ‘comb out’ had resulted in the selection for military service of Tom Williams, the colliery checkweighman. Williams was a socialist activist who, as checkweighman, was not employed by the company. The attempt to enforce his conscription could be seen as an attempt to remove a vigorous defender of workers’ rights and as an erosion of the checkweighman’s independence. The YMA took up the case. Eventually on 26 October 1918, the Association’s Council voted 161–2 to press for a deputation to meet the responsible minister. The two contrary votes were cast by Walton and his Manvers colleague. On his return to Manvers, Walton addressed a mass meeting. He claimed that he had been ‘howled down’ by Association delegates, three quarters of whom were ‘Pacifists and Bolsheviks’. The Manvers miners stopped work for two days in protest against the action of their own union. Shortly afterwards, Walton announced that he would contest Don Valley for the NDP.36 Walton faced two opponents. Hough’s objective was modest, ‘a fair share’ of Labour men in the Commons. H. B. Lees Smith, a Liberal en route to Labour had combined military service with membership of the Union of Democratic Control. He opposed ‘an Imperialistic, Jingoistic Militaristic peace.’ Walton 35
36
For Walton, see entry in Keith Gildart and David Howell (eds.), Dictionary of Labour Biography Volume XV (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2018), pp. 260–71. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 2, 9 November 1918.
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responded that the peace must be punitive; he attacked Bolshevism and spoke in generalities about reconstruction. A Conservative newspaper commended his John Bull-like qualities. His victory on what was a low poll, even by the standards of 1918 was decisive.37 The bases of his support were complex. Although new deep mines were extending the coalfield eastward, the seat still included a significant agricultural sector where backing for Walton in the absence of a Conservative was predictable. He had strong support amongst the Manvers workforce, but Hough polled well in other mining communities. Whatever the politics of the Don Valley mosaic, Walton could claim that he represented a significant element within coalfield communities, strongly patriotic and opposing Labour’s break with the coalition. The credible performances of defeated National Democratic Party candidates in mining seats in Nottinghamshire, south Yorkshire, Durham and Hamilton, the last fought by David Gilmour, the deposed Secretary of the Lanarkshire Union, suggested an appeal beyond the personalised politics of Don Valley. Yet in many mining seats Labour Miners’ candidates effectively combined national and occupational identities, the patriotic and the industrially robust. The continuation of state control provided the context in which the Federation could pursue its programme. The MFGB’s January 1919 conference confirmed its forward policy on wages, hours and public ownership. The government’s response was rejected, and a ballot produced a majority of six to one for a strike. Ministers were concerned about wider social stability; after discussions, the Federation accepted a proposal for a commission to examine the industry. Always known as the Sankey Commission after its chair, John Sankey, the Commission’s composition – MFGB representatives, coal owners, intellectuals sympathetic to the Federation and businessmen – could seem, in retrospect, crafted to produce conflicting recommendations. Early sessions on wages and hours seemingly justified Federation participation. Coal owners and their allies performed poorly as witnesses. Divided findings were bridged by Sankey’s own recommendations for a wage rise and a seven-hour day. The MFGB accepted this outcome in a ballot; subsequent sessions turned to the question of ownership. Much more seemed at stake than the ownership of one industry. These sessions were keenly fought. The outcome was four discordant reports published in June 1919. The MFGB argued that since Sankey’s own recommendations included a form of public ownership there was a bare majority for this option.38 The Lloyd George coalition depended on Conservative support in the Commons. Any threat to social stability appeared less likely and further concession seemed unnecessary. The Government announced its rejection of 37 38
Mexborough and Swinton Times, 23, 30 November 7, 14 December 1918, 4 January 1919. For Sankey, see entry in Keith Gildart and David Howell (eds.), Dictionary of Labour Biography Volume XIV (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 245–61.
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public ownership two months later. The MFGB response was predictably vehement. Vernon Hartshorn, considered respectable enough to have been allowed an unopposed return in the 1918 election typified the reaction. ‘We did not ask for a Commission. We accepted it. Why was the Commission set up? Was it a huge game of bluff? Was it never intended that, if the Reports favoured nationalisation, we were to get it? That is the kind of question the miners of this country will ask and they will say, “We have been deceived, betrayed, duped”’.39 State control would be followed not by public ownership but by decontrol. Sankey, hitherto a largely unknown Conservative judge, became a hero in the coalfields, fit to be celebrated on a lodge banner as the personification of lost hopes. But with gains in wages and a reduction of hours, the broader issue of public ownership seemed less urgent to many miners. The subsequent Mines for the Nation campaign failed. The Sankey controversy was the prelude to a much greater disaster. A brief stoppage over wages in October 1920 produced a settlement that rapidly became unsustainable. The decontrol of the industry was scheduled for 31 August 1921, an outcome desired by coal owners and government. The collapse of the post-war coal export boom in the 1920–1 winter produced ministerial panic. They wanted employers, not ministers, to bear the opprobrium of heavy wage cuts. The date of decontrol was brought was brought forward to 31 March. The MFGB’s expectations had been shredded. Smillie resigned from the presidency. The employers’ reaction to decontrol was to post notices of heavy wage reductions in many Districts. The hard-won system of national wage determination was at stake. The miners, technically locked out, were defeated after three months resistance. Beyond the immediate outcome of the lockout, coal owners and miners had to face the brutal reality of an industry that was too large for its feasible markets. The loss of advances achieved under state control strengthened support for Labour in coalfield communities through the 1920s.40 Political solidarity could serve as an alternative to industrial weakness. Even if a Labour parliamentary majority could not be achieved, control within local government could offer some defence against the harshness and insecurity of coalfield society. The disillusion of 1919–21 heightened a sense of community, occupation and perhaps, of class fired by a belief that a hostile government as well as employers bore responsibility for often bleak conditions. Such perceptions and attachments did not mean an end to the sentiments that had engendered such vigorous support for the war. These were incorporated into Labour’s burgeoning coalfield hegemony. Miners after 1921 could endorse the common 39 40
Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 18 August 1919, Col. 2096. Duncan Tanner, ‘The Labour Party and Electoral Politics in the Coalfields’, in Alan Campbell, Nina Fishman and David Howell (eds.), Miners, Unions and Politics 1910–47 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996), pp. 59–92.
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indictment that the sacrifices and solidarities of 1914–18 found little resonance in an insecure post-war economy. The politically acceptable became more inclusive. In 1921 the Member for Caerphilly, Alfred Onions, a SWMF official, died. He was replaced by Morgan Jones the first conscientious objector to be elected to the Commons. In contrast both Stanton and Walton lost to Labour Miners’ candidates in the 1922 election, the latter to Tom Williams, the Barnburgh checkweighman. Those whose patriotic zeal and personal ambitions and antipathies had taken them outside the official labour movement had become irrelevant. In November 1919, a by-election occurred in Chester le Street, one of the four Labour seats in the Durham coalfield. The Labour candidate, Jack Lawson, was a rising man in the Durham Miners’ Association, an autodidact shaped by Wesleyanism, the ILP and Ruskin College. His Coalition opponent, running under the National Democratic Party label, was the former Lanarkshire official, David Gilmour. His assertion that the ILP was ‘pacifistic’ was irrelevant in a contest framed by the controversy over the Sankey Commission’s recommendations. Lawson’s response was robust. He noted that his brother had died serving with the Durham Light Infantry and that his own military record bore scrutiny. Lawson the patriotic miner, voicing the immediate concerns of voters, was the authentic voice of the coalfield in 1919 and would remain so for decades.41
41
For Chester le Street contest see Durham Chronicle, 31 October, 7 November 1919; for a discussion of Lawson and political identity, see Beynon and Austrin, Masters and Servants, pp. 265–7.
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12 War Finance
Finance during the First World War might seem an arid topic, but in fact it mainlines us deep into Britain’s twentieth-century history, on at least four different levels. Firstly, and most obviously, it helps us understand the character and conduct of the war itself. Since at least the time of Thucydides, war has been ‘a matter not so much of arms as of money’, and grasping how efforts – successful or not – were made to obtain that money has been crucial to understanding any conflict.1 Secondly, by analysing the enthusiasm with which the public accepted an increased tax burden, and subscribed to war loans, we can perhaps explore levels of popular support for the war.2 Thirdly, it relates directly to the changing nature of Britain’s role as a power in European and world politics, and, as a result of her increasing reliance on loans from the United States, in particular to Anglo-American relations.3 Lastly, for British domestic history, it is relevant to narratives of social progress 1
2
3
Quoted in G. C. Peden, Arms, Economics and British Strategy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 7. Works which are particularly strong on this dimension of war finance include David French, British Economic and Strategic Planning 1905–1915 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982); David French, British Strategy & War Aims (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986); David French, The Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition 1916–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Georges-Henri Soutou, L’Or et le Sang: Les buts de guerre economiques de la Première Guerre mondiale (Paris: Fayard, 1989); Hew Strachan, The First World War, Volume I: To Arms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), the relevant sections of which were later published as Financing the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 220–34. Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (London: Eyre Methuen, 1972); Kathleen Burk, Britain, America and the Sinews of War, 1914–1918 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985); Paul Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict 1500–2000 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988); David Edgerton, ‘The Prophet Militant and Industrial: The Peculiarities of Correlli Barnett’, Twentieth Century British History 2:3 (1991), pp. 360–79; John Gooch, ‘The Weary Titan: Strategy and Policy in Great Britain, 1890–1918’, in Murray Williamson, Macgregor Knox and Alvin Bernstein (eds.), The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 278–306; David Reynolds, Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the 20th Century, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2000); John Charmley, ‘Splendid
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driven by state expansion, with the war often seen as a stage in the road towards the New Jerusalem welfare state ushered in by the Attlee government after 1945. The break with the past involved was summarised, inimitably, by Arthur Marwick: ‘in destroying the old, the war helped the rise of the new: out went gold sovereigns, chaperons, muffin men and the divine right of private enterprise; in came State control, summer time, a new prosperity and a new self-confidence for families long submerged below the poverty line and, in the aftermath, a biting scepticism and challenge to the established authorities.’4 This essay concentrates on the last of these four levels, by examining the extent to which Maynard Keynes was right in September 1939 when he argued that when it came to aspects of financial policy during the First World War, ‘complete control was so much against the spirit of the age that I doubt it ever occurred to any of us that it was possible.’5 What does war finance teach us about the ‘spirit of the age’ in terms of attitudes to state intervention and the free market?
Introduction The widespread tradition, exemplified by the quotation from Arthur Marwick above, that Britain between the wars had somehow failed to follow the new progressive trail of greater state involvement which had been blazed between 1914 and 1918, springs from a number of sources. One was the war memoirs of David Lloyd George, written in the 1930s. In these, Lloyd George, perhaps unsurprisingly, cast himself as the war’s hero, the man whose energy and drive overthrew the lethargy of Asquithian ‘business as usual’ and mobilised all Britain’s resources for victory via greater state intervention in all areas of British life.6 This dovetailed into a larger progressive narrative whereby the promise of collective effort, which had won the war and might now support reconstruction, was betrayed by a return to selfishness and radical decontrol. This was a line developed by wartime civil servants, such as Edward Lloyd in 1924, and William Beveridge in 1940, when the experience of the Second
4
5
6
Isolation to Finest Hour: Britain as a Global Power, 1900–1950’, Contemporary British History 18:3 (2004), pp. 130–46. Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London: Bodley Head, 1965), p. 9. The essays in Kathleen Burk (ed.), War and the State: The Transformation of British Government, 1914–1919 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982) offer a compelling critique of this view, while G. C. Peden’s The Treasury and British Public Policy, 1906–1959 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) provides a magisterial case study of the growing power of the most important government department in the period. John Maynard Keynes, ‘Notes on Exchange Control’, 24 September 1939, in Donald Moggridge (ed.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Volume XXII, Activities 1939–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013 [1978]), pp. 9–15. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 6 vols. (London: Nicholson & Watson, 1933–6).
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World War sharpened his view of the potential of state intervention and the importance of planning for reconstruction afterwards.7 He was arguing that this time the opportunity must not be missed, as indeed was his close friend and brother-in-law, the historian and reformer R. H. Tawney. In 1943 Tawney published his brilliant essay, ‘The Abolition of Economic Control, 1918–21’, which injected important nuance into the narrative. He pointed out, for instance, that government had already begun to expand before 1914. Its growth during the war was improvised, a series of reactions to problems arising, rather than an intelligent design. Nonetheless, the role of the state evolved from ‘protective agency’ to ‘organizing, directing, and sometimes managing authority’, reaching deep into economic and social life.8 The dismantling of controls was no more consciously planned than their imposition had been. The way Tawney described it, the new controls were removed after 1918, although some Cabinet members argued for their retention, amid, firstly the rush to demobilise and, secondly, an economic slump. Pressure to do so came from business, the Tory MPs who dominated Lloyd George’s government after the coupon election, the press, and the Treasury. For ‘the hard headed leaders of business . . . “Back to 1914” became the common cry’.9 Especially during and after the bust of 1920–1, ‘Reconstruction, when not dropped into the dustbin, was put on the shelf.’10 The tide of opinion against control which swept America and France, as well as the UK, proved ‘the last spasm of nineteenth-century individualism, striving to re- capture on its deathbed the crude energies of its vanished youth’.11 Subsequent historians have developed or tweaked Tawney’s thesis, but not yet overturned it.12 To see whether Keynes was right about the limits to control, and to answer the question ‘What does war finance teach us about the “spirit of the age” in terms of attitudes to state intervention and the free market?’, this essay will examine the three financial spheres in which the state operated during the First World War: private finance and markets; government expenditure; and 7
8
9 10 11 12
E. M. H. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control: At the War Office and the Ministry of Food (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), pp. 2–5, 387–8; William Beveridge, Some Experiences of Economic Control in War-Time (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), pp. 3, 35. R. H. Tawney, ‘The Abolition of Economic Controls, 1918–21’, The Economic History Review 13:1/2 (1943), p. 2. Tawney, ‘The Abolition of Economic Controls, 1918–21’, pp. 13–14. Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 19. P. B. Johnson, Land Fit for Heroes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); S. M. H. Armitage, The Politics of Decontrol of Industry: Britain and the United States (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969); Rodney Lowe, ‘The Erosion of State Intervention in Britain, 1917–24’, Economic History Review New Series 31:2 (May 1978), pp. 270–86; Peter Cline, ‘Winding Down the War Economy: British Plans for Peacetime Recovery, 1916–19’, in Kathleen Burk (ed.), War and the State: The Transformation of the British Government, 1914–1919 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982), pp. 157–81.
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funding that expenditure both domestically and abroad. An essay which traces the introduction and implementation of controls, but not their dismantling, can only be, at best, a partial answer to the question, but space precludes proper exploration of the post-war period. We shall see that, even in finance, the most classically liberal of spheres, state intervention was massive and control intrusive, taking place both on a new scale and along new vectors. Keynes was half wrong and half right. There were areas where the ‘spirit of the age’ did allow near ‘complete control’ but others where it did not. State intervention was patchy, not least because, as Tawney suggested, it was the product of pragmatic responses to scarcity, rather than a coherent ideological programme. The essay will conclude by suggesting that Keynes had reasons of his own for speaking of ‘the spirit of the age’, and that his influence on the historiography of First World War finance and the size of the state was important in constructing the way we view it today.
Private Finance and Markets An important tenet of nineteenth-century political economy was that capital markets should be free and open and that governments had a role to play in keeping them so. The financial authorities, led by the Treasury and the Bank of England, were, rather like the All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon, responsible for staging the competition and ensuring that play – and in this case, Free Trade – could proceed. They were not supposed to run on court and join in themselves. Balanced budgets and the Gold Standard meant that fiscal and monetary policy could be left more or less on auto-pilot, to be adjusted only occasionally, if crisis bit.13 Budget deficits might be tolerated in wartime, but should be eliminated as soon as possible once peace came. The national debt built up during the South African War had been almost eliminated by March 1914, for instance, despite an arms race and new social spending.14 Even before war broke out in August 1914, the crisis threatened to freeze the financial markets on which both British domestic and international enterprise depended. Investors around the world rushed to sell assets and repatriate cash, sucking liquidity from the market, spreading contagion and risking a domino effects of defaults around the world and in the City. By Friday 31 July, as the banker R. H. Brand put it, ‘before a single shot had been fired, and before any destruction of wealth, the whole world-fabric of credit had dissolved. The Stock Exchange was closed; the discount market dead; the accepting houses unable to obtain any remittances as cover for bills falling due; the liquid assets of the joint stock banks, i.e., their Stock Exchange and Money Market loans, 13 14
Peden, The Treasury and British Public Policy, pp. 4–12. F. W. Hirst and J. E. Allen, British War Budgets (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), pp. 13–14.
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and their very large holdings of bills, immobilised at the moment when their depositors were becoming restive; commerce at a standstill throughout the world; currency scarce; the Bank of England’s resources highly strained. Such was the effect of a universal destruction of confidence.’15 Financial crisis threatened a slump in the wider economy. So the government, led by Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, advised by the Treasury Permanent Secretary, Sir John Bradbury, together with the Governor of the Bank of England, Walter Cunliffe, declared several days of bank holidays to prevent runs and to buy time to consult with leading men of the City.16 By the time the banks reopened on Friday 7 August, the policy response had four strands. The first was to restore confidence by re-asserting normality. Interest rates were soon cut from crisis levels back to their normal 5 per cent. The Bank Act of 1844, which governed the Bank of England’s ability to create money and had been suspended several times during previous crises, remained in force. Keynes’ advice was instrumental in convincing Lloyd George not to take Britain off a Gold Standard which was, in any case, inoperable given the difficulty of transporting gold in wartime.17 The second policy response was to impose a moratorium on bills and debt more generally. This aimed to prevent a chain reaction of defaults across the whole City. Thirdly, the government printed £225 million of new money, literally, in the form of £1 and 10 shilling Treasury notes signed by Bradbury. With hoarding gold widely viewed as unpatriotic, these small-denomination notes offered a paper alternative to sovereign and half-sovereign coins and did not boast of convertibility with a ‘promise to pay the bearer on demand’, declaring themselves merely ‘legal tender for a payment of any amount’.18 Lastly, the Bank of England, underwritten by the Treasury, restored liquidity to the banks and discount houses by offering to act as buyer of last resort for assets, such as bills, for which the market had otherwise dried up. Later, the Bank arranged help for Stock Exchange firms and export merchants, too, via the joint stock banks.19 Altogether these strands added up to a massive and unprecedented state intervention in the financial sector. Lloyd George was probably using the royal ‘we’ when he described the government response to the crisis as ‘How we saved the City’, but historians 15 16
17
18 19
R. H. Brand, War and National Finance (London: E. Arnold, 1921), p. 54. The fullest recent account of the crisis is in Richard Roberts, Saving the City: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). John Maynard Keynes, ‘Memorandum against the Suspension of Gold’, Elizabeth Johnson (ed.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Volume XVI Activities 1914–1919: The Treasury and Versailles (London: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 7–15. www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/withdrawn-banknotes (accessed 11/6/2018). E. Victor Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25 (London: Macmillan & Co., 1952), pp. 11–32; R. S. Sayers, The Bank of England 1891–1944. vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 70–8.
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have tended to agree that the City was indeed saved.20 No major financial institution failed. Public confidence wobbled in places, as Catriona Pennell has demonstrated, but overall Keynes reckoned that ‘the attitude of the general public was one of great coolness. No sign at all was shown of the beginning of a general run.’21 There was a brief industrial slump in August and September, with some regions suffering for longer, but by November aggregate unemployment had fallen back to pre-war levels as exports and war production picked up.22 Dealings in stocks and shares gradually resumed, and the Stock Exchange officially reopened for business in January 1915. Some problems continued, however; the market for bills, for instance, remained extremely thin. In October 1914, The Economist reckoned that turnover was only 5 per cent of its pre-war level.23 The consequent shortage of money-market instruments constrained liquidity in the foreign exchange market, which was yet further handicapped by reduced arbitrage activity due to the increased cost of insuring gold shipments. There were still signs of credit crunch in the wider economy, with banks happier to lend to the government than to corporate customers or each other. What greatly concerned Keynes and others in the medium term, however, was the risk of inflation being generated by the boost to the money supply arising from the issue of Treasury currency notes, outright purchase of bills from the discount houses and banks, extension of loans to financial institutions generally, and from Ways and Means advances to the Treasury. We shall return to this below.24 Markets were not as free and open as they had been before the war. NonBritish subjects were barred from the Stock Exchange and stock which had been in enemy hands could not be traded. The Treasury regulated the market for new issues, with foreign capital-raising banned and domestic institutions able to sell stock only if they could demonstrate it was in the national interest. By 1917, new issuance was just a tenth of the pre-war level. Even the secondary market was tightly controlled, with transactions in British and other government securities below certain minimum prices outlawed until November
20 21
22 23 24
Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. I, p. 100; Roberts, Saving the City, p. 232. Catriona Pennell, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 48–50; John Maynard Keynes, ‘War and the Financial System, August, 1914’, The Economic Journal, 24:95 (September 1914), pp. 460–86: p. 473. Pennell, A Kingdom United, pp. 198–205. Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25, p. 32. T. Balderston, ‘War Finance and Inflation in Britain and Germany, 1914–1918, Economic History Review 2nd ser. LXII, 2 (1989), pp. 222–44: p. 237; Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25, pp. 31, 292.
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1915.25 Foreign exchange was subject to less interference, but importers still had to secure licences and eventually, in November 1917, the export of capital was restricted. British holders of US dollar securities were encouraged to lend or sell them to the government, although in the event the government liquidated a surprisingly small proportion of those holdings.26 More important, the Treasury intervened aggressively in the New York market, selling $2,000 million to support sterling between 1915 and 1919.27 The Governor of the Bank of England lost a battle for control of currency policy in the summer of 1917 which removed any question marks about Treasury primacy in decisions about the exchange rate.28 Earlier, there had been a similar, albeit more peaceful, transfer of power from Threadneedle Street to Whitehall, this time regarding the setting of domestic interest rates. From April 1915 these were effectively set, not through the Bank Rate, as of old, but by the rate at which the Treasury was willing to issue bills.29 We can, therefore, distinguish between two phases of state intervention in the operation of free markets during the war. The first, during the autumn of 1914, was characterised by intrusion on a massive scale. The Treasury, with the cooperation of the Bank of England and the City, overrode contract law by proclaiming debt moratoriums. It put taxpayer money at risk to underwrite threatened financial institutions and prevent systemic breakdown. It issued currency notes in its own name. As Richard Roberts has said, ‘these were fundamental departures from pre-war practice.’ Two things are striking, however. Firstly, there was no debate about the propriety of the state taking the lead in finding a way out of the crisis. It was automatically assumed that the Bank and the Treasury would coordinate the response, and that taxpayer money would be put at risk. Secondly, there was, however, no thought given to public ownership of threatened financial institutions, as in, say 2008/9. During the second phase, the level of intervention varied according to the needs of the situation. The Stock Exchange, for instance, could be liberalised, and was, while the authorities found themselves increasingly involved in the problematic sterling-dollar exchange rate. The Treasury ended up deciding both the level of the currency, and sterling interest rates, taking over functions the Bank of England had previously carried out in semi-autonomous fashion.
25
26 27
28 29
Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25, pp. 261–6. See the interesting file of correspondence and memoranda on this topic in Government Borrowing: Treasury Bills: Gilt-Edged Market Bank of England Archive (BoE) C40/422. Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, pp. 330–1. This compares with British spending on supplies in the USA of $5.9 billion over the period: Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, pp. 326–31, 356–7. Sayers, The Bank of England 1891–1944, vol. I, pp. 97–103. Ibid., p. 112.
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The level of control varied widely, and state intervention was a pragmatic response to contingent crises.
Government Expenditure The first and most obvious sign of the growth of the state between 1914 and 1918 was the sheer scale of state expenditure and the extent to which it came to dominate the British economy. Unsurprisingly, British government spending ballooned when war broke out. Total expenditure in 1918/19 was thirteen times what it had been in the last full year of peace, in nominal terms. The cost of the war, according to a Treasury memorandum of 26 November 1918 probably largely drawn up by Keynes, amounted to £6,660 million or nearly three times pre-war national income.30 As a proportion of gross domestic product, according to G. C. Peden, government expenditure expanded from 7.5 to 45 per cent between 1913 and 1916 and remained around that level until the armistice.31 This level of government dominance of the economy was unprecedented. Even during the French Wars of 1793–1815, which had ended up costing six times pre-war national income, government spending had ‘only’ grown from 6 to 25 per cent of national income.32 It was not just the amount that was spent, but the way it was done, which marked a radical shift in how the government did business, however. This manifested itself in three ways. Firstly, it very soon became clear that the Treasury was not equipped to count the candle-ends and maintain rigid control of all the new spending. Lloyd George told the War Office to get on and place its own orders without reference to the Treasury within a couple of months of the outbreak of war.33 Soon, the Ministry of Munitions was 30
31
32
33
‘Memorandum by the Treasury on the Indemnity payable by the Enemy Powers for Reparation and other Claims’, Johnson (ed.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. XVI, pp. 344–83: p. 358; Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25, p. 105. 1918/19: £2,579 million; 1913/14: £197.5 mm. Francis W. Hirst, The Consequences of the War to Great Britain (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), p. 167; Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25, p. 89; Peden, Arms, Economics and British Strategy, p. 74. Martin Horn’s estimate is higher, showing a military expenditure peaking in 1917 at 70 per cent of national income, compared with 25 per cent in 1814–15 and 57 per cent in 1943: Martin Horn, ‘The Concept of Total War: National Effort and Taxation in Britain and France during the First World War’, War and Society, 18:1 (May 2000), pp. 1–22: pp. 5–7. P. K. O’Brien, ‘Public Finance in the Wars with France 1793–1815’, H. T. Dickinson (ed.), Britain and the French Revolution, 1789–1815 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 165–87: pp. 176–7. George Peden, The Treasury and British Public Policy, 1906–1959 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 6–7, 115; Strachan, Financing the First World War, pp. 47–9, 58–9.
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established and given its head. By the end of the war, it had 65,000 civil servants managing 250 factories directly and supervising the work of 20,000 more.34 The consequence, inevitably, was over-ordering and waste. ‘The atmosphere of waste and not counting the cost’, Keynes later complained, ‘was disgusting to any thrifty or provident spirit.’35 Despite periodic crackdowns, the post-war result was a reaction which saw Treasury control of spending, and of the Civil Service more generally, asserted extremely strongly.36 Secondly, the Treasury could and did involve itself directly in expenditure during the war by coordinating purchases of raw materials, especially those imported from abroad, to prevent different departments, or indeed allies within the Entente, from bidding against each other for scarce resources. Private trade was eliminated in a wide range of commodities including sugar, meat and wheat.37 By 1918 the Ministry of Food had established a monopoly over 85 per cent of Britain’s food supplies.38 In November 1916, for example, the War Office bought the entire wool clip of Australia and New Zealand. The Anglo-French Commission Internationale de Ravitaillement was set up in the first month of the war and was later extended to balance the purchasing priorities of the Entente and channel orders to the United States.39 One of Keynes’ first jobs once he formally joined the Treasury in 1915 was as its representative on the inter-departmental Committee on Wheat and Flour Supplies, the job of which was to coordinate purchases, especially from India, without unduly disrupting the market.40 Inevitably, with the government now the single biggest buyer of a whole range of goods and services, its economic influence expanded. This leads us into the third new area of state involvement: the management/ manipulation, and sometimes outright control, of markets for goods and services. This took a variety of forms, from direct intervention in otherwise relatively free markets, as in the case of foreign exchange described above;
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
Experiments in State Control: At the War Office and the Ministry of Food, p. 24; Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25), p. 47. John Maynard Keynes, ‘The End of Laissez-Faire’, in Johnson (ed.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Volume IX Essays in Persuasion (London: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 272–94: p. 286. Kathleen Burk, ‘The Treasury: From Impotence to Power’, Burk (ed.), War and the State, pp. 84–107: pp. 96–8. E. M. H. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control: At the War Office and the Ministry of Food (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924). José Harris, ‘Bureaucrats and Businessmen in British Food Control’, Burk (ed.), War and the State, pp. 135–156: p. 135. Burk, ‘The Treasury: From Impotence to Power’, Burk (ed.), War and the State, pp. 84–107: p. 93 Johnson (ed.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Volume XVI, pp. 78–92.
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through subsidy, as with shipping insurance; to regulation, for example with the Stock Exchange; and eventually in some cases to direct outright control. The railways are a classic example; the market for jute another. Immense demand for sandbags, and the ‘impudence’ of speculators, resulted eventually in the government taking control of the whole jute industry, from the growers in Bengal, through the spinners and manufacturers in Dundee, to the merchants in Liverpool. At every stage, prices and profit margins were fixed and cost-accounted by the state.41 The most radical government intrusion into private life and liberty, of course, occurred with Conscription. The labour market did not conform to a straightforward narrative of growing state intervention, however. The story is more complex. On the one hand the Treasury Agreement of March 1915 saw the unions renounce strikes, and the Munitions of War Act of the same year restricted the worker’s freedom of movement. By August 1917, however, the resentment aroused by this regulation had grown to unacceptable levels, ‘leaving certificates’ were abolished, and war industries were left to find the man- and womanpower they needed through ordinary economic incentives and appeals to patriotism. Overall, therefore, state intervention in economic and therefore private life was immense. It took many different forms, however, including direct national ownership and control of sectors of industry, and did not always inexorably expand. It sometimes contracted. Government control meant different things in different spheres. Flexibility and decentralisation were possible in, say, raw material procurement while other sectors, such as insurance, demanded a more legalistic approach. State intervention ‘did not mean that no one but a civil servant was in charge of business’.42 Businessmen worked alongside civil servants throughout the new organisations and the two groups, rather than forming ‘distinct tribes’, often grew to resemble each other.43 If this was a revolution in planning, it was an unplanned one.
Funding To fund her war, Britain relied on both taxation and borrowing. Any Gladstonian illusions that she might finance it out of current revenue quickly vanished. For the fiscal year 1914/15 Britain spent £514 million pounds, more than two and a half times her expenditure in the last year of peace, while
41
42
43
W. K. Hancock and M. M. Gowing, British War Economy (London: HMSO, 1949), pp 15–16; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, ch. 4–6. William Beveridge, Some Experiences of Economic Control in War-Time (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), p. 25. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 390–5; but see also José Harris, ‘Bureaucrats and Businessmen in British Food Control’, Burk (ed.) War and the State, pp. 135–156: pp. 147–51.
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revenues were essentially unchanged at £199 million, generating a budget deficit of £315 million. By the end of the war the accumulated budget deficit totalled £7,017 million, with taxation covering just 26 per cent of total government expenditure.44 In comparison, taxes had paid about half the cost of both the French Wars (1793–1915) and the Crimean War (1854–6), and about a third of the £250 million spent on the South African War (1899–1902).45 The proportion during the Second World War was 53 per cent.46 As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George was keen to avoid raising taxes. Martin Daunton has suggested three reasons for this.47 Firstly, bruised by intense Unionist resistance to his tax increases before the war, he shied away from the risk of renewed partisan discord. Secondly, he feared that large tax increases would destroy confidence and cause a slump. Thirdly, he expected Britain’s liability would be limited in a war anticipated to be short. Only later, under chancellors Reginald McKenna and Andrew Bonar Law, was dramatic action taken on income tax, with rates increased and the number of people paying income tax greatly expanded. Before the war, the standard rate of income tax was 5.8 per cent, rising to 8.3 per cent for those paying the top rate plus super tax. By 1918/19 these rates had risen to 30 per cent and 52.5 per cent respectively. A lowest rate taxpayer in 1914 found himself paying twice as much by the war’s end as he had at the beginning, while super taxpayers faced six times the burden.48 Duties also rose. That on beer, for example, rose from 7s 9d per barrel in 1914 to 70s in 1919/20: a ninefold increase.49 An important new source of revenue was found in Excess Profits Duty, payable by companies on profits inflated by wartime, which peaked at 80 per cent in 1917. By 1918 this was contributing almost as much to revenue as income and super tax.50 The Treasury also grew the tax take by a huge increase in the number of people paying income tax. The threshold was cut from £160 to £130 per annum in McKenna’s budget of September 1915, which doubled the number liable at once, and thereafter inflation carried more of the waged working class into the net. In 1913/14, some 1.13 million people had paid income tax. By
44
45
46 47 48
49 50
Balderston, ‘War Finance and Inflation in Britain and Germany, 1914–1918, tables 3 and 6, pp. 227, 229. Martin Daunton, Just Taxes: The Politics of Taxation in Britain 1914–1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 38; Hirst and Allen, British War Budgets, pp. 7–11. Horn, ‘The Concept of Total War’, p. 9. Daunton, Just Taxes, pp. 38–41. Ibid., p. 47; Peden, The Treasury and British Public Policy, p. 94; Strachan, Financing the First World War, pp. 78–9. Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25, pp. 90, 95. Daunton, Just Taxes, p. 46.
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1918/19 over 3.5 million did.51 Overall, Britain raised £999 million in direct tax in 1919/20, compared with £163 million in 1913/14.52 The tax burden per head of population, which had been £3 11s in 1913/14, by 1920/1 was over £26: a sevenfold increase in nominal terms, probably representing a tripling in real terms.53 It is hard to judge how much support there was for the government’s taxation policy. At an elite level, Martin Horn has argued that the crossparty consensus in favour of heavy taxation, which had existed early on, broke up during the second half of the war amidst accusations of waste as well as agitation from the trades unions for an increase in the income tax threshold and a capital levy.54 The level of popular consent is harder to judge. Allowances probably helped: by 1919/20 fully half of those liable had been exempted.55 No doubt there was evasion, but inevitably evidence is limited. We do know of at least one tax strike, among the miners of South Wales. R. C. Whiting cites the fact that 8,000 men were involved as evidence of the seriousness of unrest. Equally, however, since that represented only 11 per cent of the 71,000 liable, even in a famously recalcitrant district, it could be interpreted as the action of a strikingly small minority. It is interesting that most opposition to taxation, both in South Wales and among Scottish miners, fell away in the atmosphere of national crisis engendered by the initial success of the German spring offensives in March 1918, as patriotism reasserted itself in a crisis.56 Expenditure which could not be met out of current revenue had to be borrowed. In 1914 Britain’s national debt was £650 mm, all of it owned by domestic investors. By 31 March 1919, she owed a grand total of £7,208 million, of which £5,915 million (82 per cent) was domestic, and £1,395 million (19 per cent) overseas, debt.57 The government had four main methods of borrowing. Firstly, the Exchequer borrowed directly from the Bank of England through Ways and Means Advances, a traditional method of bridging temporary shortfalls in government revenue, which became a semi-permanent and not insignificant part of the financing mix in the second half of the war, fluctuating between £150 million and £200 million in late 1918, up from £35 million in the first four months of the war. By March 1919 the 51
52 53 54 55 56
57
Peden, The Treasury and British Public Policy, p. 94; Strachan, Financing the First World War, pp. 78–9. Hirst, The Consequences of the War to Great Britain, pp. 167, 235. Hirst & Allen, British War Budgets, p. 18. Horn, ‘The Concept of Total War’, p. 20. Daunton, Just Taxes, p. 42. R. C. Whiting, ‘Taxation and the Working Class, 1915–24’, The Historical Journal, 33,4 (December 1990), pp. 895–916; Strachan, Financing the First World War, p. 78. Balderston, ‘War Finance and Inflation in Britain and Germany, 1914–1918’, table 5, p. 227.
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advances had expanded further, to £455 million, or 6 per cent of total domestic debt.58 Secondly, the Treasury borrowed short-term from the banking sector by issuing bills with three, six or nine months to maturity on demand. About £1,000 million of T-Bills were outstanding at any one time in 1918, constituting 16 per cent of total domestic debt.59 The government also borrowed at longer maturities through, thirdly, the issue of medium-term Exchequer and National War Bonds, and fourthly, three long-dated War Loans. It is not always easy to strip out exactly how much new cash was raised from endinvestors through these issues, but National War Bonds probably generated approximately £1,600 million, War Loans £1,500 million and Exchequer Bonds a bit less than £500 million.60 From the point of view simply of raising money to pay for the war, the domestic borrowing programme was a huge and often unacknowledged success, a testament to effective debt and market management by the authorities, the spirit of patriotic sacrifice of savers (or possibly peer pressure), and an innovative and effective promotional campaign [see Fig. 12.1]. It was important that borrowing both went well and was seen to go well. The first War Loan floated in November 1914, at £350 million, was the largest bond issue anywhere in the world, ever. To ensure success the Bank of England twisted the arms of the joint stock banks and lent anyone who wanted to buy it the money to do so at a cheap rate. Even so, it was badly undersubscribed, and the Bank was forced to purchase £153 million of stock, much of which had to be hidden on its balance sheet. Confessing to under-subscription might betray a lack of popular confidence in Britain’s chances of victory and damage her credit both at home and abroad, so Lloyd George lied to Parliament, declaring it a resounding success.61 The press fell into line: even before the results had been announced, The Economist declared that ‘the success of our gigantic issue at such a time as this is a marvellous testimony to the resources of Great Britain.’62 Further intervention from the authorities was necessary in 1915 to sell issues successfully, but, despite this bumpy start, the government managed not only to mobilise the well-developed London
58
59
60
61
62
J. A. C. Osborne, The Bank of England 1914–1921, vol. I (unpublished war history), p. 293, Bank of England Archive ADM2/1; Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25, p. 106. Osborne, The Bank of England 1914–1921, vol. I, pp. 481–2, Bank of England Archive ADM2/1. Ibid., pp. 386–441, Bank of England Archive ADM2/1; Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25, pp. 106–16. Strachan, Financing the First World War, p. 116; Osborne The Bank of England 1914–1921 (unpublished war history) vol. I, pp. 386–7, Bank of England Archive ADM2/1. The Economist, 21 November 1914, p. 905.
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Figure 12.1 Pupils at Gibbons Road School, Willesden, pay their weekly contribution into the War Savings Association, 1916. Photograph by Horace Nicholls. Imperial War Museum Q 30245.
capital market to good effect, but also to build a much broader, new, market for its debt among private individuals. Private sector holdings of government debt by value expanded from some £300 million to £5,500 million between 1914 and 1925. The share of total private property invested in government bonds went up from 2.5 to 25 per cent.63 By the end of 1917, 16 million individuals owned government securities, compared with 345,000 before August 1914, and small savers had absorbed £487 mm, or 8 per cent, of the new domestic debt.64 Within the apple of successful borrowing, however, there lurked a couple of worms. Firstly, the average maturity of the national debt shortened dramatically. Borrowings maturing within a year, and so characterised as ‘floating’, went from only 2 to over 20 per cent of the total between 1914 and 1919, increasing sensitivity to short-term interest rates and increasing rollover risk. This contributed to post-war nerves by increasing the apparent urgency of paying down the debt.65 Secondly, borrowing from banks did nothing to reduce the amount of money in circulation and, indeed, when associated with cheap credit to finance purchases of debt, actually boosted the money supply
63 64
65
Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25, p. 122. Strachan, Financing the First World War, p. 150; Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25, p. 131. Balderston, ‘War Finance and Inflation in Britain and Germany, 1914–1918’, table 5, p. 227.
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Table 12.1. Treasury account in New York in millions of dollars, 1915–19 Receipts Exchange Gold Securities Loans (net) Repayments by Allies Total
Expenditure 579 1,180 1,096 5,151 1,849 9,855
Supplies Allies Exchange
5,932 637 2,021
Total
8,590
and risked inflation. Keynes argued that instead the government should target consumers/savers, mopping up the extra money put in their pockets by war spending and preventing a rise in prices which might undermine the balance of trade and thus Britain’s creditworthiness.66 Britain’s monetary base and M3 money supply more than doubled during the war, possibly contributing to a wartime increase of 140 per cent in wholesale prices and storing up trouble for the immediate post-war boom.67 Britain’s most important relationship during the First World War was with the United States. She needed dollars to pay for goods and services, to maintain the value of sterling in foreign exchange and prevent imports getting even more expensive; and to lend to her allies. Table 12.1 sets out the Treasury account in New York from 1915/16 to 1918/19, in millions of dollars.68 Britain needed far more dollars than she could earn, or even sell gold and securities to raise. Although gold and dollar resources in 1914 totalled £3,365 million, and there were schemes to force the owners to disgorge the assets involved, in the event the Treasury liquidated less than £300 million worth.69 Yet, for all the frequent alarms that bankruptcy was imminent, Britain ‘did get 66
67
68 69
John Maynard Keynes, ‘The Prospects of Money, November 1914’, The Economic Journal 24:96 (December 1914), pp. 610–34: pp. 616–19, 629–33; John Maynard Keynes, memoranda ‘The Bank of England in relation to Government Borrowing and the Necessity of a Public Loan’, 14 May 1915, and ‘The Meaning of Inflation’, 15 September 1915, Johnson (ed.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Volume XVI, pp. 96–105, 125–8; Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25, p. 34. Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25, pp. 80–1, 267–300, although Morgan’s conclusion is that deficit spending played a larger role. Balderston argues, however, that the capacity of London’s capital markets to absorb government borrowing, and Britain’s ability to borrow abroad, gave her an edge over Germany, where more debt ended up monetised, contributing eventually to much higher inflation: Balderston, ‘War Finance and Inflation in Britain and Germany, 1914–1918’, table 8, p. 237. Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25, pp. 356–7. Keynes, ‘How to Pay for the War’, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Volume IX, pp. 367–439: p. 435; Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25,
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through after a fashion’, in Keynes’ words, eventually due to the never unconditional but considerable support of the American government. Washington directly advanced the money the British government needed after April 1917, bypassing the market altogether.70 Despite another foreign exchange crisis in summer 1917, the worst was over. As Keynes had implicitly predicted it would in October 1916, politics had trumped economics.71 Eventually, three quarters of Britain’s total new external debt came from America.72 Overall, the extent to which Britain managed to tax and borrow her way to victory seems to have well considered and successful. A creative tax policy found new sources of revenue, and exploited old ones more intensely, to considerable effect, while commanding an impressive level of public acceptance. The Treasury cleverly created a variety of new instruments to suit different liquidity preferences and mobilise savings, although it also ended up monetising a portion of the debt. It also managed, eventually, to leverage American support for the war against Germany into the dollars it needed to fund the war effort of both Britain and the Entente without requisitioning more than a small proportion of privately held foreign assets. The economic footprint of the British state grew during the war, but not in a way considered excessive by more than a few.
Conclusion Many British subjects felt the weight of the state more heavily as a result of the First World War. Most found themselves paying much more tax than before, and many were brought into a wholly new relationship with the government, either by paying income tax or by lending it money. Domestically, this helped the Treasury to borrow the money it needed, although it was forced to use a range of sometimes unpleasant expedients to do so. Printing money – in today’s jargon, quantitative easing – also played an important role. The London capital markets were mobilised for the war effort. Inevitably, the government could not maintain the same control over its foreign borrowing. With American acquiescence and help, the Treasury maintained a fixed
70
71
72
pp. 326–31; Daniel Todman, Britain’s War: Into Battle, 1937–1941 (London: Allen Lane, 2016), pp. 416–19, 526–30. John Maynard Keynes, ‘Notes on Exchange Control’, 24 September 1939, Johnson (ed.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Volume XVI, pp. 210–14: p. 213. John Maynard Keynes, ‘The Financial Dependence of the United Kingdom on the United States of America’, 10 October 1916, and ‘Our Financial Position in America’, 24 October 1916, Johnson (ed.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Volume XVI, pp. 197–209. Peden, The Treasury and British Public Policy, p. 98; Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–25, pp. 318–19.
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exchange rate, and did so without requisitioning British private sector holdings of gold and overseas assets as it effectively did during the next war.73 To that extent, Keynes was right that ‘complete control’ did not fit ‘the spirit of the age’ in the area he knew most about (because he headed the Treasury department in charge of it): external finance. This essay has shown, however, that the same cannot be said more broadly. State intervention in several areas was broad and deep. It was primarily pragmatic, rather than programmatic, improvised opportunistically to fight one fire after another. It seems to have secured public acceptance surprisingly easily for a society supposedly deeply steeped in the virtues of free enterprise and individualism. Whether that reflected patriotic mobilisation, a supine citizenry content to do as it was told, or the beginnings of the cohesive mass modern democracy that Daniel Todman, among others sees emerging between the wars, will require further bottom-up research, probably applying the techniques of cultural history, rather than the top-down ones appropriate to political economy, to uncover.74 Keynes’ comments about ‘the spirit of the age’ in 1939, of course, specifically concerned exchange control. But they also reflected his conflicted feelings about a war he both hated and worked to support, as well as a wider sense of disappointment at the wasted opportunities of peace. Keynes, after all, had made his name with a scintillating indictment of what he saw as a betrayal of liberal ideals at Versailles.75 Sadly, as Alec Cairncross pointed out, ‘none of Keynes’s writings provides us with a systematic analysis of the scope for government action’.76 His essay, ‘The End of Laissez-Faire’, published in 1926, agreed that ‘centralised action on a great scale’ had taken place, and that ‘war experience in the organisation of socialised production has left some near observers optimistically anxious to repeat it in peace conditions.’ He shared the view that knee-jerk City opposition to any kind of social action was an obstacle to that happening, but also, importantly, thought that the language and concepts had not existed to make anything of the kind achievable. Specifically, he thought that the correct theoretical framework defining state Agenda and Non-Agenda needed to be laid out.77 Any shortcomings of government intervention were at least as much the result of lack of theoretical understanding (normally caused by not listening to Keynes!) as the 73
74 75
76
77
W. K. Hancock and M. M. Gowing, British War Economy (London: HMSO, 1949), pp. 83–8. Todman, Britain’s War: Into Battle, 1937–1941, pp. 83–91. John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London: Macmillan, 1919). Alec Cairncross, ‘Keynes and the Planned Economy’, in A. P. Thirlwall (ed.), Keynes and Laissez-Faire: The Third Keynes Seminar Held at the University of Kent at Canterbury 1976 (London: Macmillan, 1978), pp. 36–58: p. 38. Keynes, ‘The End of Laissez-Faire’, in Johnson and Moggridge (eds.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Volume IX, pp. 272–94: pp. 286–8, 291.
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consequence of austerity. As unemployment remained stubbornly high during the 1920s and 1930s, Keynes grew increasingly convinced that government intervention was sometimes required to unblock sticky markets. He felt his work, especially the General Theory, had provided the language – and, with national income accounting, the tools – to make state intervention work.78 Keynes always felt that overcoming conceptual difficulties was where he could contribute most to resolving practical political challenges, so it is hardly surprising that theory was the first thing he thought of when he looked for causes of the failures of reconstruction after 1918. In his famous 1940 pamphlet, ‘How to Pay for the War’, he argued that the prevention of wartime inflation depended on ‘social action’, and on a ‘comparatively novel’ analysis of the causes of inflation: ‘economists have only got clear about it . . .’, Keynes maintained, ‘in the last quarter of a century . . . During the last war I was in the Treasury. But I never at that time heard our financial problem discussed along these lines.’79 This time, for Keynes, as for Beveridge and Tawney, things would be different, and it was their voices, and those of their disciples, which still dominate the way we think about finance and the First World War today.80
78
79
80
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (London: Macmillan, 1936). Keynes, ‘How to Pay for the War’, Johnson and Moggridge (eds.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Volume IX, p. 422. Beveridge was a member of the ‘Old Dogs’ group which met at Keynes’ London home from September 1939 to discuss problems of war administration. Keynes later proved an influential supporter of the Beveridge Plan for recasting the social security system: Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes Volume 3 Fighting for Britain 1937–1946 (London: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 48, 266–70.
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PART III People
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13 Labour, the Labour Party and the Trade Unions
The great majority of English, Welsh and Scottish workers supported the war, as did a minority of Irish labour, not just in the Ulster counties. In a war of production, labour was in near unlimited demand both for the armed forces and for industrial and agricultural production. In Britain, perhaps a little under 40 per cent of the pre-war male workforce, 5,670,000 men, went into the Armed Forces in stages between 1914 and 1918.1 In Ireland some 210,000 men (just under 14 per cent) served in the British Army. The state soon had to determine priorities as to what could be imported and, to an increasing extent, where labour should be deployed. The needs of war, skewed production increasingly away from consumer goods towards munitions and food. While the numbers in civil employment in the UK fell from 19,440,000 to 17,060,000 during 1914–18, the numbers employed in the metal trades rose by 34 per cent from 1,804,000 (9.4 per cent of whom were female) to 2,418,000 (24.6 per cent female). Labour crowded into cities and towns across the UK, experiencing often dire housing conditions and working long hours to cover wartime inflation. In Scotland, mostly on the Clyde, by 1918 there were 59,080 people working in new munitions factories. Of these workers 31,512 were women, many of whom had previously worked in textiles, though others had been in domestic service or in work such as gutting fish. The Clyde replaced many shipping losses, building 1,897 vessels, 2,374,561 tons of output, during the war. Women did not become a large part of shipbuilding labour in the UK, and even by the end of the war they constituted only 7 per cent of employees.2 In Belfast the demand for labour in shipbuilding benefited Catholic workers In the case of agriculture, it has been estimated that some 150,000 men volunteered in the first year of the war, with some 300,000 joining the armed
1
2
War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War (War Office, 1922), pp. 365–74. W. R. Scott and J. Cunnison, The Industries of the Clyde Valley during the War (Oxford: Milford, 1924), pp. 84, 98–9.
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forces over the course of the war.3 The number of women employed in agriculture went up by some 20 per cent from 190,000 in 1914 to 228,000 in 1918. In mid-1917 the need for women workers in agriculture was deemed ‘most urgent’, and they were being paid a minimum of 18 shillings (90p) a week for a 10–12 hours day. Gladys Pott, who had been Secretary of the League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage before the war, worked for the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries in 1916–19 and urged women to volunteer to work on the land, observing that their men ‘work and suffer that the Empire may live, and their women folk be spared the unspeakable martyrdom meted out to Belgian wives and daughters’.4 Earlier, women had sought agricultural work, but found that farmers were resistant to employing women.5 The government responded to the need for agricultural labour with the Women’s Land Army recruited from early 1917. Its 17,000 members were ‘billeted like soldiers and uniformed like soldiers’ and were only demobilised at Christmas 1919.6 Agriculture was one of the sectors where there were increased numbers of women unionised by 1919.7 Ireland, like other UK agricultural areas, benefited from the huge demand for agricultural produce, both for food and for processing. In much of the west and southwest of Ireland agricultural holdings were small, worked by family labour more often than employed labourers. Where there were large estates, the farm labourers looked to the owners not to the Labour movement.8 In Belfast and the Lagan valley the demand for linen grew, not least as aircraft production increased, while the supplies of imported flax fell and the local acreage of flax nearly trebled. The demand for female labour for spinning and other processes went up greatly, with Catholic women benefiting. Politically, the Labour movement had been at its strongest during upturns in the trade cycle, with trade unionism growing rapidly in 1888–90 and 1910–14. The impact of the First World War on labour and the labour market was like a massive upturn in the trade cycle. With the huge withdrawal of men, and despite the need for the unions to recruit their replacements, UK trade union membership rose from 4,145,000 in 1914 to 6,533,000 in 1918. In the post-war boom of 1919–20, trade union growth rose further to a pre-1946 peak of 8,348,000 in 1920. By 1918, trade union density (the proportion of 3
4
5 6
7 8
Edith Whetham, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. VIII, 1914–39 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 71. Gladys Pott, ‘Women in Agriculture’, in H. M. Usborne (ed.), Women’s Work in War Time: A Handbook of Employments, T. Werner Laurie, 1917, pp. 117–26 (quotation at p. 126). Whetham, 1914–39, pp. 80–2. Thomas Hudson Middleton, Food Production in War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), p. 295. Sheila Lewenhak, Women and Trade Unions (London: Ernest Benn, 1977), p. 166. On county Clare, see David Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life 1913–1921: Provincial Experience of War and Revolution (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1977), p. 239.
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members who were legally potential members) had risen to 35.7 per cent from 23 per cent in 1914, and reached 45.2 per cent in 1920. Although trade union membership fell with the severe economic recessions of 1921–2 and 1931–3, it did not fall back to the pre-war high of 1914 even in 1933, when it stood at 4,392,000 (though the density, at 22.6 per cent, was lower for only that year).9 The inadequacies of the free market soon became apparent to the government. The War Office was faced with private traders cornering the market for such goods as socks, jerseys and blankets, and local army buyers were paying some 50 per cent above the cost price.10 The market mechanism was also inadequate for ensuring a massive increase in the output of munitions. As well as the issue of profiteering, there was a need for a more flexible labour force. Production in engineering was expanding while the skilled labour force was being lost to voluntary recruiting. In the decades before the First World War, both the machinery and the labour to operate it had become increasingly specialised. The recruitment of some 10,000 skilled men and the massive increase in demand for munitions generated an urgent need for simpler machines, single-purpose and automatic, which semi-skilled or unskilled labour, including women, could work. In November 1914, skilled engineers at Vickers’ works in Crayford objected to setting up machines for women to work. The employers and the leaders of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) and Amalgamated Society of General Toolmakers, Engineers and Machinists agreed that women ‘shall be restricted to purely automatic machines for the production of repetitive work’.11 When lengthy discussions between the unions and employers failed to reach agreement, the government set up the Committee on Production on 4 February 1915 ‘to inquire and report forthwith . . . as to the best steps to be taken to ensure that the productive power of the employees in engineering and shipbuilding establishments working for Government purposes shall be made fully available’. A conference of engineering unions and employers held at Sheffield on 4 March agreed on the conditions for allowing dilution on the production of shell and fuses. The Shell and Fuses Agreement protected skilled men in post, and allowed semi-skilled or female labour to do skilled work where there were shortages of skilled labour, provided they were paid the rate for the job, and such labour was the first to be discharged at the end of the war.12 Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, held meetings at the Treasury from 17 to
9
10
11
12
George Sayers Bain and Robert Price, Profiles of Union Growth: A Comparative Statistical Portrait of Eight Countries (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), pp. 37, 39. E. M. H. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control: At the War Office and Ministry of Food (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), pp. 24–7. G. D. H. Cole, Trade Unionism and Munitions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), pp. 32–40, 52–4. Cole, Trade Unionism and Munitions, pp. 61–9.
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19 March to secure acceptance by the engineering and other unions on the relaxation of trade union practices. The Treasury Agreement was a voluntary agreement and lacked legal status. It proved ineffective, and thus was given legislative force with the Munitions of War Act, 2 July 1915.13 Several of the provisions of the Munitions of War Act increased tensions within unions. Industrial disputes could be settled by the Board of Trade, but most were resolved by compulsory arbitration of the Committee on Production. The Munitions of War Amendment Act 1916 widened further what was covered by ‘munitions work’. Compulsory arbitration could be, and was, extended by royal proclamation. Strikes were proclaimed in the cases of Glasgow, Liverpool and London dockers, South Wales miners and some Lancashire textile workers. Munitions tribunals were created to fine workers for transgressing the Munitions acts or breaking workplace rules – such as good timekeeping and sobriety – in controlled establishments. There were huge numbers of prosecutions, with the tribunals sometimes providing a stage for radical protest, as in Glasgow.14 The introduction of leaving certificates to penalise skilled labour that left war work for higher paid work elsewhere without the approval of their employers – called ‘the Slavery Act’ by militant workers – was highly unpopular. Of 3,913 applications to local tribunals for leaving certificates, 990 were granted, 1,698 were refused, 1,040 withdrawn and 189 applications judged unnecessary.15 Given the bitterness that the system engendered, the certificates were abandoned after the May 1917 engineering strikes. There was serious dissent over altered working practices, especially in engineering, with militant shop stewards often leading unrest. Socialists were outraged at the relaxing or ending of restrictive practices resulting in profits for private individuals not the state, while conservative skilled men were shocked by the influx of women. Yet, as Alastair Reid has shown, in Clydeside shipbuilding trade union officials rather than militant shop stewards remained leaders in many shipyards.16 The huge expansion of engineering in many cities led to overcrowding and escalating rents. ‘Red Clydeside’ was about social as well as industrial conditions. In Glasgow. ‘Mrs Barbour’s Army’ held huge demonstrations and secured a rent freeze. Mary Barbour’s husband was a shipyard worker.17 13
14
15
16
17
Chris Wrigley, David Lloyd George and the Labour Movement: Peace and War (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1976), pp. 91–121. Gerry Rubin, War, Law and Labour: The Munitions Acts, State Regulation and the Unions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Humbert Wolfe, Labour Supply and Regulation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), pp. 222–3. Alastair Reid, The Tide of Democracy: Shipyard Workers and Social Relations in Britain, 1870–1950 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010). Jorn Leonhard, Pandora’s Box: A History of the First World War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 2018, pp. 320–1.
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Women were prominent in other social campaigns. Another social change linked to industry was in pay. There was abnormal demand for both skilled and unskilled labour, and the war narrowed the differentials between them. Voluntary recruiting took 191,170 miners in the first seven months of the war, roughly 19 per cent of all the labour in UK coal mines, The Army required miners for tunnelling and setting explosives under German trenches, but too many men were taken from the mines. Coal was critical for the war effort. As Lloyd George told the miners’ leaders in 1915: I hardly need tell you that a strike in the coal mines would be worse for us than a German victory. . . . The whole basis of the explosive [in shells] is coal. We are supplying not merely our own country, but the whole of the Allies practically depend entirely upon the coal miners of this country. The engineers are important to the extent that they supply our armies in the field . . .That is why the coal miners of Great Britain are more important in the preparation of munitions of war than even the engineers themselves.18
Lloyd George was prone to overstating matters when in negotiations, but his view was broadly endorsed by Barry Supple in the official history of the coal industry: ‘it was clear that the shortage of manpower in the mines was potentially a more severe handicap to the war effort than the shortage of men in the army’.19 Lloyd George had put pressure on the engineering unions to secure agreement at the Treasury Conference, March 1915, but the miners’ leaders had refused to negotiate. With an impending strike in the South Wales mines, Lloyd George soon showed that he took a big strike very seriously. In Wales, the coal miners’ bargaining position was especially strong given the navy’s need for South Wales smokeless steam coal. Despite the Munitions of War Act, 1915, having just made strikes illegal, the miners held a very effective strike in July 1915, securing most of their objectives. The South Wales strike entrenched bitter industrial relations. Pre-war strikes had revealed deep class hostility, matched later by the violent industrial relations in the Ruhr in 1919.20 In 1915 the Welsh coal owners were obdurate in refusing even to discuss a new agreement, unlike owners elsewhere. The miners were affected by soaring prices at a time when they believed, with some
18 19
20
Wrigley, David Lloyd George and the British Labour Movement, pp. 123–4. Barry Supple, The History of the British Coal Industry, volume 4: 1913–1946: The Political Economy of Decline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 71. For the bitterness, see D. Evans, Labour Strife in the South Walkers Coalfield, 1910–11 (Cardiff: Cardiff, Educational Books, 1911), chs. 7 and 8.
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justification, that the owners were ‘simply shovelling up money’.21 With the failure to resolve wages in South Wales and with another strike imminent, the government used the Defence of the Realm Act to take control of the South Wales coalfield on 29 November 1916 and quickly increased the miners’ wages by 15 per cent. The other coal mines were taken over with effect from 1 March 1917. In South Wales, the coal owners were intransigent, and the miners were in a strong bargaining position and could point to wage rises agreed in other coalfields without such conflict.22 State control was primarily due to bad industrial relations. State control of the coal industry led to the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain securing a major gain: national wage bargaining. In August 1917, the miners pressed for 25 per cent wage increases to match the rising cost of living, at a time when their take-home pay lagged behind that of many industrial war workers. The government conceded flat-rate war bonuses in September 1917 and in June 1918, the flat rate benefiting the lower-paid workers. The South Wales Miners’ Federation successfully demanded better hours and conditions for surface workers, who went from an eleven-hour day to a 49 hour week.23 Coal miners across Britain emerged at the end of the war in a very strong position. The Miners’ Federation gave its members some protection against military conscription. It successfully resisted much erosion of its members’ controls of workplace practices, and it made considerable efforts to eliminate non-union labour in the coalfields. The Miners’ Federation’s and other mining unions’ active membership rose from 867,300 in 1914 to 1,019,500 in 1918.24 At the war’s end, the Federation was more united, and it sought better wages and hours, continuing ownership by the state and no return to private ownership. The railways were taken over by the state at the outbreak of the war. The unions were strengthened by their enhanced negotiating role. Under state control, there was national wage bargaining, not bargaining at railway company level. Unlike coal, national wage bargaining continued after state control ended. There were flat-rate wage rises, so benefiting lower paid workers most. Clerical and salaried staff generally gained wage increases in line with the operating staff.25 Trade union membership among railway
21 22
23 24 25
Supple, History of the British Coal Industry, p. 74. G. D. H. Cole, Labour in the Coal-Mining Industry (1914–1921) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), pp. 27–30, 42–8. Cole, Labour in the Coal Mining Industry, pp. 60–3. Bain and Price, Profiles of Union Growth, p. 45. Edwin A. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, 2 vols. (London: Selwyn and Blount 1921), pp. 766–70. Philip Bagwell, The Railwaymen (London: Allen and Unwin, 1963), pp. 347–56.
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employees rose from 273,800 in 1914 to 428,900 (in terms of density up from about 43 per cent to about 60 per cent).26 The state did not control the docks directly, but it did intervene from early in the war. The needs of the war included securing faster turnarounds of shipping, given the requirements for imported food and raw materials. One of the policy statements issued by the Port and Transit Executive Committee stated, ‘No custom of a port, or trade practice, must be allowed to interfere with obtaining the utmost possible dispatch . . . [and] speeding-up of work at all ports.’27 When the Port and Transit Executive was set up in November 1915, Harry Gosling, President of the National Transport Workers’ Federation, was initially the sole trade union representative. At the local level, the unions were much involved in the port labour committees. Most of the thirty-two set up in 1916 were in response to the introduction of conscription and were kept busy issuing exemption certificates. These exemptions went to union members.28 James Sexton, then the General Secretary of the National Union of Dock Labourers, later recalled, ‘Men who had been bitterly antagonistic to our union clamoured for admission to it when all men registered at the clearing house were ruled to be ineligible for military or naval service because they were already serving the country by handling its supplies of food and war materials.’29 During the war, the unions co-operated with the authorities and there were relatively few disputes. Port and inland water transport had been heavily unionised before the war. In 1911 the sector had a union density of 86 per cent. The number of union members went up during the war from 129,500 in 1914 to 143,300 in 1918. In contrast to key war industries, the cotton industry faced major problems in keeping its workforce busy because of shortages of supplies of raw cotton from the USA. There were exceptions due to military recruitment in some skilled work, such as the piecers who assisted the spinners. Generally, though, there were large numbers of underemployed workers in cotton towns with very few alternative employment openings. The cotton industry heavily depended on the allocation of shipping space for American cotton, there being fewer shipping problems for Egyptian cotton. The Cotton Control Board was set up on 28 June 1917 following rampant speculation on the Liverpool cotton futures market. Like the Port and Transit Executive Committee, the Cotton Control Board gave more representation to the employers than to the trade
26 27
28
29
Bain and Price, Profiles of Union Growth, p. 67. Quoted in Gordon Phillips and Noel Whiteside, Casual Labour (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1985), p. 116. Chris Wrigley, ‘The First World War and State Intervention in Industrial Relations’, in Chris Wrigley (ed.), A History of British Industrial Relations, volume 2: 1914–1939 (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1987), pp. 38–40. James Sexton, Sir James Sexton: Agitator (London: Faber, 1936), p. 239.
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unions. Hubert Henderson, the board’s secretary, wrote that its chair ‘was an employer, with an employer’s outlook and ideas’.30 The unions did benefit from more centralised collective bargaining. For most of the war, they secured a system of short-time working for all, rather than making large numbers of workers unemployed. This was in line with past practice in the cotton industry, where work was shared when hard times hit. Those workers who were made unemployed were compensated with payments raised through a levy on spinning employers who used more than 60 per cent of their spindles. Although the money came from the employers, it was paid out by the unions to their members. However, in mid-1918 the government secured the end of the short-time system funded by levies on the employers.31 The cotton workers had taken wages that had fallen badly behind the cost of living because of substantial payments to unemployed cotton workers. From the outbreak of the war to January 1918, cotton wage rates had risen by 33 per cent, wage earnings by 42 per cent, but the cost of living by 103 per cent.32 The unions were very aware that in a period of short-time working, they lacked the bargaining power of those in such war work as engineering and coal mining. With the end of the short-time payments and the soaring cost of living, the cotton unions became militant. In September 1918, the spinners went out on a week-long strike. It was called off in response to a personal intervention by Lloyd George who appealed in the name of ‘our brave men who are engaged in a deadly struggle with the enemy’ and offered an inquiry by a tribunal. The tribunal failed to offer immediate wage improvements and so in December, 100,000 spinners and cardroom workers went on strike. On 11 December – significantly, three days before the general election – Lloyd George saw the employers and unions in Downing Street. At this meeting a 50 per cent wage increase over 1914 levels was agreed for all categories of workers.33 The extended boom of most of 1910–20 saw trade unionism increase among women. In the Civil Service, the number of women rose from 66,000 in July 1914 to 234,000 in July 1918, from 21 per cent to 55 per cent of that labour force.34 Trade union expansion went beyond war work and administration; for instance, the numbers in teaching and accountancy rose from 3,277,000 to 4,940,000 between 1914 and 1918, rising from 24 to 37 percent of the workforce in these occupations. UK female trade union membership rose 30 31
32 33
34
H. D. Henderson, The Cotton Control Board (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922), p. 11. Alan Fowler, ‘Impact of the First World War on the Lancashire Cotton Industry and Its Workers’, in Chris Wrigley (ed.), The First World War and the International Economy (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2000), pp. 76–98. Fowler, ‘Impact of the First World War’, p. 87. Chris Wrigley, Lloyd George and the Challenge of Labour: The Post-War Coalition 1918–1922 (Hassocks: Harvester-Wheatsheaf, 1990), pp. 95–7. N. K. Buxton and D. I. Mackay, British Employment Statistics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), pp. 76–81.
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from 437,000 (a density of 8.0 per cent) in 1914 to 1,209,000 in 1918 (a density of 21.7 per cent), and to a pre-1940 high of 1,342,000 in 1920 (a density of 23.9 per cent).35 UK trade unions emerged from the war strengthened in numbers, organisation, and finance, often with a greater unity of purpose. The unions shared several common experiences. The biggest impact was the withdrawal of labour for the armed forces. Voluntary recruiting was by its nature indiscriminate, and many men who went before conscription and the Schedules of Reserved Occupations were men the industries could ill afford to lose. The impact of the soaring cost of living was suffered fairly willingly at first, given the suffering of those at the battle fronts. As the war went on, however, real standards of living dropped at a time when working people became aware that huge profits were being made, including by employers in state-controlled industries and in food distribution. Skilled male workers particularly feared for their crafts after the war. The trade unions represented many people’s concerns, both in workplaces and in the community. For working people in Britain, from manual to white collar, the war challenged their ability to maintain their real standard of living (the balance between their income and prices), and particularly to secure good food and fuel at reasonable prices. The experience of war undercut the acceptance of laissez-faire assumptions concerning the state. This was a major change that benefited the Labour Party. This change in outlook was well-expressed in the introduction to the Liberal Party’s Liberal Industrial Inquiry: ‘The theory that private competition, unregulated and unaided, will work out, with certainty, to the greatest advantage of the community is found by experience to be far from the truth.’36 William Beveridge, who worked as a civil servant on labour supply during the First World War and at its end became Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Food, later wrote, ‘The consumer is served best by plenty with competition, next best by control in time of shortage, worst of all by competition in time of shortage’.37 High wartime inflation undercut wage differentials, moving many workers hitherto not attracted by trade unions to seek their support in securing wage increases. The food shortages in big cities led to demands for fair shares for all. From early in the Second World War the British government managed the cost-ofliving index by rationing and subsidies, having learned from the mistakes of the first two and a half years of the First World War. Wartime queues in 35 36
37
Bain and Price, Profiles of Union Growth, p. 39. Britain’s Industrial Future: Being the Report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry (London: Ernest Benn, 1928), p. xix. Sir William H. Beveridge, British Food Control (London: Humphrey Milford, 1928), p. 181.
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Petrograd (today St Petersburg) were a major contributor to the Russian revolution of February 1917. In mid-March 1917 in Battersea (south London), the local press reported crowds of women and children going to coal yards and wharves seeking coal. A month later, there was a near riot on Falcon Road in Battersea when a crowd, estimated to be 2,000 people, mostly women, was told there were no potatoes.38 In Coventry, male munitions workers stopped work to relieve their wives in food queues, and Sheffield male munitions workers threatened to do the same. There were even letters from soldiers’ wives indicating that their husbands in the trenches were very unhappy about their spending long hours in queues.39 The eight regional commissions of inquiry which followed the May 1917 engineering strikes agreed that the soaring cost of living, combined with outrage at profiteering, was the ‘most important of all causes of industrial unrest’. When Lloyd George set up the commissions in mid-June 1917, he insisted on speedy reports, as it was believed that they were in a brief ‘industrial lull’ which would not last long given the steadily rising cost of food. While the commissioners investigated, Lloyd George set in motion moves to make food available at reasonable prices, including state subsidy on the price of bread.40 Some local authorities introduced local rationing, beginning with Gravesend and Pontypool in November and December 1917; Birmingham followed on 1 January 1918. National rationing of sugar began on 31 December 1917. In February 1918, rationing of butter, margarine and meat was introduced in London and other cities. Food queues dwindled and by May 1918 had disappeared.41 Good food, available at reasonable prices, was one of the causes taken up by the Labour Party. The Labour Party emerged from the war years as a widely recognised contender for power. Most of Labour’s pre-war MPs owed their seats to a pact with the Liberal Party, which gave Labour a free run against the Conservatives in a limited number of seats, in return for not splitting the anti-Tory vote in others. In 1906, twenty-nine MPs endorsed by the Labour Party were elected, with forty in the January 1910 general election and fortytwo in December 1910. However, the 1910 increases largely stemmed from the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain voting to affiliate in 1908 and eleven of the fifteen miners who had been in the Parliamentary Liberal Party joining Labour. The pact with the Liberals was under pressure before 1914 and was likely to crumble, but the war ensured that the Labour Party went its own way. The trade unionist majority in the Parliamentary Labour Party supported the war. The non-trade union Independent Labour Party (ILP) members 38 39 40 41
South Western Star, 16 March and 27 April 1917. Beveridge, British Food Control, pp. 196–204. Chris Wrigley, David Lloyd George and the British Labour Movement, pp. 198–9. Beveridge, British Food Control, pp. 188–95, 205–8.
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opposed the vote for war credits at the start of the war. Ramsay MacDonald resigned as chair of the Parliamentary Party (effectively the leader’s post) and was replaced by Arthur Henderson, the leading trade unionist in the Parliamentary Party and its chair in 1908–10. The five ILP members had had an impact that was out of proportion with the ILP presence in the Labour Party. Socialist societies accounted for under 3 per cent of affiliated members, with trade unions accounting for some 97 per cent. Keir Hardie (chair of the party in 1906–8), died in 1915, and his seat at Merthyr Tydfil was lost to an independent pro-war Labour candidate. The other ILP opponents of the war all lost their seats in the 1918 general election. In their support for the war effort, Arthur Henderson and the other trade unionist Labour MPs were in tune with the predominantly pro-war views of most working-class people. Labour, like the Liberal and Conservative parties, took part in the voluntary recruiting drive. Through the War Emergency Workers’ National Committee and trades councils, Labour also vigorously campaigned for better allowances for the families of service personnel, controls on rents, better housing and fairer availability of food. Through the trade unions the Labour movement campaigned for higher pay at a time when wartime inflation was leaving real wages behind. By 1917 the co-operative movement had moved to form its own Coop Party and more generally to supporting Labour, having previously been predominantly Liberal. As a result, the labour movement was strongly associated with controls on food profiteering. Arthur Henderson, until he joined HH Asquith’s coalition government in May 1915, was a member of the No Conscription Fellowship which sought to avoid compulsion. The government increasingly needed the support of the trade unions and the Labour Party. It quickly realised that it needed to consult the trade unions and gain their support, or at least acquiescence, in changes to work practices in war industries such as engineering, chemicals and electricals. Hence the negotiations in the five months before the passage of the Munitions of War Act, 2 July 1915. The government brought the leading trade unions involved in war work into advisory bodies. Arthur Henderson held ministerial posts in Asquith’s coalition government (1915–16) and was a War Cabinet member under Lloyd George (1916–17) but was always primarily there to troubleshoot industrial disputes. Lloyd George tried unsuccessfully to bring Robert Smillie, President of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, into his government, but he did appoint J. R. Clynes (cotton), Food Controller; John Hodge (steel), Minister of Labour; George Barnes (engineering), Minister of Pensions; William Brace (coal mining), Under-Secretary of State, Home Office; and George Roberts (printing) Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade and then Minister of Labour. Lloyd George put Labour politicians in posts which could be deemed labour areas of interest, just as he brought in employers to head their areas of special interest.
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However, the needs of ‘a war of production’ often favoured organised labour more than the employers. The state control of much of industry accelerated the spread of collective bargaining. Finding themselves left behind, the employers organised themselves to be more effective in protecting their interests in Whitehall, and formed the Federation of British Industries in 1916, uniting Manchester and Birmingham employers’ associations. Much, but not all, of the Labour Party’s increased political importance derived from the great growth in the strength of the trade unions. Less often commented on was that in the short term the war fostered dissent from the trade union leadership and led to various alternative political moves. This had been very apparent before the war, with the high-profile dissent of the railway worker, Walter Osborne, who had secured the Osborne Judgement in 1909, which ruled compulsory political levies illegal, and with Lib-Lab MPs (trade union MPs who stood with Liberal support and took the Liberal whip in the House of Commons) in northeast Derbyshire who were reluctant to break with the Liberals. The scale of support among trade union members for other parties before the war was suggested by the size of the minority votes in the ballots to establish political funds under the 1913 Trade Union Act. In these ballots just under 30 per cent voted against establishing political funds which would go to the Labour Party. The biggest minorities were in unions with strong ties to the Liberals or, in Lancashire cotton, to the Conservatives: the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (43 per cent, or if counting in rejected votes, 46 per cent); a federation which had affiliated to the Labour Party after a third ballot in May 1908, the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (47 per cent); and the cotton textiles unions of weavers and spinners (44 and 33 per cent).42 In 1918 there was still a minority, most notably in smaller unions such as the Amalgamated Musicians’ Union, who tried to get the TUC to create a socialist-free Trade Union Labour Party. However, the motion calling for the creation of such a body was defeated by 3,815,000–567,000 (87–13 per cent) at the 1918 Congress.43 The leading figures behind the Trade Union Labour Party moves were very committed to victory in the war. Indeed, ‘patriotic labour’ was very much focused on hatred of the enemy. In the case of James Havelock Wilson and others in his National Seamen’s and Firemen Union this stemmed from the drowning of large numbers of British seamen from the U-boat campaign, and particularly from the execution by firing squad in July 1916 of Captain Charles Fryatt for trying to ram a U-boat which 42 43
House of Commons Debates, 4th series, LVII, Cols. 613–4; 16 February 1914. Chris Wrigley, ‘At the Crossroads: The Labour Party, the Trade Unions and the Choice of Direction for the Democratic Left’, in Lucy Bland and Richard Carr (eds.), Labour, British Radicalism and the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), p. 48.
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was about to shell his ship. Wilson was elected as a Coalition Liberal MP for South Shields in the 1918 general election, having been returned unopposed earlier in the year in a by-election. He did not stand again in 1922. Other varieties of ‘patriotic labour’ were also successful in the 1918 general election. The British Workers’ League (BWL) was sponsored by the Conservatives, with the intention of getting its candidates to oust ILP or Labour MPs deemed insufficiently patriotic. The dilemma for the Conservatives was that local Conservative associations could not be expected to withdraw their candidates unless the Conservative Party leadership publicly endorsed the BWL; but if the Conservative leadership did so, it would undermine the prospects of BWL candidates gaining significant Labour movement support. In the 1918 general election, nine National Democratic and Labour candidates (as the BWL was renamed) were successful. Their victories included beating Ramsay MacDonald and Fred Jowett of the ILP as well as the notably patriotic Arthur Henderson. Three of the successful National Democratic and Labour (NDL) candidates were miners, winning in Aberdare, Don Valley and Wallsend. In Parliament, the nine NDL MPs were led by George Barnes, who had succeeded Henderson in the War Cabinet and earlier in 1910–11 as chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party. All but one (who joined the Labour Party in October 1919) lost their seats as National Liberal candidates in the 1922 general election.44 While a substantial minority of trade unionists voted in the 1918 general election for ‘patriotic’ candidates, there was also a longer-term movement of trade union members from Liberal to independent Labour and often to socialist politics following the war. The Liberal Party was weakened organisationally by the war, both in terms of constituency organisation and because of the split in the Parliamentary Party of December 1916. It was also weakened by the undermining of laissez-faire beliefs and the widespread acceptance of state intervention and a heavily controlled economy. In contrast, the Labour Party was strengthened organisationally and by the policies adopted during the war. Arthur Henderson, who had worked as a Liberal Party election agent from late 1895 to 1903 and was Labour’s electoral expert thereafter, devoted himself to reorganising the party after he was constructively dismissed from the War Cabinet on 12 August 1917.45 Henderson saw the TUC about reorganising the party less than four weeks later. He emphasised, as he sought support for organisational change, that Labour needed to be prepared, given the start in June 1917 of discussions in the House of Commons on a major Representation of the People Bill.46 44 45 46
Wrigley, ‘At the Crossroads’, pp. 46–8. Chris Wrigley, Arthur Henderson (Cardiff: GPC Books, 1990), pp. 19–24, 120–6. Chris Wrigley, ‘Labour and the Impact of the 1918 Reform Act’, Parliamentary History, 37:1 (2018), pp. 64–80.
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Henderson knew how far the trade unions would be willing to go and he needed greater funds from them, and so did not threaten their dominance of the party organisation. Henderson impressed on the January 1918 Labour Party conference ‘that it was no use talking about a new social order or reconstructing society’ until its political organisation was adequate for ‘the great task’ that lay immediately before them. He added, that ‘they had never in the proper sense claimed to be a national political party’.47 G. D. H. Cole, the academic and political activist, wrote of the party reorganisation, ‘Its essential purpose was to transform the Labour Party from a Federation, able to act only through its affiliated societies, into a national organised Party, with a Local Party of its own in every Parliamentary constituency.’48 The reorganisation also responded to the extension of the franchise to many women. From 1908, the Women’s Labour League, which campaigned for women’s suffrage and more, affiliated to Labour. With the Representation of the People Act, 1918, the League was subsumed in the Labour Party, taking its journal Labour Woman with it. The Labour Party appointed a chief woman’s officer, Dr Marion Philips. She had a doctorate in History, had worked as a social researcher for Beatrice and Sidney Webb, and was Secretary of the Women’s Labour League, a Fabian, a member of the ILP, and a Kensington Labour councillor. The other women’s organisers were working-class women. Two women’s organisers for England were appointed in early 1918 and a third in September 1918. The fourth organiser, Agnes Hardie, was appointed for Scotland in October 1918. Hardie had been an organiser for the National Union of Shop Assistants, was the first woman on Glasgow Trades Council and had been elected to a school board in Glasgow. Like Phillips, she was later a Labour MP. The Labour Party also adopted a constitution with socialist aims. It emphasised that it intended to represent white-collar workers as much as manual workers: ‘Generally to promote the Political, Social and Economic Emancipation of the People, and more particularly of those who depend directly upon their own exertions by hand or brain for the means of life.’ Its most famous clause, 3 (d), was ‘To secure for workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry, and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible, upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.’ This clause was a masterpiece of drafting by Sidney Webb, which ruled out none of the contemporary varieties of socialism, yet never used the word ‘socialism’. Webb himself commented in 47
48
On 25 January 1918, The Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party, 1918, p. 99. G. D. H. Cole, A History of the Labour Party from 1914 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1948), pp. 44–5.
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an article in the Observer, ‘This declaration of the Labour Party leaves it open to choose from time to time whatever forms of common ownership, from cooperative stores to nationalised railways, and whatever forms of popular administration and control of industry, from national guilds to ministries of employment and municipal management [which] may in particular cases commend themselves.’49 The rebranding of the Labour Party also included a raft of new policies, which collectively asserted that Labour was a distinctive party on the political left. Labour reiterated its old policy of the right to work or the right to maintenance, but now emphasised that they applied to women as well as men. Other policies included a system of education from the nursery to the university based on social equality, the building of a million new cottages in town and country, the abolition of the Poor Law and the development of municipal welfare services as well as public control of mines, transport and agriculture. Many of the policies were publicised through short articles in the press by Arthur Henderson. These articles were the basis of a book, The Aims of Labour, which promised a better Britain after the war, albeit on a lesser scale than William Beveridge’s Second World War proposals, Social Insurance and Allied Services (1942). The Aims of Labour sold very well. In his preface, Henderson declared that the proceeds from the book would be given to a fund that the Labour Party was promoting ‘with a view to erecting a suitable and lasting memorial to the honour of those who had fallen on the field of battle in furtherance of the ideals and aims which inspire British democracy and on behalf of which British Labour has sacrificed so much and so freely’.50 These were sentiments intended to appeal to all those who had lost family members in the war, and they included Labour leaders such as Clynes and Barnes, as well as Henderson himself The coming of the fourth Reform Act of 1918 created the impetus for the Labour Party to reorganise. In giving the vote to men because they were men, not owners of property, and extending it to most women over thirty, it confronted Labour with new challenges which invigorated the party. Marion Phillips edited a second substantial book for the Labour Party, Women and the Labour Party (1918). Henderson, in the book’s foreword, emphasised Labour’s long support of ‘the claims of women on the ground of sex equality’ and that in the coming era of ‘social reconstruction Labour’s policies aimed to promote ‘the common interests of both sexes’.51 Labour’s third leaflet in 1918 was Why 49
50 51
‘New constitution of the Labour Party’, Observer, 21 October 1917; quoted in J. M. Winter, Socialism and the Challenge of War: Ideas and Politics in Britain, 1912–18 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), p. 268. The Aims of Labour, 1918, p. 5. The preface was dated 23 December 1917. Arthur Henderson, ‘Foreword’, in Marion Phillips (ed.), Women and the Labour Party (London: Headley Bros, 1918), p. 5.
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Women should join the Labour Party. Labour, like the other parties, made a major effort to secure women’s votes. One of its aspects recognised the important domestic role played by women by involving them in reconstruction discussions concerning the planning of the interiors of houses.52 Henderson and other Labour politicians made much of the party having changed from being predominantly a trade union pressure group to being a party for the whole electorate. At Widnes in 1920 he commented, ‘Do not believe those who say the Labour Party is merely the party of trade unions. It is the party of all who work and whose labour enriches the common life in contradiction to those who do not work but live parasitically on the labour of others.’53 This was the message which Henderson and other leaders wished to promote. However, the war years and especially the 1918 general election reinforced the dominance of the trade unions notwithstanding the revised party constitution. Henderson told the Labour Party conference in 1918 that ‘the question of finance will have to be met. There is no other limit to the number of candidates or to the enthusiasm in the ranks of the Movement.’54 There was great enthusiasm in many constituencies, including in places unlikely to have many Labour voters, such as Chertsey. Yet there was optimism because of the greater number of voters. The trade unions had funds. The Miners’ Federation of Great Britain sponsored fifty-one candidates, of whom twenty-five were elected. Nineteen of the unsuccessful twenty-six stood in seats which were soon to be Labour bastions or won in good years. The textile unions ran ten candidates, of whom four were elected. It seems that the unions’ choice of constituencies to contest was markedly inept, with candidates not running in seats with large numbers of cotton workers.55 The Amalgamated Society of Engineers, whose members were more dispersed than many miners and textile workers, backed seventeen candidates but only one was elected. Of the fiftyseven endorsed successful candidates in 1918, forty-nine were sponsored by trade unions, five by local Labour parties and three by the ILP. In addition, there were three unendorsed successful candidates and one successful Co-op Party candidate, all four taking the Labour whip at Westminster. Henderson was succeeded as chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party by Willie Adamson, a Scottish miner, for four years (1917–21), and from 1918 until 1922 the
52
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55
Krista Cowman, ‘From the Housewife’s Point of View’: Female Citizenship and the Gendered Domestic Interior in Post-First World War Britain’, English Historical Review, 130:543 (2015), pp. 352–83. At Widnes, 8 January 1920; Times, 9 January 1920. ‘Report of the Executive Committee, June 1918–June 1919’, Labour Party, Report of the Nineteenth Annual Conference, 1919, p. 28. Alan Fowler, Lancashire Cotton Operatives and Work (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 121–6.
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Parliamentary Party was dominated by miners. Ramsay MacDonald scathingly referred to it in these years as ‘the checkweighman’s party’ (checkweighmen being the men’s elected representatives who checked fair payment was made for miners’ output of coal). The parliamentary strength of Labour at the end of the war was regional. Most Labour MPs in 1918 were in Lancashire, Yorkshire and the northeast of England. In the south, there were four in London and a fifth in the Forest of Dean. There were nine Labour MPs in Wales and six in Scotland. All were men. Four of the seventeen women who stood in the 1918 general election were Labour candidates. As the Reform Act legislation left open the possibility of returning officers rejecting female nomination papers, the House of Commons passed a clarification of women’s right to stand as parliamentary candidates on 23 October 1918, a mere nineteen days before the Armistice. Those Labour women who stood all had suffragist backgrounds as well as socialist and peace campaigning records. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, who stood for Manchester Rusholme, had come to the ILP via the West London Methodist Mission and was a pre-eminent suffragette, having been imprisoned six times and force-fed. Charlotte Despard, who stood for Battersea North, had twice been gaoled for suffragette activity. She had been a member of the Social Democratic Federation, a delegate to the Second International in 1896, a member of Battersea Labour Party and a notable peace campaigner. Millicent Hughes Mackenzie, who stood for the Welsh Universities seat, was co-founder of the Cardiff and District Women’s Suffrage Society and the first female professor in Wales. Mary Macarthur, who was sponsored by the National Federation of Women Workers as Labour candidate for Stourbridge, was a leading trade unionist who had founded the National Federation of Women Workers, an active member of the ILP and an opponent of the war. Macarthur came closest to winning of the four women, coming second in her three-cornered contest and losing by 1,333 votes.56 Organised labour in Northern Ireland had followed developments in Britain before the First World War. The setting up of the Independent Labour Party in Yorkshire was soon followed by the creation of a branch in Belfast. The Belfast Trades Council had affiliated to the Labour Representation Committee in 1903, had hosted the 1907 Labour Party conference and, with some success, had sought to secure the election of working men to the city council and to Westminster.57 Belfast Labour was predominantly unionist, and it became
56 57
Wrigley, ‘Labour and the Impact of the 1918 Reform Act’, pp. 64–80. John W. Boyle, The Irish Labour Movement in the Nineteenth Century (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), pp. 278–327.
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vehemently so during the controversies over the third Home Rule Bill.58 A group of these men crossed to northern England and helped a Conservative and Unionist candidate win a Derbyshire by-election in which the anti-Conservative vote was split between Liberal and Labour candidates.59 Belfast Labour did join with Dublin Labour in demonstrating against the danger of military conscription being applied to Ireland, holding a ‘monster protest’ of over 8,000 Belfast workers on 14 April 1918.60 Before the war, in Dublin and southern port towns and cities, Jim Larkin’s syndicalism was militant but not centred on taking over the means of production. As Marc Mullholland has argued, the militant strikers were more focused on controlling their trade union and working-class districts. They spoke of securing in time ‘the co-operative commonwealth’.61 The Labour Party of Ireland was formed in 1912 by James Connolly, Jim Larkin and William O’ Brien as the political wing of the Irish TUC. The war led to James Connolly, Ireland’s leading Marxist theorist, moving towards nationalism and being executed by the British after the Easter Rising of 1916. The war and its aftermath saw, like the rest of the UK, a big increase in trade union membership. Trade union affiliations to the Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party rose from 110,000 in 1914 to 250,000, with 130,000 of these being in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.62 The Labour Party stood aside from the bitter Irish constitutional divisions and did not contest the 1918 and 1921 elections. There were less divisions in the British labour movement than in other European belligerent nations, such as Germany. The Labour Party did not suffer a major split in the war, unlike the German SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany). The USPD (Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany) broke away in April 1917, and in the 1920 Reichstag elections took 17.9 per cent of the vote to the SPD’s 21.7 per cent. It too then split, some going to the KPD (German Communist Party), others returning to the SPD. The KPD secured an average of just under 13 per cent of the votes in the
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60
61
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Emmet O’ Connor, ‘Sheep in Wolves Clothing: Labour and Politics in Belfast 1881–1914’, in Francis Devine, Fintan Lane and Niamh Puirseil (eds.), Essays in Irish Labour History (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008), pp. 65–82. Emmet O’ Connor, ‘British Labour, Belfast and Home Rule’, in Laurence Marley (ed.), The British Labour Party and Twentieth Century Ireland: The Cause of Ireland, the Cause of Labour (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), p. 64. Deidre Lindsay, ‘Labour against Conscription’, in David Fitzpatrick (ed.), Ireland and the Great War, 2nd ed. (Gigginstown, Mullingar, Westmeath: Lilliput Press 1988), pp. 77–89. Marc Mullholland, ‘Irish Labour and the “Co-operative Commonwealth” in the era of the First World War’, in Lucy Bland and Richard Carr (eds.), Labour, Radicalism and the First World War, pp. 182–200. Francis Devine, Organising History: A Century of SIPTU (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2009), chs. 6–8.
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seven Reichstag elections from 1924, whereas the Communist Party of Great Britain secured an average of 0.2 per cent of the votes in the six elections from 1922. The TUC emerged from the war with its prestige enhanced and the Labour Party formed a minority government just over five years after the Armistice.
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14 Nations in Arms Enlistment and Conscription . . Between 1914 and 1918 the United Kingdom equated to a ‘nation in arms’ for the first time in a century. Yet there were wide variations between nations, regions and localities. The national war effort concealed myriad national and local loyalties. National and local political, social, economic and cultural factors all impacted upon military participation both under voluntary enlistment prior to 1916 and conscription thereafter. After establishing the parameters of military participation, this chapter analyses the role of national, regional and local identities in the expansion of the army between 1914 and 1916 and also in the application of conscription after 1916. The significance of economic factors in stimulating or hindering both voluntary enlistment and conscription can then be examined, before reaching a conclusion.
I A total of 4.9 million men enlisted in the British army between August 1914 and November 1918. Of these, 2.4 million were enlisted prior to the introduction of conscription in January 1916, and 2.5 million after. The latter figure includes those who continued to enlist in the regular army, those who continued to volunteer, and those whose willingness to serve if called upon to do so had been attested under the Derby Scheme between October and December 1915. The actual number of conscripts enlisted under successive Military Service Acts numbered 1.3 million. Account also needs to be taken of those already serving in the regular army, the army reserve, the Special Reserve and the Territorial Force in August 1914. When they are added, the total of men passing through the British army was 5.7 million, or some 22.1 percent of the male population of the United Kingdom. It represented a higher proportion of those deemed to be of military age – that is between the ages of eighteen and forty-one – and a higher proportion still of those on the British mainland since conscription was never applied to Ireland, and the response from Ireland was not as great as that from mainland Britain.1 1
Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire (London: HMSO, 1922), pp. 156–9, 363–4.
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By contrast, 4.6 million men served in the British armed forces as a whole between 1939 and 1945, representing 19.4 percent of the male population.2 Consequently, with the possible exception of the long struggle against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France between 1792 and 1815, Great War Britain experienced its greatest ever level of military participation.3 True universal military service is impossible to achieve. There will always be those exempted for reasons of age and/or physical fitness and, increasingly, in modern industrialised states for reasons of occupation deemed vital to the overall war effort. A marked feature of total war is the requirement to outproduce as well as outfight an opponent. Nonetheless, even the level of enlistment reached between 1914 and 1918 still meant that approximately half of those of military age did not enlist, and that approximately half of those who were enlisted spent half of the war as civilians.4 In part, this reflected the laissez-faire liberalism of the Victorian and Edwardian state. There was a long struggle to accept the anathema of conscription, its political and organisational milestones being the Householders’ Returns in November and December 1914, the formation of the Asquith coalition government in May 1915, the National Register in July 1915, and the Derby Scheme.5 The initial lack of any adequate machinery of government to meet the challenges of war also led to the failure to arrive at a coherent manpower policy until the War Cabinet’s acceptance of the priorities of its Manpower Committee in January 1918. That gave priority to the production of timber, iron ore, food, merchant shipping, aircraft and tanks over supplying the army’s manpower needs.6 Importantly, however, the lessons were learned so that Britain entered the Second World War with conscription and a coherent manpower policy.7
II It was a national war effort from the beginning but one suffused with localism and with different conceptions of national, regional and local identities. In expanding the army in 1914 the new Secretary of State for War, Field Marshal 2
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Fighting with Figures: A Statistical Digest of the Second World War (London: Central Statistical Office, 1995), pp. 38–9. M. Greenwood, ‘British Loss of Life in the Wars of 1794–1815 and 1914–18’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 105 (1942), pp. 1–16. Laura Ugolini, Civvies: Middle-Class Men on the English Home Front, 1914–18 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 7. See R. J. Q. Adams and Philip Poirier, The Conscription Controversy in Britain, 1900–18 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987). Keith Grieves, The Politics of Manpower, 1914–18 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. 149–76. Margaret Gowing, ‘The Organisation of Manpower in Britain during the Second World War’, Journal of Contemporary History 7 (1972), pp. 147–67.
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Lord Kitchener, chose to ignore the mechanism of the County Territorial Associations (CTAs) established for that purpose by R. B. Haldane in 1908. In part, Kitchener’s reasoning for bypassing the CTAs lay in his fear of local political influences. The Territorial Force, he told Sir Edward Grey, was a ‘town clerk’s army’.8 Kitchener’s ‘New Armies’ would be raised directly by the War Office. Yet the War Office’s own network of recruiting offices depended often upon not only those of the CTAs but also the efforts of many individuals and organisations, such as the National Service League, the Primrose League, the Rural League, the Church Lads’ Brigade, the British Empire Agency, the Legion of Frontiersmen, the Jewish Recruitment Committee, and even the Mothers’ Union. Initially, the former Secretary of State for War, the Earl of Midleton, called upon the CTAs to assist in housing, clothing and training New Army recruits but his committee was dispensed with on 7 September 1914.9 Three CTAs – Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, Denbighshire and Flint, and the East Riding – directly raised eleven battalions for the New Army alongside new Territorial units. Of the 557 new service or reserve battalions raised between August 1914 and June 1916, 38 per cent were the result of local or organisational initiative outside the efforts of the War Office itself.10 In the case of the efforts of individuals such as Lord Derby, the ‘King of Lancashire’, in northwest England; Claude Lowther MP who raised three ‘Southdown’ battalions (11th, 12th and 13th Royal Sussex Regiment) in Sussex; or Cameron of Lochiel and Lord Lovat in the Highlands, the appeal was almost feudal.11 By contrast, the unpopularity of the Hon. Hugh Fortescue, son of the Lord Lieutenant, hindered recruiting in Devon.12 The whole organisation of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, which took the lead in producing and distributing recruiting propaganda, was based upon local constituency associations [see Fig. 14.1]. Established by Asquith on 27 August 1914 under the chairmanship of the Liberal Chief Whip, the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee used political parties’ constituency networks to encourage voluntary enlistment. In October 1915 it was superseded 8
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10 11
12
Lord Grey of Fallodon, Twenty Five Years, 1892–1916, 2 vols. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1925), II, p. 68. Peter Simkins, Kitchener’s Army: The Raising of the New Armies, 1914–16 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 75. Ibid., p. 79. Keith Grieves, ‘Lowther’s Lambs: Rural Patriotism and Voluntary Recruitment in the First World War’, Rural History 4 (1993), pp. 55–75; Ewen Cameron and Iain Robertson, ‘Fighting and Bleeding for the Land: The Scottish Highlands and the Great War’, in Catriona Macdonald and Elaine McFarland (eds.), Scotland and the Great War (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1999), pp. 81–100. Bonnie White, ‘Volunteerism and Early Recruitment Efforts in Devonshire, August 1914 to December 1915’, Historical Journal 52 (2009), pp. 641–66.
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Figure 14.1 Bucks boys come over here: you’re wanted. Poster produced in 1914 for the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee and adapted for local use. From the collection of the Buckinghamshire County Recruiting Officer, Captain Leonard Green of Chetwode Priory. Bucks Military Museum Trust.
by the Joint Recruiting Committee, whose work ceased in July 1916 with the extension of conscription.13 In addition, countless groups and individuals – men and women – worked tirelessly to organise recruiting locally. At Guildford, the thirteen members of the recruiting committee comprised a local solicitor who was a former rifle volunteer, the mayor, three or four corporation officials, and representatives of two local breweries, the local gas company, a local printer, the local rifle club, the Chamber of Trade, and the Royal Surrey County Hospital.14 Some meetings may not have drawn that many recruits and there was something of a law of diminishing returns after September 1914, but it has been suggested that the sheer theatricality of recruiting meetings as community occasions held far more symbolic significance than actual military results.15 An estimated 20,000 individuals – mostly clergymen – acted as local agents for the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps alone.16 In the same way, many individuals canvassed for the Derby Scheme. Where local committees did not exist, they were newly formed with branch committees established in districts and groups of villages, and in boroughs and 13
14 15
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Roy Douglas, ‘Voluntary Enlistment in the First World War and the Work of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee’, Journal of Modern History 42 (1970), pp. 564–85. Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, 57. Kit Good, ‘England Goes to War, 1914–15’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Liverpool 2002), p. 142. Ian Beckett, ‘The Nation in Arms’, in Ian Beckett and Keith Simpson (eds.), A Nation in Arms: A Social Study of the British Army in the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), pp. 2–35, at 17.
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borough wards. A total of 2.1 single and 2.6 million married men were canvassed.17 One indication of the effort required was that 300 volunteers in Leeds undertook 200,000 visits to canvas 42,000 individuals.18 In urban centres, civic pride and identity were significant. While it had other roots in terms of peer influence, an obvious manifestation is the 115 ‘Pals’ battalions, such as the Accrington Pals (11th East Lancashire Regiment), Grimsby Chums (10th Lincolnshire Regiment), and Swansea Pals (14th Welsh Regiment). Lancashire and Cheshire raised twenty-four such battalions, and Yorkshire and the northeast, fifteen apiece. Manchester competed with Salford to raise battalions. Similarly, Hull consciously rivalled Liverpool in its efforts to raise units, although it has been argued that the War Office’s readiness to endorse ‘sub-national identities’ was ‘not really an affirmation of region or locality, but an expression of faith in private enterprise’, evidenced in the willingness of individuals to bear the financial costs.19 A good example was James Dalrymple, General Manager of Glasgow Corporation Tramways, who sponsored the 15th Highland Light Infantry, also known as the Glasgow Corporation Tramways Battalion. Within battalions there were still more local affiliations, such as the company of the 6th Buffs formed from William Cory & Son, a Medway coal and coke transport company.20 In Liverpool separate recruiting tables were established in St George’s Hall on 31 August 1914 for: the Cotton Association; the Corn Trade Association; the Stock Exchange; the Law Society; the Cunard and White Star shipping lines; accountants; banks; insurance companies; and the sugar, seed, oil and cake, timber and fruit trades.21 Quite often, with the carefully delineated class associations of some units such as the Public Schools Battalion (16th Middlesex Regiment), the Newcastle Commercials (16th Northumberland Fusiliers) or the Birmingham City Battalions (14th and 15th Royal Warwickshire Regiment), it was ‘less about who you served with, but much more obviously about who you didn’t serve with’.22 In Leeds, the exclusion of artisans and manual workers from the
17
18
19
20
21 22
Ian Beckett, Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly, The British Army and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 115. Edward Spiers, ‘Voluntary Recruiting in Yorkshire, 1914–15’, Northern History 52 (2015), pp. 295–313, at 311. Helen Townley, ‘The First World War and Voluntary Recruitment: A Form for Regional Identity? An Analysis of the Nature, Expression and Significance of Regional Identity in Hull, 1900–16’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Sussex (2007), 177. Mark Connelly, Steady the Buffs: A Regiment and the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 10–12. Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, p. 85. Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 78.
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Leeds Pals (15th West Yorkshire Regiment) widened social divisions and dampened recruiting.23 Pals battalions, and all those newly raised, became de facto battalions of the army’s county regiments. In that sense, all were also local. The idea of the county regiment had only become a reality in the 1870s and 1880s. Linking of regular battalions and their connection with militia and volunteer battalions in a single depot through ‘localisation’ in 1872 had been followed by full ‘territorialisation’ in 1881. Regular battalions were now permanently linked as new county regiments, with militia and volunteers as additional battalions. Many of the new county links of regular battalions were entirely bogus and few recruited exclusively or even primarily in their designated counties. The South African War, however, went a long way towards establishing the county regiments of popular memory and the Great War completed that process, adding another level to the appeal of local loyalties in 1914. Territorial units were ‘Pals’ in all but name, the wartime expansion of the force to 692 battalions by the time direct enlistment into the Territorials was suspended in December 1915, drawing in approximately half the number enlisted in the New Armies in the same period.24 The CTAs had never had the original elective element envisaged by Haldane but they continued to reflect older county loyalties in terms of their composition. Territorials in themselves drew on an ‘amateur military tradition’ long predating a regular standing army. The lineage of most Territorial infantry battalions went back to the revival of the volunteer force in 1859 and those of most yeomanry units to the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The County Lieutenancy had lost much of its powers and administrative functions in the course of the nineteenth century, not least through the emergence of county, rural district and urban district councils. Nonetheless, lord lieutenants were still important and invariably still led most CTAs, while county council representatives on the associations were also often drawn from the traditional elite. If increasingly shorn of meaningful wartime responsibilities after 1914, it was still the CTAs that then took over the administration of the revived volunteer force in 1916. The Volunteer Training Corps (VTC), as it was initially known in 1914, arose itself from local efforts in response to invasion fears, subsequently expressed through War Office recognition of a Central Association in November 1914. Initially regulated under the 1863 Volunteer Act, the VTC was transformed into the Volunteer Force by new legislation in December 1916, becoming volunteer battalions of county regiments. Just as in 1859, many volunteer units were formed by professional men and tradesmen, including such groups as golf clubs, old boys’ associations, and Optimists’
23 24
Spiers, ‘Voluntary Recruiting’, p. 299. Ian Beckett, ‘The Territorial Force’, in Nation in Arms, pp. 127–64, at 139.
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businessmen’s clubs, a movement originating in the United States in 1911.25 Men of military age were not to be enlisted unless they had genuine reasons for not joining the army. There was something of a conflict of interest between the VTC and the Special Constabulary, which also attracted many men in 1914, since they performed similar guard duties. Once conscription was introduced, military service tribunals could make exemption conditional upon service in the volunteers, although the ability to compel exempted men to attend drills through civil prosecution was rarely exercised. By February 1918, 35 per cent of the 285,000 members of the Volunteer Force were ‘tribunal men’.26 The pre-war National Reserve of older men established in 1911 was subsumed in the Territorial Force in 1915 and became part of the Royal Defence Corps in 1916. It has been argued that quasi-military women’s voluntary organisations such as the Women’s Emergency Corps and the Women’s Volunteer Reserve – organisations that had approximately 10,000 members by 1916 – also consciously projected themselves within the local Victorian volunteering tradition.27 They were quite separate from the 6,000 largely working-class women enlisted in the Women’s Legion in 1915–16. The latter was the effective predecessor of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) created in March 1917 and eventually numbering about 41,000 mostly working or lower middle-class women.28 Given the nature of the state, it is not surprising that the apparatus established in 1916 for the adjudication of claims for exemption from military service was also locally based. General recognition of grounds for potential exemption went back to the militia ballot as applied to that force between 1757 and 1831. The 2,000 or so military service tribunals were established on the pattern of those organised for the Derby Scheme and on the basis of county, urban and rural district councils. They represented an extraordinary voluntary effort on the part of their members. Consisting of local worthies but now also including businessmen, trades unionists and women, somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 individuals sat on them. The tribunal at Marlow in 25
26 27
28
K. W. Mitchinson, Defending Albion: Britain’s Home Army, 1908–19 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 84. Beckett, Bowman and Connelly, British Army, p. 131. Krisztina Robert, ‘Gender, Class and Patriotism: Women’s Paramilitary Units in First World War Britain’, International History Review 19 (1997), pp. 52–65; Krisztina Robert, ‘Constructions of “Home”, “Front” and Women’s Military Employment in First World War Britain: A Spatial Interpretation’, History and Theory 52 (2013), pp. 319–43. Elizabeth Crosthwait, ‘The Girl Behind the Man Behind the Gun: The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, 1914–18’, in Leonore Davidoff and Belinda Westover (eds.), Our Work, Our Lives, Our Words (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1986), pp. 161–81; Lucy Noakes, Women in the British Army: War and the Gentle Sex (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 61–81.
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Buckinghamshire, for example, met thirty-nine times during the course of the war and that at Calne in Wiltshire met on sixty occasions. Kingston-uponThames tribunal, however, met 260 times, that in Leeds 435 times, and that in Birmingham a total of 1,765 times. The Northamptonshire Appeals Tribunal heard 12,150 cases in 162 sittings, while the Bristol tribunal considered over 41,000 cases.29 Advice was received regularly from the Local Government Board, and there were constant adjustments to schedules of reserved occupations, but tribunals remained ‘sovereign entities, duty-bound to consider cases judiciously and impartially, but with no de jure obligation to answer for their decisions’.30 While local and regional identity has been emphasised thus far, there was also the question of national identity within the United Kingdom. In 1913 the regular army was overwhelmingly English in composition at 78.6 per cent, with the proportion of Irish soldiers at 9.1 per cent, Scots at 7.6 per cent and Welsh just 1.4 per cent. Overall, Scotland and Wales not only now increased their representation to a level matching that of England but also found proportionally more recruits than England. Scotland produced the largest proportion of recruits under voluntary enlistment.31 Kitchener proved resistant to a Welsh Army Corps, primarily through fears of politicisation. He was pressured by David Lloyd George and the putative corps was permitted to incorporate a number of existing battalions alongside those raised by the Welsh National Executive Committee. In the event only a single division – the 38th (Welsh) – emerged but with a strongly nationalist image and a reputation for political nepotism in command appointments.32 There was no significantly different war experience, however, for those serving in Scottish or Welsh units from that of the rest of the army. Nominally Scottish, Welsh or, for that matter, English units were frequently cosmopolitan – especially as casualties mounted and all were fed from a common manpower pool – and the bonding of camaraderie under fire overrode purely national identities.33 It might be added that the billeting of the new Kitchener and Territorial divisions over much of England in 1914–15 exposed the parochialism of pre-war 29 30
31 32 33
Beckett, Bowman and Mark Connelly, British Army, p. 125. James McDermott, British Military Service Tribunals, 1916–18 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), p. 4. Beckett, Nation in Arms, pp. 10–11. Clive Hughes, ‘The New Armies’, in Nation in Arms, pp. 100–25, at 117. Edward Spiers, ‘The Scottish Soldier at War’, in Hugh Cecil and Peter Liddle (eds.) Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced (London: Leo Cooper, 1996), pp. 314–35; Gervase Phillips, ‘Da Bach Y Soldiwr: Welsh Soldiers in the British Army, 1914–18’, Llafur 6 (1993), pp. 94–105; Chris Williams, ‘Taffs in the Trenches: Welsh National Identity and Military Service, 1914–1918’, in Matthew Cragoe and Chris Williams (eds.), Wales and War: Religion, Society and Politics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007), pp. 126–64.
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society, serving to reinforce stereotypes in some cases and breaking down preconceptions in others. Ireland was a special case because of the highly politicised state of the island in 1914 in light of the home rule crisis and the paralysis of government policy following the Curragh incident in March 1914, when many army officers indicated their intention to refuse any potential order to coerce Ulster into accepting home rule. While some have downplayed the part of religion and politics in Irish recruitment,34 it is undeniable that politics played a significant role. The 10th (Irish) Division was organised by the War Office as part of the ‘First New Army’ but met such a poor response that between 30 and 40 per cent of its strength was not recruited from Ireland.35 Consequently, Kitchener negotiated with the political leadership of the existing Irish National Volunteers (INV) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) once home rule had been put on the statute book in September 1914 but immediately suspended for the duration. Appeals by the leadership to their followers were not entirely successful. It is generally agreed that, by April 1916, some 29,000 UVF and 30,000 INV members had enlisted, but alongside over 57,000 men who had no affiliation to either. The enlistment from the UVF was proportionally higher than that of the INV in terms of absolute numbers. Neither the 16th (Irish) nor 36th (Ulster) Divisions, however, were ever exclusively drawn respectively from the INV and UVF.36 Irish recruitment peaked in September 1914 before going into a sharp if uneven decline, representing a much lower base than in Britain and always well below Ireland’s share of total population. Provision for extending conscription to Ireland was included in the Military Service (No. 2) Act of April 1918 in the wake of the German spring offensives on the western front and on the basis of the political need for equality of sacrifice. The danger passed and it was never implemented. Yet enabling legislation was sufficient to undermine constitutional nationalism in Ireland with disastrous results at the 1918 general election.
III Apart from the political aspects of Irish recruitment, economic factors were also extremely significant. These have been discounted by some who have misinterpreted the listing of a man’s previous occupation on enlistment forms as firm evidence of employment. Belfast provided 29.5 per cent of all Irish recruits between August 1914 and October 1916. There was not only 34
35
36
David Fitzpatrick, ‘The Logic of Collective Sacrifice: Ireland and the British Army, 1914–18’, Historical Journal, 38 (1995), pp. 1017–30. Stephen Sandford, Neither Unionist nor Nationalist; The 10th (Irish) Division in the Great War (Sallins: Irish Academic Press, 2015), pp. 15, 20–21. Beckett, Bowman and Connelly, British Army, pp. 109–10.
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uncertainty about future orders in shipbuilding and engineering in Belfast in 1914, but the linen industry was also badly affected by the stoppage of Belgian and Russian imports.37 In this regard, recruitment patterns followed those on mainland Britain, for the relationship between employment and recruitment was a close one. That had always been the case for recruitment into the peacetime regular army. In 1906 the then Quartermaster General Sir William (later Field Marshal Lord) Nicholson appropriately commented that the peacetime army relied upon a ‘compulsion of destitution’.38 What was once characterised as the ‘rush to the colours’ can be almost precisely dated to the period between 25 August and 9 September 1914. Some 15 per cent of all wartime enlistments occurred in the first two months of the war, but the response was not immediate. It was only on 30 August that news was received of the British retreat from Mons. German atrocity stories were also becoming current, and the idea of the ‘Pals’ surfaced in Lord Derby’s first use of the term on 28 August, although the Stockbrokers Battalion (10th Royal Fusiliers) had begun recruiting seven days earlier. The 33,204 men enlisted on 3 September – the most on any single day – comfortably exceeded normal annual recruitment into the army. But the news from France was now improving, poor recruit accommodation and other challenges were apparent with many men sent home on deferred enlistments, and the War Office began to try and regulate the flow by arbitrary changes to height and other physical requirements. Even more important, large government contracts were being placed for clothing, equipment and munitions. Improved employment prospects and rising retail prices encouraged many men to remain in civil employment. Possibly as many as 480,000 men lost their jobs amid the prevailing economic uncertainty of August 1914, with many others placed on half-time. In any case, autumn was a time for lay-offs in agriculture and building. Detailed studies for Bristol, Birmingham and Leeds show the correlation between unemployment and enlistment. In Bristol 10 per cent of the workforce was laid off and 26 per cent placed on half-time. Nine out of every ten men laid off in the city enlisted. In Birmingham, 78 per cent of recruits in August came from those who had been most likely to enlist in peacetime; that is, those from less secure employment subject to seasonal variations. In Leeds, enlistment reduced the 10.25 per cent contraction in employment to 1.5 per cent by September.39 Yet, of 1,145 men who had indicated a willingness to join 37 38
39
Ibid., pp. 110–11. Ian Beckett, ‘The Compulsion of Destitution: The British Army and the Dilemma of Imperial Defence, 1868–1914’, in Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (eds.), Raise, Train and Sustain: Delivering Land Combat Power (Canberra: Australian Military History Publications, 2010), pp. 30–52, at 31. Beckett, Bowman and Connelly, British Army, pp. 100–1.
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a new workers’ battalion in Leeds in early September, only 100 came forward when asked to do so in December.40 By December 1914, there was a labour shortage in Birmingham.41 Indeed, the Board of Trade calculated that those on short-time had declined from 26 per cent of the industrial labour force in September 1914 to only six per cent by February 1915 reflecting both enlistment and the take-up of employment. In rural areas, such as the southwest, an abundant harvest, farmers who were prepared to offer incentives to remain on the land, and an absence of large-scale employment outside the Plymouth and Devonport dockyards resulted in low enlistment rates. In the case of Cornwall, extraction industries such as tin and china clay were suffering economic depression from falling prices but, here, the labour force was well used to cycles of boom and bust and was apparently prepared to await better times.42 There had been something of an economic upswing in Scotland in 1913, but there were distinct regional variations with east coast coal mines more badly affected than west coast mines by the loss of German and Baltic markets. Thus, 36.5 per cent of miners in East Lothian enlisted by August 1915 compared to 20 per cent in Ayrshire. Engineering, iron and steel also saw initial wartime contraction and, of thirty major industries surveyed by the Board of Trade in October 1914, twenty had produced a higher proportion of recruits in Scotland than elsewhere.43 The attitude of employers was crucial in many cases. In Gwynedd in Wales, some slate-quarry owners refused to keep open the places of those enlisted while others threatened to dismiss men who did not enlist. The North- Eastern and Cardiff Railway Companies induced enlistment by guaranteeing post-war employment, although the latter retracted the offer when it became clear that under-manning might result from too enthusiastic a response.44 Generally, railwaymen and Admiralty employees received early protection through ‘badging’. Within six months the Admiralty had ‘badged’ over 400,000 men, and the War Office some 80,000 men by July 1915.45 On the other hand, some employers such as the larger ironworks and shipbuilding firms in Middlesbrough, the Stroud Brewery Company or the sporting outfitters, Aquascutum, offered bonuses to those who did enlist. 40 41
42
43
44 45
Gregory, Last Great War, pp. 88–9. John Hartigan, ‘Volunteering in the First World War: The Birmingham Experience, August 1914 to May 1915’, Midland History 24 (1999), pp. 167–86. Andy Gale, ‘The West Country and the First World War: Recruits and Identities’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Lancaster (2010), pp. 64–96; Stuart Dalley, ‘The Response in Cornwall to the Outbreak of the First World War’, Cornish Studies 11 (2003), pp. 85–109. Derek Rutherford Young, ‘Voluntary Recruitment in Scotland, 1914–16’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Glasgow (2001), pp. 95–158, 195–99. Hughes, ‘New Armies’, pp. 102, 120. Beckett, Bowman and Connelly, British Army, 104.
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Wage rates do not appear to have been a factor in enlistment but the response to war did reflect the age structure of the labour force across different sectors. Younger men naturally tended to enlist before older men, with notably older labour forces in agriculture and the railways producing the lowest rates of enlistment at 22 and 18 per cent respectively. By contrast, the highest percentage of the labour force between the ages of 20 and 34 (74 per cent) was found among employees of omnibus companies, and they recorded the highest enlistment rate of all occupations (47 per cent).46 In passing it might be noted that suggestions that the number of under-age enlistments reached between 250,000 and 360,000 are based on highly unconvincing extrapolation from limited samples.47 By February 1916, sampling surveys of the Board of Trade suggested that, whereas over 40 per cent of those engaged in the professions, entertainment, finance and commerce had enlisted, less than 30 per cent had done so in industry as a whole, agriculture, or transport. The entertainment sector recorded the highest sectoral enlistment rate at 41.8 per cent and, notwithstanding the omnibus companies, transport the lowest at 22.4 per cent. As has been remarked, ‘men engaged in commercial or distributive trades were in uniform and at risk for longer periods and in relatively larger numbers than were industrial workers, transport workers or agricultural workers’.48 The various factors affecting enlistment resulted in wide regional and local variations. By November 1914, southern Scotland had produced 237 recruits per 10,000 of population, the Midlands 196 per 10,000, Lancashire 178 per 10,000, London and the Home Counties 170 per 10,000, Yorkshire and the northeast 150 per 10,000, the southwest 88 per 10,000 and eastern counties only 80 per 10,000. Comparison of rates in Bristol, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, Norwich and Nottingham show equally wide variations.49 The effective limit of volunteering had been reached by the autumn of 1915 and, as the war went on and casualties increased, there were increasingly competing manpower demands between the armed forces, industry and agriculture. Ultimately, conscription had to be applied. The Military Service Act of January 1916 deemed all single men and widowers between eighteen and forty-one to have enlisted. The Military Service Act (No. 2) in May extended conscription to all men between eighteen and forty-one. Various exemptions were removed by the Military Service (No. 1) Act in February 1918. The Military Service (No. 2) Act in April 1918 extended conscription to all up to 46
47 48 49
Peter Dewey, ‘Military Recruitment and the British Labour Force during the First Word War’, Historical Journal, 27 (1984), pp. 199–224. Beckett, Bowman and Connelly, British Army, pp. 128–9. Jay Winter, The Great War and the British People (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986), p. 37. J. M. Osborne, The Voluntary Recruiting Movement in Britain, 1914–16 (New York: Garland, 1982), pp. 138–44.
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the age of fifty-one, as well as making provision for possible extension to the age of fifty-six and, as already related, to Ireland. In theory, conscription should have equalised the burden of military participation, but it did not do so. The sampling surveys by the Board of Trade in 1918 show every sector of employment in the same relationship to each other as in 1916. There was the issue of physical fitness with over a million men exempted by medical boards in the last twelve months of the war even when there was considerable pressure on doctors to lower rejection rates. Of 2.4 million men medically examined in 1917–18, only 36 per cent were classed as physically fit for service overseas, with 22.5 per cent fit for garrison, labour or sedentary duties overseas; 31.3 per cent fit for home duties; and 10.3 per cent unfit for service of any kind. Wales (46 per cent), Scotland (44.2 per cent) and northern England (43.6 per cent) were adjudged to have the highest proportion of men fit for overseas service, and the southwest (14 per cent) the largest proportion of those totally unfit for service.50 Rejection rates reflected pre-war deprivation, but physical ability was often equated with stature. There was also social and racial prejudice against Jews, of whom perhaps 41,000 were enlisted, around 10,000 enlisted prior to the introduction of conscription.51 ‘Coloured’ recruits were also generally rejected until the colour bar was theoretically lifted in June 1918.52 By far the greatest reason for exemption from military service was employment, which brings us back to the military service tribunals. Tribunals have had a bad press, not least for the supposed influence of military representatives but also for perceived hostility to exemption on the grounds of conscience. Apart from conscience and employment, exemption could be claimed also on grounds of ill health and family commitments. Of the first 1.2 million single men called up, no less than 750,000 appealed. Conscientious objection, however, was a thoroughly minor issue, with only 16,500 claims for exemption on such grounds made during the entire war.53 By October 1918, by which time schedules of reserved occupation had been adjusted many times to remove various exemption categories, it was still the case that 2.5 million men were classed as in reserved occupations. Indeed, cases before the Mid-Staffordshire Appeals Tribunal suggest that many men juggled more than one occupation
50
51
52
53
Jay Winter, ‘Military Fitness and Civilian Health in Britain during the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 15 (1980), pp. 211–44, at 238–9. Harold Pollins, Jews in the British Army in the First World War’, Jewish Journal of Sociology, 37 (1995), pp. 100–11; Anne Lloyd, ‘Between Integration and Separation: Jews and Military Service in World War I’, Jewish Culture and History, 12 (2010), pp. 41–60. David Killingray, ‘All the King’s Men: Blacks in the British Army in the First World War’, in Rainer Lotz and Ian Pegg (eds.), Under the Imperial Carpet (Crawley: Rabbit Press, 1986), pp. 164–81. Beckett, Bowman and Connelly, British Army, p. 125.
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both to make a living but also, as schedules of reserved occupation changed, ‘to make their employment fit new definitions of work in the national interest’.54 Tribunals constantly showed themselves mindful of local needs in terms of economic vitality and the need to maintain production, be it industrial or agricultural. National policy directives were mitigated by local interpretations of economic interventionism to the extent that the Minister of National Service, Auckland Geddes, complained in July 1917 that ‘the present system is based almost entirely on individual or local considerations’.55 Tribunals, therefore, were typical of the series of compromises between the state and the largely autonomous communities and networks, which characterised much of the war effort. At Leek in Staffordshire, local economic requirements took precedence.56 At Kingston-upon-Thames, where the tribunal included a builder and two retired grocers, as well as an insurance agent and a labour representative, partiality was shown towards employees of local printing firms and, more surprisingly, a department store.57 The shortage of agricultural workers in Wiltshire caused considerable concern with the tribunals there questioning the viability of the official guidance for retaining only one skilled and able-bodied man for every team of plough horses, every 20 milk cows, every 50 head of stall or yard cattle, every 200 sheep on enclosed land and every 800 sheep on hill or mountain pasturage.58 At Audenshaw in Manchester, tribunal members were sensitive to ‘the assumption of social stability through the maintenance of local services’.59 The most detailed research has been that on the Northamptonshire Appeals Tribunal where the boot and shoe trade was regarded as vital not only locally, but nationally. At the very moment the War Office was demanding more men should be released from the trade in January 1917, its own Army Contracts Department placed new orders for 1.25 million pairs of boots.60 Of the seventeen men – there was also one female county councillor – who sat on the tribunal at various times during the war, two, who sat throughout, were
54 55
56
57
58
59
60
Karen Hunt, Staffordshire’s War (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2017), p. 49. Gregory, Last Great War, 108; Adrian Gregory ‘Military Service Tribunals: Civil Society in Action, 1916–18’, in José Harris (ed.), Civil Society in British History: Ideas, Identities, Institutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 177–90. Keith Grieves, ‘Military Tribunal Papers: The Case of Leek Tribunal in the First World War’, Archives 16 (1983), pp. 145–50. Christine Housden, ‘Kingston’s Military Tribunal, 1916–18’, Occasional Papers in Local History (Kingston: Kingston University, Centre for Local History Studies, 2004). Ivor Slocombe, ‘Recruitment into the Armed Forces during the First World War: The Work of Military Tribunals in Wiltshire’, Local Historian 30 (2000), pp. 105–23. Keith Grieves, ‘Mobilising Manpower: Audenshaw Tribunal in the First World War’, Manchester Region History Review 3 (1989–90), pp. 21–29, at 26. McDermott, Military Service Tribunals, p. 74.
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representative of boot and shoe trades unions. Two, both added in 1917, were representatives of boot and shoe manufacturers. Conceptions of masculinity also impinged upon the Northamptonshire Appeals Tribunal’s work in the exemption of many butchers and bakers, since it was considered that women could not be employed in slaughtering or in working alongside men in the early hours in traditionally hot conditions that tended to result in bakers half-stripping.61 But butchers and bakers were also often sole proprietors and, together with directing heads of small businesses, these too were seen as priorities for potential exemption, particularly as the food distribution and retail sectors mattered to the local economy. The loss of a proprietor also impacted upon the livelihood of his employees.62 Yet there was no consistency between one tribunal and another. At Marlow, the tribunal rejected three-quarters of all claims by sole proprietors.63 Its members – a local businessman, a journalist, a surgeon, a head brewer, a police officer, a whitesmith, a house painter, and a barrister acting as military representative – showed more consideration to larger employers such as the local brewery, Wethered’s, which turned over part of its premises to munitions production, and a construction firm. Although the number of cases heard, and the patterns of employment varied over the county, the percentage of claims dismissed across the twenty-two Buckinghamshire tribunals between January and April 1917, ranged from 3.5 per cent at Wycombe to 45 per cent at Marlow.64 In Essex, the dismissal rate in urban tribunals was between 20 and 30 per cent compared to 15 per cent in rural tribunals.65
IV Thus far, issues of identity and economic factors have been privileged over others in examining the army’s expansion in 1914, as well as the application of conscription after 1916. The influence of events on the western front in the late summer and autumn of 1914 have been mentioned, and it would be wrong to downplay the general contribution of patriotism to the call to arms. Given the existence of opposition to continental involvement in some quarters in 1914 and the relatively little time the British public had to react to the descent into war, the response in August and September was remarkable. It does call
61 62 63
64
65
Ibid., pp. 139–40. Ibid., pp. 131–53. Andy Ford, ‘Reluctant Recruits: Appeals against Military Conscription in Marlow, 1916– 18’, Records of Bucks 56 (2016), pp. 126–41, at 134. Ian Beckett, ‘The Local Community and the Great War: Aspects of Military Participation’, Records of Bucks 20 (1978), pp. 503–15, at 509. Stuart Hallifax, ‘Citizens at War: The Experience of the Great War in Essex, 1914–18’, unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford (2010), pp. 245, 289–94.
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attention to the degree of incipient militarism within pre-war society and, in some respects, the response to the South African War presaged that of 1914. Age was clearly a factor but so was family situation. It is noticeable that the take-up of the so-called Imperial Service Obligation by which Territorials had to signify their assent to overseas service was considerably less than suggested at the time. There were still over 85,000 Territorials enlisted for home service only in August 1915.66 The majority were married men, and the failure of the War Office to clarify the scale of separation allowances in 1914 had an impact upon enlistment. Concessions on separation allowances were not made until October 1914.67 Asquith’s pledge that no married man would be taken before any single men resulted in greater willingness on the part of the married to attest under the Derby Scheme. Of 2.1 million single men, only 840,000 attested (38 per cent) and only 318,000 of those were thought to be actually available. Of 2.8 million married men, 1.3 million were attested (46 per cent) and over 403,000 were both willing and available to serve if called upon.68 As with the ‘Pals’, peer influence had its effect but, in the last analysis, the choices made were an individual matter. The influence of women is harder to quantify, particularly in terms of those handing out white feathers.69 Some men defy easy categorisation. Sydney Rogerson recorded that his soldier servant had enlisted in an alcoholic haze after seeing a friend off to the front, and when the recruiting sergeant came to claim him next morning ‘he was as surprised as his wife was annoyed’.70
V What is readily apparent is that the process of enlistment and recruitment was exceedingly complex. Multiple national, regional and local identities and loyalties coexisted with similar multiple variations in national, regional and local employment patterns as well as multiple individual considerations. There was an unprecedented voluntary response to the war – certainly in living memory – but the demands of modern industrialised warfare could only be met by the application of conscription, itself only ever applied sporadically in the past and then primarily for home defence. But the way in which conscription was applied after 1916 also testified to the influence of the same factors that had governed voluntary enlistment previously. The burden of military service did not fall equally between 1914 and 1918, but it was still the case that Britain, if not Ireland, became a ‘nation in arms’. 66 67 68 69
70
Beckett, Bowman and Connelly, British Army, p. 92. Ibid., p. 99. McDermott, Military Service Tribunals, pp. 13–14. Nicoletta Gullace, ‘White Feathers and Wounded Men: Female Patriotism and the Memory of the Great War’, Journal of British Studies 36 (1997), pp. 178–206. Sydney Rogerson, Twelve Days (London: Arthur Barker, 1933), p. 40.
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15 Charitable Work
Introduction In standard histories of both the First World War and charity a myth has arisen that is as pernicious as those about the Christmas Truce or ‘donkey’ generals.1 The story goes that on the outbreak of war a troop of middle-class ladies began a frantic spate of sock knitting that not only had little impact on the war effort but was equally transient in its effect on both philanthropy and those involved. Of course, some notable exceptions are admitted but only when charity reached the ‘front line’ in the form of Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs), the Scottish Women’s Hospitals or the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). On the home front, charity gets little coverage other than work in aid of Belgian refugees.2 In some ways this is not surprising, as a good deal of contemporary coverage was equally dismissive. The soldier with more knitted ‘comforts’ than he knew what to do with was quite pervasive whether in the cartoons of Punch or the inflated memoirs of Robert Graves.3 The truth was, as so many ‘revisionist’ histories of other aspects of the period are showing, very different. The First World War was the highpoint of British charitable fundraising and volunteering. Its impact was profound and an important contrast to developments in Germany. Its organisation included many new ideas that are still with us, and it boasted one of the most innovative 1
2
3
Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (Boston: Little Brown, 1965); Gerard DeGroot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (London: Longman, 1996); Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert (eds.), Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986). Peter Cooksley, The Home Front: Civilian Life in World War One (London: NPI Media, 2006); Richard Van Emden and Steve Humphries, All Quiet on the Home Front: An Oral History of Life in Britain during the First World War (London: Hodder Headline, 2003); Diana Condell and Jean Liddiard, Working for Victory? Images of Women in the First World War (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987). Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That (London: Jonathan Cape, 1929 and revised edition, London, Cassell, 1957).
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and successful wartime leaders – a man who today has been almost entirely forgotten.4
The Charitable Landscape Some writers on Victorian and Edwardian philanthropy have argued that it marked a ‘golden age’ of charity, with levels of giving expanding significantly.5 Actual figures indicate that there was no dramatic expansion of income during the last decade of the nineteenth and first decade of the twentieth centuries.6 So the pre-war charitable scene was not quite as rosy as some have depicted, particularly in relation to secular organisations. This did not mean that the ground for potentially rapid expansion of voluntarism was not fertile. Conditions existed which account for the extraordinary voluntary response to the war, not least to Kitchener’s call for a new national army, with 1.2 million recruits by the end of 1914. It is helpful here to distinguish between different types of charitable activity or voluntary action. It is a distinction expressed by William Beveridge in his 1948 book Voluntary Action: A Report on Methods of Social Advance, which defined voluntary action as comprising two main types – mutual aid and philanthropy. Beveridge explained that ‘it is Mutual Aid when consciousness of a common need leads to combined action to meet that need, to helping oneself and one’s fellows together. It is philanthropy when the driving force is not consciousness of one’s own needs, but what I have described as social conscience.’7 If philanthropy was not on the increase in pre-First World War Britain, mutual aid certainly was. The late Victorian and Edwardian period was marked by a massive upsurge in mutual aid bodies, clubs and associations.8 The most widespread of mutual aid organisations for ordinary people were the 4
5
6
7
8
Peter Grant, Philanthropy and Voluntary Action in the First World War: Mobilizing Charity (London: Routledge, 2014). Frank Prochaska, The Voluntary Impulse: Philanthropy in Modern Britain (London: Faber and Faber, 1988). Howe’s Classified Directory to the Metropolitan Charities (London: Longmans, various years); Annual Charitable Register and Digest (London: Charity Organisation Society, various years). Quoted in Justin Davis Smith and Melanie Oppenheimer, ‘The Labour Movement and Voluntary Action in the UK and Australia: a comparative perspective’, Labour History, 88 (May 2005), pp. 105–20. Cathryn Cornes and John Hughes-Wilson, Blindfold and Alone: British Military Executions in the Great War (London: Cassell, 2001), pp. 27–8. José Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit: Britain 1870–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), especially p. 220; Peter Simkins, Kitchener’s Army: The Raising of the New Armies 1914–1916 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988); Hugh Cunningham, ‘Leisure’ in John Benson (ed.), The Working Class in England (London: Croom Helm, 1985) pp. 140–1.
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trade unions and friendly societies, and the war years saw a significant increase in union membership. Friendly societies were in their heyday and by 1900 their membership was 5.4 million in a United Kingdom population aged over twenty of about 24 million.9
Early Efforts In the first weeks following the outbreak of war, there were two immediate and significant charitable efforts. The first was the National Relief Fund (NRF) formed to offset the expected depressive effects of the war on British industry. The second was the reaction to an influx of some 250,000 refugees from Belgium. It was the response to these that set in stone many of the received ideas we have about wartime charity. The NRF was established to help alleviate all distress caused by the war but in practice 60 per cent of the proceeds were directed towards aid for servicemen’s families. The NRF utilised the network of 300 Local Relief Committees established by the Local Government Board to coordinate their efforts as well as of a massively expanded team of volunteers recruited to the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association (SSFA). The committees had significant autonomy, and this could lead to disagreements with the NRF in London. The system was a somewhat uneasy alliance for many reasons, not least the confusion between entitlements and charitable gifts. This led to a backlash when Labour leaders insisted the money was a right and should be administered by the state. Most of the fieldwork for the SSFA was done by middle-class ‘lady visitors’ who ‘acted as the advocates, disciplinarians, trouble-shooters, and morality police of soldiers’ wives.’10 There was considerable debate and controversy as to whether benefits should be extended to ‘unmarried wives’ and whether they should be withdrawn if women were found to be spending too much time in public houses. Many resented this intrusion, and the officious and patronising manner of some visitors [see Fig. 15.1].11 The National Relief Fund was too much an expression of outdated paternalistic philanthropy impinging on an area ripe for integration into the embryonic welfare state. More than anything else it was the moral issue of ‘do-gooders’ passing judgement that doomed the entrepreneurial approach. 9 10
11
Brian Harrison, Peaceable Kingdom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p 178. George Robb, British Culture and the First World War (Palgrave: Basingstoke, 2002), p. 79. Proceedings of conference for members of the SSFA, Guilds of Help, COS and others (London: Longman Green and Co, 1915); Letter from Harold Baker MP (Financial Secretary at the War Office) to the WNC, December 1914, War Emergency Workers National Committee, Publications, Reports and Executive Committee Minutes (London: Co-operative Press, 1914– 1916). Cyril Pearce, Comrades of Conscience: The Story of an English Community’s Opposition to the Great War (London: Francis Boutle, 2001), p. 106.
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Figure 15.1 Labour’s view of the National Relief Fund, from the weekly journal of the National Union of Railwaymen, the Railway Review, 11 September 1914. Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick.
Even at this early stage in the war there had been decisive changes from Victorian values of philanthropy. Women were simply not prepared to ‘go through humiliating processes modelled on the charitable assessments of the Charity Organisation Society’.12 George Robb is therefore perfectly correct in his view that: ‘the traditional philanthropic ideal of moral reform was out of step with wartime democratic sentiment’.13 The response to the Belgian refugee problem mirrored many similar issues during the war: there was an initial explosion of voluntary effort, some attempts at co-ordination and, later, state intervention, partly in reaction to expressions of public disquiet. In common with the NRF, the co-ordination of relief began with private enterprise but increasingly came under state direction. However, unlike the NRF, much of the voluntary effort was immediate,
12
13
Deborah Thom, Nice Girls and Rude Girls: Women Workers in World War 1 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998), p. 147. Robb, British Culture, p. 79.
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spontaneous and ‘bottom-up’, rather than initiated from above, and this led to a mushrooming of activity with hundreds of communities across Britain establishing funds. Women usually supplied the driving force for local activity and many of them had learned their trade in the pre-war campaign for the vote.14 Though somewhat confused, there were relatively few problems with individual refugees and local groups, but the same cannot be said about the administration of some of the national charities established for the benefit of Belgium and its people. The profusion of organisations created significant difficulties. Unlike the main Belgian charities, some of these bodies were on or over the borderline of legality (such as the Belgian Canal Boat Fund and the Belgian Soldiers’ Fund). Mirroring the concerns expressed over the National Relief Fund the press began to find examples of what they saw as maladministration.15
The Extent of Charitable Activity From 1916, after the passing of the War Charities Act, we can establish with reasonable accuracy the number of new charities the war spawned. These numbers, in the War Charities register, must be considered a minimum, as some had already closed, and many others remained unregistered. However, if we take 1920 as the cut-off date, the total number of new war charities was 17,899.16 This is a huge number, especially when compared with the number of charities operating before the war, 36,865 in 1913, an increase of nearly 50 per cent.17 Calculating accurately the amounts they raised is more problematic as no official figures were ever compiled. However, there are a number of indicators that can assist. The first is from figures given by contemporary commentators.18 The second is to calculate a national figure utilising reliable local statistics. Many local histories of the Great War were produced, and a few attempted a comprehensive listing of amounts raised such as Glasgow, the only place to systematically collect data throughout war and have it audited.19 Finally, there are the detailed statistics from major national funds such as that of the Red Cross.20 14 15 16 17
18
19 20
Grant, Philanthropy and Voluntary Action, pp. 28–32. Ibid., pp. 91; 96–100. 68th Report of the Charity Commissioners of England and Wales 1921, PP, ix, Cmd. 1198. 61st Report of the Charity Commissioners of England and Wales 1914, PP, xv, Cd. 7310, p. 785. For example, W. E. Dowding, ‘A Study of the War-Giving’, Contemporary Review, 108 (November 1915). ‘War Philanthropy: Glasgow Raises £4,000,000’, Glasgow Herald, 26 December 1919, p. 3. British Joint Committee of Red Cross, Reports by the Joint War Committee and the Joint War Finance Committee of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John of
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Table 15.1. Wartime fund raising Method
Total (£)
1 Median from local figures excluding national 2 Median plus approx. national 3 Glasgow figure plus national 4 #3 plus donations in kind 5 Approx. equivalent of #4 today 6 National Lottery today (5 years)
c100 million c200 million c300 million c400 million c20 billion 5 billion
From these sources, estimates of the total funds raised during the war can be made. The more work I have done on this topic the more I am inclined to the higher figures, i.e. about four times more than the National Lottery raises for good causes today [see Table 15.1].21 What can also be concluded is that the dramatic increase in charitable giving to war-related causes had no catastrophic effect on existing charities.22 Indeed, the significant post-war increase in charitable income suggests that the stimulus to charitable activity during the war continued into peacetime, with people donating at a higher rate to existing charitable causes, at least while higher wages and full employment were sustained.23 The numbers of people involved were equally large. Bradford estimated that 2,000 men and 5,000 women, from an adult population (excluding those in the services) of about 100,000, were engaged in regular war charity work.24 In nearby Leeds, with a population of 445,000, there were 10,000 women involved in voluntary activity by the spring of 1915.25 These and other locally extrapolated figures suggest that at least 400,000 men and 1.2 million women were regularly engaged in working for wartime charities.26 These are figures that compare favourably with the 2.6 million men who volunteered for the armed forces. They are also highly significant in relation to the numbers of
21 22
23
24
25
26
Jerusalem in England on Voluntary aid Rendered to the Sick and Wounded at Home and Abroad and to British Prisoners of War 1914–1919 (London: HMSO, 1921). Grant, Philanthropy and Voluntary Action, pp. 135–41. Charity Commissioners for England and Wales Annual Reports 1913–18; Howe’s Classified Directory to the Metropolitan Charities, 39th to 44th editions; Annual Charities Register and Digest, 22nd to 31st editions, 1913–1922. Geoffrey Finlayson, Citizen, State and Social Welfare in Britain 1830–1990 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 209. Bradford Khaki Club, The Wonderful Story of Voluntary Labour during the Great War (Bradford: Bradford Khaki Club, n.d. [1920]). William Herbert Scott, Leeds in the Great War 1914–1918: A Book of Remembrance (Leeds: Leeds Libraries and Arts Committee, 1923), p. 35. Grant, Philanthropy and Voluntary Action, pp. 143–4.
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Table 15.2. Comparison between charity trustees 1918 and 2017
Male Female Average age Median age Under 35 35 to 54 Over 54 Professional qualification
Croydon 1918
Blackburn 1918
2017
72% 28% 50 54 13% 37% 51% 46%
69% 31% 42 42 28% 55% 17% 18%
64% 36% 61 59 1.5% 33% 65% 60%
Sources: 1918 figures War Charities registers TNA CHAR 4/1 to 4/21. 2017 figures Cass Business School and Charity Commission, ‘Taken on Trust’, www.cass.city.ac .uk/faculties-and-research/centres/cce/trustee-awareness-research-2017
women who were employed on other activities during the war. There were 57,000 in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAACs), 60,000 female VADs and 260,000 in the Women’s Land Army. There were 950,000 ‘munitionettes’, still fewer than the numbers who were regularly working for charities. The demographics of these people is of significant interest and the following table compares two parts of the country during the war with the make-up of today’s charity trustees [see Table 15.2]. There are several elements to note. The 1918 figures are based on office holders only (chair, treasurer and secretary), whereas the 2017 figures are based on all trustees. ‘Professional qualification’ is based on 2017 requirements for the occupation of these volunteers. It is used as a proxy for social class that is comparable across 100 years. These factors mean that First World War trustees were even more likely to be female, younger and working class than the table suggests. Although the age difference can partly be explained by the increase in life expectancy and people today being more active later in life, it is noticeable how many young people, especially in Blackburn, were involved. The youngest trustee was 14-year-old Joseph Boothman. Also critical is the importance of localism. There were significant variations in the nature and type of charity across the country. In suburban Croydon, the mayor chaired six of the thirty-eight registered charities while his wife chaired two more. The town clerk, the borough treasurer and the borough accountant served on a total of twelve committees. Overall, the impression is very much of a top-down process: a small number of larger charities run by experienced, middle and upper-middle-class office holders. The picture in Blackburn was entirely different. Here smaller charities based on a workplace, church or chapel were more characteristic. Of the 148 Blackburn charities, 41 per cent
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Table 15.3. Typology of First World War charities Category
% of all charities
Comforts for British and Empire Troops Medical support (including hospitals and supplies) Support for disabled servicemen Relieving distress at home Post-war remembrance (including war memorials) and celebration Aid for refugees (mainly Belgian) and overseas Assistance to prisoners of war
28 25 13 11 9 8 7
Source: Compiled from War Charities Act 1916: Index of Charities Registered Under the Act to March 1919, HMSO, 1919.
were workplace based and 39 per cent based on a church or chapel. The figures in Croydon were only 5 per cent in each category. As the war progressed, and especially after conscription was introduced, far more smaller charities in support of the troops were started, and in these northern industrial areas, charity was a bottom-up, working-class movement.27
The Causes The range of charitable activity was enormous, but it had a significant bias towards comforts for troops and medical supplies [see Table 15.3]. These organisations used an astonishing range of fundraising techniques. Many are still in use today, such as flag days, which, although not invented during the First World War, mushroomed after 1914. Direct mail to potential donors was used for the first time to any significant extent. Payroll giving was, again, not new but increased significantly, an example being officials employed by the city council in Manchester ‘taxing themselves on the amount of their salaries, the taxes varying from 23/4 to 5 per cent’.28 The annual ‘Our Day’ in aid of The Times Fund for the Red Cross was a forerunner of national appeals like Comic Relief and Children in Need, a single day on which everyone (both in Britain and across the Empire) was expected to do something for charity, the more unusual or eye-catching the
27 28
Grant, Philanthropy and Voluntary Action, pp. 144–55. Alderman Daniel McCabe, Lord Mayor of Manchester, ‘Manchester’s Motto’, TP’s Journal, 2:21, 6 March 1915, p. 203.
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better. Dressing up in silly clothes, performing prodigious feats of endurance or eating for charity are by no means modern inventions. Children too were mobilised, and it was not long before every school in England was regularly and directly engaged in the immense voluntary effort.29 Even the smallest schools became involved, an example being Stanbury Board School in the Yorkshire village of the Bronte sisters, Haworth, with a school roll not far above 100. In November 1914, 30 shillings was raised by selling national flags painted by the children. In April 1915, a first hamper of comforts for soldiers knitted by the children was despatched containing six large scarves, three wool helmets and seven pairs of socks. The wool was provided free of charge by a local spinner and production soon reached an industrial scale. Knitted comforts were supplied to Keighley Military Hospital, and later in 1917 sixty soldiers from the hospital were entertained in the school.30 Some individual children went even further. In Burnley, Lancashire, eight-year-old Jennie Jackson, daughter of a miner from Towneley Colliery, became perhaps the best-known child fundraiser of the war. Her mother Kate made a perfect replica military uniform for Jennie leading to her nickname, ‘Little Kitchener’. After gaining permission from the chief constable, Jennie began collecting coppers in the street but soon gravitated to touring local pubs, clubs and factories as well. Her phenomenal success was such that in February 1916 Jennie raised funds for a field ambulance which was built in Burnley and handed over to the army by Queen Alexandra, with Jennie proudly present. In all she raised a total of £4,000 (roughly equivalent to £200,000 today) and received the War Medal of the British Red Cross Society. At the 1919 Great March of Peace in London, Jennie received her highest honour, becoming the only child permitted to join the march and witness the unveiling of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey [see Fig. 15.2].31
Scandal and Legislation The somewhat haphazard nature of early charitable efforts eventually led to two major interventions. The first, in late 1915, the creation of a Director General of Voluntary Organisations, was initiated by the Army; the second, the War Charities Act of 1916, by the government.
29 30
31
Grant, Philanthropy and Voluntary Action, pp. 39–46. Diary or Log Book, Stanbury Board School, Haworth, Yorkshire at Haworth village website. www.haworth-village.org.uk/history/school/stanbury_school.asp (accessed 20/ 9/2006). Gill Johnson, ‘Burnley: Fame of Little Girl “Soldiers”’, This Is Lancashire, 20 July 2006. www.thisislancashire.co.uk/archive/2006/07/20/Looking+Back+%28pen_lookingback% 29/843840.Burnley__Fame_of_little_girl____soldiers___ (accessed 5/11/ 2010).
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Figure 15.2 Jennie Jackson or ‘Little Kitchener’, the most notable child fundraiser of the war. Courtesy of Andrew Gill, ‘Burnley in the Great War’ website.
The most important stimulus to the latter was the publicity surrounding dubious or fraudulent organisations. Journalists, politicians and some prominent charities seized upon these cases to urge government action to prevent abuses of public trust. Charity fraud was certainly not new and has probably existed for as long as there have been charities. As early as the fifteenth century, bills of complaint came to the Lord Chancellor about the misuse of charitable legacies, and James Fishman has called the first quarter of the nineteenth century the ‘golden era of chicanery involving charities’.32 But did the war lead to an increase in fraud or turn previously respectable individuals into fraudsters? The evidence rests on a relatively small number of cases, nearly all of them London-based and investigated by the same person, Detective Inspector John Curry. Whilst Curry, in both his evidence to the War Charities Committee and his official reports to Scotland Yard, was 32
Gareth Jones, History of the Law of Charity 1532–1827 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969) pp. 7–9; James J. Fishman, ‘Charitable Accountability and Reform in Nineteenth-Century England: The Case of the Charity Commission’, Chicago-Kent Law Review, 80:2 (2005), p. 730.
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commendably objective, some of the use to which his cases were put were far less fair and often drew conclusions not supported by the evidence. In addition, most of the culprits were certainly ‘up to no good’ before the war and simply used it as a new cover for their activities.33 Where there certainly was fraud, the sums were minor.34 Where potentially large sums were involved, there was no clear evidence of wrongdoing. Inevitably, it was the latter that drew most attention in the press and in Parliament. The two most prominent were the Belgian Soldiers’ Fund and the French Relief Fund. In both cases a pair of miscreants were responsible. The Belgian Soldiers’ Fund was the brainchild of Miss Sophie (or Sophia) de Mussenden Carey, the daughter of a Lincolnshire clergyman, and her shady American business partner, Ben Blanchard. The pair had been involved before the war in the Women’s Financial Information Bureau whose activities had been the subject of a press exposé.35 The pair who controlled the French Relief Fund were its General Secretary, James Hargreaves Dickinson, and the Joint Treasurer, Sir Thomas Brooke Hitching. Dickinson was a former bankrupt who had been convicted of impersonating an army officer. Detective Sergeant Leeson of Lancashire Police concluded that ‘this man is, in my opinion, a distinctly doubtful character’.36 Brooke Hitching, though a former Mayor of Marylebone and unsuccessful Conservative parliamentary candidate, was rejected as a City of London Alderman as not being a ‘fit and proper person to support the dignity and discharge the duties of the office’.37 The reason for his ignominious rejection were two cases of conflict of interest whilst in public office from which he had benefited financially.38 The financial records of both organisations do not suggest that either was an outright fraud. However, all four were certainly guilty of paying themselves inflated fees, taking expensive trips abroad and may have been ‘skimming off’ funds from contracts.39 Despite the lack of evidence, at this distance it is very difficult to say that fraud was minor. It is easy to say that the cases were insignificant in relation to the totality of wartime charitable effort, but this is to ignore the impact of fraudulent activity on public opinion, especially in the circumstances pertaining at the time. Given only the clear instances of fraud it is difficult to argue 33
34
35 36 37
38 39
MEPO 2/1675, Charities: Belgian Soldiers Fund 1915–1917; MEPO 3/249, Thomas Alroy alias Thomas alias Johnson: bogus charity frauds, 1915; MEPO 3/252, Fraudulent collections by bogus ‘Captain Illingworth’ for Queen Alexandra’s Field Force Fund. For example, Thomas Alroy or ‘Captain’ Illingworth, Grant, Philanthropy and Voluntary Action, pp. 101–3; 108–10. Truth, vol LXXV, 6 May 1914, p. 1115; 13 May 1914, p. 1181; 20 May 1914, p. 1249. Report to Chief Constable of Lancashire, dated 12 January 1916, TNA, TS 18/262. Letter from Herbert Morris, Secretary of the Charity Commission to Treasury Solicitor, 24 October 1916, TNA, TS 18/262. The Times, 13, 14 February, 13, 14, 16, 18 and 19 March 1912, pp. 4, 6, 4, 14, 16, 3 and 4. TNA, MEPO 2/1675.
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against the pressure for legislative change, even if some supporters of legislation suggested that fraud was far more widespread than the evidence supported. When the Committee on War Charities submitted its report to Parliament, in June 1916, the twin concerns of the potential for fraud and the reckless use of the names of prominent persons as patrons (a ‘crime’ of which the French Relief Fund was especially guilty) underpinned its recommendations to regulate war-related charities.40 The legislation does appear to have reduced the number of dubious charities. Equally, there is very little evidence that the Act produced significant problems for legitimate charities or of over-regulation other than in a minority of cases in London.41 However, there were also drawbacks to the legislation, not the least of which was its uneven implementation. In some districts, registration authorities did their best to carry out the intention of the act with excellent results. In others they did little or nothing. There were always going to be problems with locally administered schemes, where was neither the will nor the funds to run them centrally.42
The Director General of Voluntary Organisations The sheer scale of the war soon caused significant problems. The caricature of the soldier sending socks back home or receiving unwearable items was not entirely false, and mismatches of supply and demand were common.43 The War Office took the matter seriously. Complaints by officers in the press and questions in parliament led to extensive correspondence between MajorGeneral Sir John Cowans, the Quartermaster-General (QMG) at the War Office, and Lt-Gen Ronald Maxwell, the QMG at General Headquarters in France.44 Maxwell’s continuing response was that all was well, and that the reports were exaggerated and ought to be suppressed. Cowans remained unconvinced, and the ‘comforts scandal’ occupied the attention of two senior generals for some ten months. Eventually the Army Council took action. On 1 October 1915, Sir Edward Ward was given the impressive title of Director General of Voluntary Organisations and was charged with ‘coordinating and regulating all voluntary organisations throughout the country’.45 40 41
42 43
44 45
Report of the Committee on War Charities, PP 1916, Cmd. 8287, 425. LMA, LCC/PC/CHA/1/4 decision of 11 July 1917; LMA, LCC/MIN 8337 (vol. 3); LMA, LCC/MIN 8338 (vol. 4), Case No. 638. Grant, Philanthropy and Voluntary Action, pp. 119–24. Captain J. C. Dunn, The War the Infantry Knew (London: Abacus reprint, 1994), p. 100; Simon Fowler, ‘War Charity Begins at Home’, History Today (September 1999), p. 19; Ian F. W. Beckett, Home Front 1914–1918: How Britain Survived the Great War (Kew: National Archives, 2006) p. 66. TNA, WO 107/14; TNA, WO 107/15. The Times, 11 October 1915, p. 11.
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Edward Willis Duncan Ward was born in Oban on 17 December 1853. He was privately educated and in 1874 entered the commissariat of the Control Department. This was the precursor of the Army Service Corps (ASC), but at that time, although comprising military officials, it operated separately from the Army. In 1885 he was promoted Assistant Commissary General and saw active service in the Sudan campaign where his work was commended by Sir Garnet Wolsey. In 1888, when the ASC was formed, he was commissioned with the rank of major, and was promoted lieutenant-colonel in 1890. Wolsey assisted Ward’s career and he was posted to Ireland until 1895. In 1895–6, Ward was Assistant Adjutant General for the Ashanti expeditionary force in West Africa, where he demonstrated an early flair for innovative management techniques, overcoming difficulties with aplomb and being particularly sensitive in his handling of the 100,000-plus ‘native’ carriers. Ward achieved this through the simple but effective step of giving ‘native’ overseers greater responsibility for managing porters, and by using local labour rather than those ‘trusted’ workers from further afield who had less immunity to local strains of disease. In addition, he decreed that that all British officers dealing with the labourers should both speak their language and understand their culture.46 For the next five years Ward was given charge of the annual Royal Military Tournament, which raised funds for service charities, and was in those days held at the Agricultural Hall in Islington. Under his guidance, ‘the success and popularity of the Military Tournament went forward by leaps and bounds’.47 In its early days the Tournament had made a loss, but by 1896 it was returning a profit of £4,000. In the first year under Ward, profits tripled to £12,000.48 In September 1899, as war loomed in South Africa, Ward was appointed Chief Supply Officer for Natal. Very quickly the Boers were at the doors of the town of Ladysmith where Ward was in charge of supplies. In addition to the troops, Ward also had to feed some 6,000 civilians. Without his expertise supplies would have run out and the garrison been forced to surrender.49 Following the raising of the siege and not a single death – military or civilian, black or white – through malnutrition, Ward was promoted to the post of
46
47
48
49
Major R. S. S. Baden-Powell, The Downfall of Prempeh: A Diary of Life with the Native Levy in Ashanti 1895–96, ch. 6. http://pinetreeweb.com/bp-prempeh-01.htm (accessed 22/10/2006). ‘Colonel Sir Edward Ward’, obituary by ‘An Old Brother Officer’, Journal of the Royal Army Service Corps, 1928, p. 682. Lt-Col P. L. Binns, The Story of the Royal Tournament (Aldershot: Gale and Polden, 1952), p. 149. H. W. Nevinson, The Diary of a Siege (London: Methuen, 1900).
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Director of Supplies for the entire South African field force, where he was one of the first to realise the advantages of mechanical transport.50 On his return to England, Ward became First Secretary to Sir Ralph Knox, Permanent Secretary at the War Office. In 1901 Ward succeeded Knox in the post, the first military holder of the position since the 1870s. He held it for the next thirteen years. In the early part of his tenure, Ward’s relationship with his civilian superior was difficult. He clashed with the Conservative war minister between 1903 and 1905, Hugh Arnold-Forster, on significant matters of reform.51 Ward’s frosty relations with his political superior improved dramatically following the fall of the Conservative government in December 1905 and Richard Burdon Haldane’s appointment to the post of Secretary of State for War in the new Liberal administration. Ward shared Haldane’s views on the need for significant reform and reorganisation to turn the army into a modern fighting force. He threw himself enthusiastically into these tasks, which included officer recruitment, plans for mobilisation and the re-organisation of the Army Medical Department and that of the War Office itself. In 1908–1909 he worked with Douglas Haig on the production of ‘a codified set of manuals dealing with administration and training’ which became Field Service Regulations Parts 1 and 2.52 Ward was a key figure in many other critical improvements bringing his organisational and managerial skills to bear. One was as Chairman of the Committee on Civil Employment of Ex-Soldiers and Sailors, a cause that was close to his heart and demonstrated his keen humanitarian concern.53 Another of Ward’s achievements was the creation of the Officers Training Corps. Most histories credited Haldane with this reform, but it was Ward who had first made proposals along similar lines in 1903–4. Haldane recognised the OTC as Ward’s brainchild by making him the chair of the committee in August 1906.54
50
51
52
53
54
Sir George White despatches of 2 December 1899 and 23 March 1900, quoted in the Army Service Corps Journal, May 1901, pp. 45, 47; Sir Wodehouse Dillon Richardson, With the Army Service Corps in South Africa (London: Richardson and Co, 1903), p. 136. Edward M. Spiers, The Army and Society, 1815–1914 (London: Longman, 1980); TNA, WO 32/9224; TNA, WO 32/8782. Colonel G. Williams, Citizen Soldiers of the Royal Engineers Transportation and Movements and the Army Service Corps 1859–1965 (Ashford: Royal Corps of Transport, 1965), pp. 26, 33. Committee on the Employment of Ex-Soldiers and Sailors, 1906, Cd. 2991 and information from British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service. www.bopcris .ac.uk/cgi-bin/displayrec.pl?searchtext=ex+soldiers&record=/bopall/ref7397.html (accessed 21/09/2006). Ian Worthington, ‘Socialization, Militarization and Officer Recruiting: The Development of the Officers Training Corps’, Military Affairs 43:2 (April 1979), pp. 90–6.
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One of Haldane’s main aims was the creation of an administrative staff for the War Office and Army separate from the General Staff, which focused on operations.55 This led to the creation of the first university course for army officers at the London School of Economics. The LSE course is again usually credited to Haldane, but this is only partially correct. Ward had been an administrative officer himself for almost thirty years, and he had espoused many of the principles behind the course as early as 1893. He put forward the idea for the scheme in a memorandum entitled ‘The need for a trained administrative staff’ in February 1906.56 In 1914 Ward retired from the War Office, but he was quickly back in action on the outbreak of war. His first act was the creation of a new charity, the Camps Library, to ensure a supply of books and magazines for the camps and billets where soldiers were stationed.57 As well as his role as DGVO, Ward was also an extremely active chairman of the council of the RSPCA; honorary treasurer and a member of the general purposes committee of the West Indian Contingent Committee (which looked after the welfare of West Indian and Bermudan troops); Assistant Inspector of Shells for the Ministry of Munitions and Commandant-in-Chief of the Metropolitan Special Constabulary. In its primary aim of co-ordinating the collection and distribution of comforts, the DGVO scheme was highly successful.58 It continued throughout the war and its immediate aftermath, for example assisting destroyed villages in France and Belgium. Ward himself was able to report in June 1917 that ‘the response to the Army Council’s Scheme for the provision of comforts for general distribution to the Troops in the Field has been highly satisfactory’ and the long delays previously reported had ceased.59 The DGVO scheme was clearly needed, and it overcame many of the supply problems encountered in 1914 and 1915. At the outbreak of war a localised approach to comforts and medical supplies was all that existed but, as Sarah Pedersen has noted, ‘by the end of 1915 the government had started to realise
55
56
57 58 59
Edward M. Spiers, Haldane: An Army Reformer (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1980), p. 151. Edward W. D. Ward, Supply and Transport on Active Service (Dublin: Sibley and Co.), pp. 18, 25–6; Donald Cameron Watt, ‘The London University Class for Military Administrators 1906-31: A Study of the British Approach to Civil-Military Relations’, LSE Quarterly, 2:2 (Summer 1988), pp. 157–8; B. W. Blouet, Halford Mackinder: A Biography (College Station Texas: Texas A & M University Press, 1987), p. 131; Captain H. A. Young, ‘Practical Economy in the Army’, Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, vol. L (July to December 1906), pp. 1281–5. Report of the Work of the Camps Library, PP 1919, Cmd. 174, HMSO. Grant, Philanthropy and Voluntary Action, pp. 78–82. Memorandum from the Office of Director-General of Voluntary Organizations (London: HMSO, June 1917).
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that a voluntary and localised approach to the war was not enough’.60 Such co-ordination required great skill and diplomacy if it was both to command respect at the highest level and to retain support among the mass of local volunteers that charitable activity had generated. In this, Ward’s appointment was a masterstroke. No other man could have succeeded in harnessing voluntary action without alienating it. Ward combined:
• Knowledge and convening ability – of Whitehall, the army and charity. • Empathy and compassion – he helped found the Union Jack Club for other ranks to stay in London.
• Innovation – he was aware of and utilised modern managerial techniques, and he was not hidebound by tradition or prejudice.
• Efficiency and effectiveness – as DGVO Ward eliminated scandal and media criticism and was respected by both charities and the establishment.
• A sense of humour. In Ladysmith he edited a journal to keep up morale, and
when a formal complaint was lodged with him by ladies who were indignant about soldiers bathing naked in the river on Sundays Ward, he sensibly suggested that the ladies not look.61
Impacts on the Wider War Effort If voluntary activity made a significant contribution to social capital in Britain did it also make a similar contribution in Germany? The evidence suggests that, at first, the similarities were greater than the differences, but towards the end of the war the situation in Britain remained substantially unchanged whereas in Germany social capital had been significantly weakened. Before the war, Germany exhibited the same dense network of local voluntary associations, youth organisations and women’s groups that existed in Britain.62 Likewise, the war ‘spawned an unprecedented volunteerism in support of the troops’ and ‘opened vast new challenges to women’s charitable organisations [which] began to oversee all manner of services’.63 But trust in German state institutions broke down, loosening the bonds of social cohesion and negatively affecting social capital. The situation was exacerbated by food
60
61 62
63
Sarah Pedersen, ‘A Surfeit of Socks? The Impact of the First World War on Women Correspondents to Daily Newspapers’, Scottish Economic and Social History, 22:1 (2002), p. 51. Speech by Sir Edward Ward to the Authors’ Club reported in The Times, 23 May 1905. Brett Fairbairn, ‘Economic and Social Developments’ and Edward Ross Dickinson, ‘The Bourgeoisie and Reform’, in James Retallack (ed.), Imperial Germany 1871–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 68, 153. Jeffrey Verhey, ‘War and Revolution’, in Retallack, Imperial Germany, p. 250; Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 116.
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shortages, the failure of rationing and the growth of the black market.64 The rigidity with which Germany attempted to control voluntary efforts in the ‘command economy’ meant that German voluntary organisations were inevitably straightjacketed.65 In contrast, in Britain the war provided a new impetus to voluntarism based upon the principle of mutual aid.66 A profusion of small, local organisations provided support for the troops of their town, village or workplace. Other examples were the significant rises in trades’ union membership and the emergence of veterans’ bodies. Eventually these independently formed mutual aid organisations moved into some form of closer co-operation with the state, through the co-ordination of the DGVO, formal political partnerships or amalgamation into the British Legion. One can perhaps suggest that at first the two strands of philanthropy and mutual aid were relatively distinct but that, during the war, they came into greater alignment. Another conclusion is that the First World War contributed towards an increased professionalisation of the charity sector. Only after the war were social workers regularly paid and turned from amateurs into professionals. The War Charities Act tried to ensure that even the smallest charities were run along professional lines with elected committees, books of accounts and minutes. Voluntary action was particularly effective during the war. Three key mission-related criteria helped account for this effectiveness. First, there was a direct feedback mechanism from the beneficiaries of most charities, especially the troops. The fact that, contrary to the myth, there was a close connection between the western front and those at home ensured that any problems were quickly noticed, as with the ‘comforts scandal’ in 1915, and rectified.67 The very close local links with troop comfort and prisoner-of-war funds ensured this feedback mechanism operated at both the macro (DGVO) and micro (local fund) levels. Second, clear performance measures were shared and understood. Were soldiers, prisoners of war, or hospitals getting what they needed? If they were not, supplies could be adjusted, especially through the DGVO. Third, all these charities had very specific aims that were, for the most part, fulfilled through links to state provision. There was no ‘mission drift’ during the war and official support bodies were created to assist their missions.
64 65
66
67
Ian F. W. Beckett, The Great War 1914–1918 (Harlow: Pearson, 2001), p. 276. Michael Howard, ‘The First World War Reconsidered’, in Jay Winter, Geoffrey Parker and Mary Habeck (eds.), The Great War and the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 28; Adam R. Seipp, The Ordeal of Peace: Demobilization and the Urban Experience in Britain and Germany 1917–1921 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), p. 46. Geoffrey Finlayson, Citizen, State and Social Welfare in Britain 1830–1990 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), p. 209. Grant, Philanthropy and Voluntary Action, pp. 155–61.
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If a final piece of evidence is required, it is worth quoting from a detailed study of an individual community in wartime. Aberdare, a mining town in South Wales, was dubbed by The Times in 1916 as ‘the industrial storm centre of Britain’, and yet Anthony Mor-O’Brien found it ‘fundamentally patriotic and in favour of victory in the field’.68 His comments on philanthropy are the most pertinent to this chapter: With the First World War . . . philanthropy became the responsibility of everyone, not just the social leaders, and was inextricably bound up with patriotism. A fundamental change both in the nature of philanthropy and in the role of the state seems to have taken place specifically because of the war. . . . For the first time in British history, philanthropy experienced an unguided change which involved the whole of society over an extended period and under the emotional stimulus of wartime, developing from the preserve of the well-to-do and religious leaders, as had traditionally been the case, into a mass voluntary activity with patriotic connotations.69
68
69
Anthony Mor-O’Brien, ‘A Community in Wartime: Aberdare and the First World War’, PhD dissertation, University of Wales, 1986, summary. Mor-O’Brien, ‘A Community in Wartime’, pp. 174–5.
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16 Refugees
In October 1914, a small but revealing ceremony took place at Tikitiki, in the district of Waipu in New Zealand. There, almost 12,000 miles away from the battlefields of Europe where war had been raging for weeks, Maori gathered around a flagstaff whose erection had been funded by subscription for one singular purpose: hoisting the Belgian flag under the New Zealand ensign as a tribute to the Belgian nation, which had bravely arisen against the German invasion. In the words of one of the chiefs invited to speak during the event, the Maori here [. . .] had met to honour the flag of the Belgians, ‘a people who had raised [sic] on the hurdles over which the enemy would have to jump before New Zealand could be reached.’1
Notwithstanding the implausibility of a direct German assault on New Zealand, this speech revealed the role played by the invasion of Belgium in the cultural mobilisation for war across the British Empire. It was typical of the discourses and representations that framed the initial responses to the conflict. When, in November 1914, the pupils of Roseneath School in Wellington ‘spontaneously decided to forego their picnic and prizes and donate the whole of the net proceeds [of their annual garden fête] to the Belgian Relief Fund’, they did so in recognition of the plight of Belgians, as many communities did across the British world.2 Historians of wartime propaganda have regularly paid attention to the construction and significance of ‘Gallant Little Belgium’ across the Allied societies.3 As the German army invaded the country and laid a number of cities to waste, including of course Louvain and its world-famous university library, it initiated an unprecedented forced migration. Over a 1
2
3
The Press, 7 October 1914, ‘The Maori and the Belgians: Honouring the Belgian flag. Gisborne, October 6’. Letter from the Roseneath School Headmaster to the Belgian Consul in Wellington, New Zealand, 25 November 1914, Archives Générales du Royaume, Bruxelles (hereafter AGR), T.533, 9–16. Sophie de Schaepdrijver, ‘“A Less-Than-Total Total War”: Neutrality, Invasion, and the Stakes of War, 1914–1918’, in Felicity Rash and Christophe Declercq (eds.), The Great War in Belgium and the Netherlands: Beyond Flanders Fields (Cham: Springer, 2018), pp. 13–34.
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million Belgian men, women, and children fled the advancing enemy and sought refuge in France, the Netherlands and Great Britain. This critical dimension of the history of Belgium at war was long neglected, consigned to the margins of both the historiography and the collective memory of the First World War. Not until the tail end of the twentieth century, and the publication of seminal works by Peter Gatrell, Tony Kushner and Katharine Knox, did scholars of the Great War give due consideration to this specific type of civilian victimisation.4 Peter Cahalan’s book had hitherto stood out as the lone study of the reception of Belgian refugees in the United Kingdom.5 In the last twenty years the study of wartime refugees has been reinvigorated. Michael Amara produced an excellent comparative monograph on the reception of Belgian refugees in France, Britain, and the Netherlands,6 while other scholars positioned them within the wider social history of Britain during the war.7 Historians of the war also contributed to the growing attention to population displacement in the wake of twentiethcentury conflicts.8 Most recently, the centenary commemorations of the war coincided with the re-emergence of migration as a key issue in international
4
5
6
7
8
Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011); Tony Kushner and Katharine Knox, Refugees in an Age of Genocide. Global, National and Local Perspectives during the Twentieth Century (London, Portland (OR): Frank Cass, 1999). In the meantime, however, historians of education had produced interesting work on the experience of refugee children. Kevin Myers, ‘The Hidden History of Refugee Schooling in Britain: The Case of the Belgians, 1914–18’, History of Education, 30 (March 2001), pp. 153–62. For the contribution of women’s historians, see Katherine Storr, Excluded from the Record: Women, Refugees, and Relief, 1914–1929 (New York: Peter Lang, 2009). Peter Cahalan, Belgian Refugee Relief in England during the Great War (New York: Garland, 1982). Michaël Amara, Des Belges à l’épreuve de l’exil : les réfugiés de la première guerre mondiale : France, Grande-Bretagne, Pays-Bas 1914–1918 (Brussels: Université de Bruxelles, 2008). See also the catalogue of the exhibition organised in 2004 by In Flanders Fields museum in Ypres, Michaël Amara and Piet Chielens (eds.), Strangers in a Strange Land: Belgian Refugees, 1914–1918 (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2004). Pierre Purseigle, ‘“A Wave onto our Shores.” Exile and Resettlement of Western Front Refugees, 1914–1918’, Contemporary European History, 16 (2007), pp. 427–44. Essential readings in this field include: Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell (eds.), Homelands: War, Population and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918–1924 (London: Anthem Press, 2004); Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron (eds.), Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands, 1945–50 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009); Jessica Reinisch and Elizabeth White, The Disentanglement of Populations: Migration, Expulsion and Displacement in Post-War Europe, 1944–9 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011); Peter Gatrell and Liubov Zhvanko (eds.), Europe on the Move: Refugees in the Era of the Great War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017). Matthew Frank and Jessica Reinisch (eds.), Refugees in Europe, 1919–1959: A Forty Years’ Crisis? (London: Bloomsbury, 2017).
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and domestic politics to rekindle scholarly and public interest in Belgian refugees.9 In the history and memory of a conflict defined by industrial warfare, an unprecedented number of casualties, and the experience of mass grief and mourning, the experience of Belgian refugees may seem marginal. It did, however, illustrate the fundamental transformation of warfare evidenced by the First World War. Along with the war’s other civilian victims, refugees testified to the dissolution of the boundary between the military and civilian experiences of the conflict. Indeed, the very phrase ‘home front’ was coined to reflect this gradual and incomplete collapse of the distinction between the experience of soldiers and that of civilians.10 The reception of refugees also revealed the social and cultural dynamic underpinning the extensive mobilisation of British society for war. But Belgian refugees in Britain also participated in the social mobilisation of the kingdom of Belgium. In the particular context of the invasion and subsequent occupation of their country, their experience underlines another specificity of the First World War: the emergence of transnational home fronts.11 Belgian refugees did not simply add, with imperial soldiers and labourers, to the multicultural character of British society; their war work demonstrated the role that exile communities could play, across national boundaries, in the mobilisation of their home society. This chapter first addresses the nature and scale of this unprecedented encounter between Belgian civilians in exile and host communities in Great Britain. It then demonstrates how the reception of Belgian refugees highlighted key aspects of the mobilisation of British society for war. In the first weeks of the war, the fate of refugees forced to flee the German invasion of 9
10
11
Denise Winterman, ‘World War One: How 250,000 Belgian Refugees Didn’t Leave a Trace’, BBC News Magazine (September 2014). Simon Fowler and Keith Gregson, ‘Bloody Belgians’, Ancestors (May 2005), pp. 43–9. Christophe Declercq, ‘Belgian Refugees in Britain 1914–1919. A Cross-Cultural Study of Belgian Identity in Exile’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University College London (2015). Jolien De Vuyst, Kevin Myers and Angelo Van Gorp, ‘The Paradox of the Alien Citizen? Access, Control and Entitlements of Belgian Refugees in Birmingham during the First World War’, Journal of Refugee Studies (January 2019), pp. 1–18. Of particular relevance to this chapter is a special issue of Immigrants & Minorities edited by Jacqueline Jenkinson, with contributions from Daniel Laqua, Rebecca Gill, Christophe Delcerq, Helen Baker, William Buck and Lorna Hughes. See Jacqueline Jenkinson, ‘Soon gone, long forgotten’: Uncovering British Responses to Belgian Refugees during the First World War’, Immigrants & Minorities, 34 (May 2016), pp. 101–12. Pierre Purseigle, ‘Home Fronts: The Mobilization of Resources for Total War’, in R. Chickering, D. E. Showalter and H. J. Van de Ven (eds.), The Cambridge History of War. Volume 4, War and the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 257–84. The key text on the Belgian experience of the First World War is Sophie de Schaepdrijver, La Belgique et la Première Guerre mondiale (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2004).
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Belgium underlined the tragic necessity of the conflict into which Britain had been plunged. The country’s commitment to uphold the rights of ‘Gallant Little Belgium’ was only reinforced by the perceived ‘frightfulness’ and ‘barbarity’ of the German enemy. As the war wore on and imposed great sacrifice and new hardships on the British people, tensions arose and occasionally degenerated into confrontations with Belgian refugees. Those did not simply stem from the material and cultural strains of wartime mobilisation; they also laid bare persisting misapprehensions of the experience of refugees and of the specificities of Belgian mobilisation. It took about a month for the British public to appreciate the scale of the migration provoked by the German invasion of Belgium and France. By September 1914, British newspapers reported frequently on the plight of refugees and expressed the country’s solidarity with the first civilian victims of the war. Since the devastation of that heroic little land [Belgium] began, its inhabitants have turned to England, their only available shelter, and a stream of fugitives, largely destitute, has set in to our shores. At first, it trickled, it now flows strongly, and it may yet become a cataract. Whatever the magnitude, it must not only be received, but welcome and instantly provided for, until this tempest be overpast.12
The British government had made no significant preparation to deal with this unexpected aspect of the European crisis. Faced with numerous other and complex emergencies, public services and charities nonetheless set out to provide for the refugees’ needs. While Belgians accounted for 95 per cent of refugees in Britain, it remains difficult to offer a precise estimate of the number of people who left Belgium to seek refuge across the Channel in the first weeks of the war. This is in no small part because the British authorities chose to deal with refugees as a transnational problem and lumped twenty-nine nationalities together under a single category. As a post-war report indicated, ‘Belgian’ refugees formed a ‘truly cosmopolitan congregation’ and fell into three subcategories: ‘(1) those driven from their country in a state of complete or partial destitution; (2) those with means who preferred to come to this country rather than endure the German occupation; and (3) those who, too well or, more accurately speaking, too unfavourably known in their own country found it desirable to be known as victims of the war’.13 A Central Register of Belgian Refugees soon recorded the arrival of over 200,000 ‘Belgian’ refugees. At its peak, the refugee population reached 210,000 and, as of 1 June 1919, the card
12 13
The Times, 14 September 1914. Ministry of Health, Report on the Work Undertaken by the British Government in the Reception and Care of the Belgian Refugees (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1920), 60.
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index produced for the Central Register listed the names of 225,572 individuals who had been welcome in the United Kingdom.14 This population reflected both the diversity of Belgian society and the geography of the continental frontlines. Unsurprisingly, considering the southwestern trajectory of the German army’s advance, two-thirds of the Belgian refugee population hailed from the Flemish provinces (Antwerp, East and West Flanders, Limburg) while 15 per cent had fled the predominantly Walloon regions (Hainaut, Liège, Luxembourg, Namur). The remainder originated from ‘mixed’ provinces such as Brabant.15 Directly related to the advance and retreat of the armies in the field, the influx of refugees to Britain virtually ceased following the occupation of Belgium. The linguistic and social fabric of the wartime Belgian community in Britain remained essentially unchanged between the evacuation of Antwerp in September 1914 and the first repatriations at the end of 1918.16 The Channel ports were logically enough the refugees’ gateways into Britain. Thus, over five days in late September 1914, 35,000 people arrived in Folkestone. British sources indicate that 38 per cent of the Belgian population eventually settled in the London metropolitan area. A report sent to the Belgian minister of the interior in August 1917 discussed the presence of 50,468 Belgian refugees in London alone.17 The city also served as a clearing house from which to despatch refugees to the other nations and across England’s counties. By 1918, Scotland had received about 20,000 refugees; 4,500 had made their way to Wales; while another 3,000 settled in Ireland. More should certainly be done to refine our knowledge of the spatial distribution of refugees across the country. At any rate, it is clear that while Belgian refugees soon became a fixture in wartime London and in a few other cities like Glasgow, their presence was as conspicuous as it was exceptional in most other communities. In the last twenty-five years, the historiography of the First World War has focussed on the cultural dynamics of social mobilisation; on the ideas, images,
14
15
16
17
Report on the Work Undertaken by the British Government in the Reception and Care of the Belgian Refugees. See especially Appendix n°5, 58ff. For an early discussion of the composition of the Belgian refugee population, see T. T. S De Jastrzebski, ‘The Register of Belgian Refugees’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (March 1916), pp. 133–58. According to the Central Register, the urban element was also overrepresented and two towns, Antwerp and Ostend, with less than one-sixteenth of the total population of Belgium accounted for the origin of one third of the refugees. Ostend, Malines, Termonde, Herstal, Willebroeck, Antwerp and Louvain had the greatest proportion of refugees in respect of their population. See Report on the Work Undertaken by the British Government in the Reception and Care of the Belgian Refugees. G. A. Powell (ed.), Four Years in a Refugee Camp: Being an Account of the British Government war Refugees Camp, Earl’s Court (London: Baynard Press, 1920), p. 28. AGR Brussels, Comité official Belge pour l’Angleterre, T.476/184.
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discourses that sustained the commitment of Britons to fight an ‘uncivilised’ enemy. Refugees played a critical role in the cultural mobilisation of Britain. Their plight, the particular form of victimisation they suffered as a result of the invasion, appeared to vindicate the construction of the conflict as a war for civilisation against barbarism. The singularity of their experience obviously contrasted with that of the home front communities that had been spared military operations. Refugees thus came across as the beleaguered victims of a cruel conflict, whose sufferings and distress could not be imagined by the population in the rear. As it happened, British civilians were fully aware of the disproportionate ordeal the refugees were going through and of the unequal distribution of the burden of war.18 Although the presence of refugees testified to the success of German armies, refugees were nonetheless considered to be heroes whose exile in Britain was not a sign of defeat but a testimony to the courageous resistance shown towards a fearsome aggressor. Accordingly, the assistance provided to the Belgian refugees became ‘a striking tribute to the country which commanded the world’s admiration’. Indeed, as far away as New Zealand local elites claimed that: ‘But for these fellows we should be eating sauerkraut and drinking lager already’.19 While such pronouncements could be dismissed, the presence of refugees on the British home front was instrumental in facilitating its cultural mobilisation. At a time when the British public had had no contact with the enemy, those ‘homeless victims of the barbarian’20 embodied the war at the very moment when soldiers of the BEF were joining the continental fray. In this context, the positive reception of refugees constituted, as The Times put it, the ‘country’s obligation of honour’.21 Relief was thus conceived as a duty that the authorities invoked to underline the demands of inter-Allied solidarity. It is perhaps worth reflecting further on the role that refugees performed on the home front, as they alighted in London: The courage, patience, and good humour of the Belgian refugees was astonishing. Many of them told terrible stories which made it quite impossible to retain any doubt as to the German atrocities.22
The history of the ‘refugee’ is inseparable from that of the 1914 atrocities, which provide the backdrop against which we must approach their
18 19 20
21 22
Northampton Independent, 17 October 1914. A.G.R., T.533, 9–16. The Times, 10 September 1914; Imperial War Museum, London (hereafter IWM) Essington-Nelson Miss A 86/48/1. The Times, 14 September 1914. The Times, 26 September 1914.
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representation.23 On their arrival and over the course of their settlement, refugees functioned as vehicles for the dissemination of images of brutality and suffering. Just arrived at the Gare du Nord in Paris, Belgian refugees and their French counterparts, were telling ‘dreadful things’.24 According to The Times: as they sit there they are talking about one thing – of what the ‘Bosches’ (sic) have done to the villages they have passed through already. ‘they cut the hands off the little boys, so that there shall be no more soldiers for France. They kill the women, and the things they do to the young girls, Monsieur, are too terrible to be told. They burn everything and steal and destroy. Back there is nothing but wilderness.25
Settled in communities spared by the invasion, the refugees brought tales of the invasion reinforced by the authority that their direct experience conferred upon them. The influx of Belgian refugees therefore brought the local population face to face with the realities and disasters of modern warfare at a time when British military involvement was still limited. In Folkestone, the refugees’ gateway to Britain, ‘each boat was carrying a contingent always worthier of help and pity’.26 In Northampton, when about 200 refugees reached their final destination, they served to provide tangible evidence of the distress of war: The arrival of the first batches of Belgians here, and train loads on their way north brought home to us the tragedy of their martyred country. [. . .] Kind hearted ladies were ready at the station with steaming coffee, buns, sweets, which they eagerly devoured, smiling wondrously the while at the contrast between their reception here and the horrors from which they had fled.27
During the first weeks of the conflict, when the restriction of information prevented people knowing what was going on at the front, Belgian refugees supplied news about the conduct of war and its impact. The misfortune of war found its expression in the tragedy of family separation described by one British female volunteer: One evening another and myself were sent to Charing Cross to meet a late train, after waiting, an hour in the very dimly lighted station we went to the trains, at the last moment, were all being sent into Victoria & we were 23
24 25 26 27
John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 175. Le Petit Parisien, 27 August 1914. The Times, 2 September 1914. Armand Varlez, Les Belges en exil (Brussels – London: Librairie Moderne, 1917), p. 40. William H. Holloway, Northamptonshire and the Great War (Northampton: Northampton Independent, 1920), p. 220.
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hurrying out when a young man came up to us seeing our sashes and asked if we spoke French & then told us his pathetic story – he was trying to meet all the refugee trains to find his mother & sisters – refugees from Brussels- & apparently had been doing this for nights.28
At a time when Britain was still coming to terms with the outbreak of the war and organising itself to meet the demands of modern warfare, the reception of refugees illustrated the emergence of the British home front; a civilian society whose chief organising principle was the successful prosecution of the war, the material and emotional support of combatants in the field, and the relief of war victims. The Belgian refugees were not only war victims but had also fallen prey to a ‘barbaric’ enemy. Their plight reinforced a system of representations according to which the war must lead to the foe’s complete capitulation. ‘Innocent’ targets of a military operation that refused to comply with the traditional laws of war, the refugees were victims of a conflagration understood in social-Darwinist and ethnic terms, as a life and death struggle.29 In a nutshell, the ‘refugees’ offered a metonymy of the war, of its stakes, around which a coherent system of representation hinged as well as the social practices that ultimately made up the social mobilisation of a belligerent nation. The speed of the German advance and the scale of the migration it brought about surprised British commentators who frequently evoked language of natural disaster to describe the effect of the ‘Teutonic tide’ and its ‘formidable waves’.30 Britain, like other Allied and neutral countries dealing with a sudden influx of refugees initially struggled to organise its response to the unprecedented humanitarian crisis unfolding on its shores. National organizations such as the War Refugees Committee (hereafter WRC) were nonetheless created with the support of the government to lay the institutional and legal foundations of the reception of refugees. Meanwhile, in keeping with the rapid mobilisation of civil society across the country, local committees organised themselves to welcome refugees in their community. The number of such relief committees stabilised at around 1,500 in England alone in 1915. In most cases, these bodies had been created spontaneously on the initiative of local notables and pre-existing institutions or communities.31 On 16 September 1914 the mayor of Newport in Wales convened a meeting where volunteers concerned with the welfare of Belgian refugees agreed to form a committee. 28 29
30
31
IWM Essington-Nelson Miss A 86/48/1. Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, ‘Violence et consentement: la ‘culture de guerre’ du premier conflit mondial,’ in J.-P. Rioux and J.-F. Sirinelli (eds.), Pour une histoire culturelle (Paris: Le Seuil, 1997), p. 259. Ernest Gaubert, ‘Scènes et types de réfugiés (Notes d’un sous-préfet)’, La Revue de Paris, 10 (1915), pp. 376–400. Cahalan, Belgian Refugee Relief, pp. 170–1.
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Offers of hospitality were then forwarded to the WRC. In the meantime, various personalities and representative bodies joined the committee. Anxious to keep its official endorsement, the committee asked the mayor to retain the chairmanship of an agency which now benefited from the free and regular collaboration of the local newspapers, the South Wales Argus and the Monmouthshire Evening Post.32 This example illustrates the typical formation of refugee committees across Britain, but also underlines how local civil societies set out to respond to the many emergencies arising out of the war. In this case, however, local and national organisations involved in refugee relief paid particular attention to the involvement of Catholic societies and networks, as they inferred the denominational characteristics of the refugee population from the Catholic heritage of the Belgian nation. The WRC thus tasked the Catholic Women’s League with welcoming refugees at railway stations. Refugees were expected to recognise the white sashes, imprinted in black with Ligue des Femmes Catholiques, that the League’s volunteers wore. One of those volunteers, Miss Essington-Nelson, recorded her experience of meeting refugees as they stepped off trains in Victoria and Charing Cross stations in London. When the trains arrived we helped in the sorting, ourselves trying to find the Belgians from French, Russians, American & even Armenians. Girl guides were there with coffee, soup, etc. & the women’s emergency corps was doing excellent work. At one end of the station a man, appointed for the task, sat on a raised platform with lists of hotels, boarding houses & lodgings with the prices, for those who could pay for themselves. [. . .] After helping them into the motor busses we left them to pass out, amid the cheers of the crowds outside, to the different depôt (sic) where the first nights were always spent in order to register them.33
As this diary indicates, the refugee population was nonetheless more diverse than previously expected, and relief organisations soon realised that they needed to call upon other denominational or social groups.34 One such charitable organisation was the Jews’ Temporary Shelter in Whitechapel that initiated the humanitarian response of the Jewish community.35 A dedicated Jewish War Refugees Committee was formed by the end of August 1914.36
32
33 34 35
36
BDIC, O 8947, Reports of the Newport (Mon.) Belgian refugees committee, and forty other Belgian refugees committees in Monmouthshire and neighbourhood. I. W. M. Essington-Nelson Miss A 86/48/1. Varlez, Les Belges en exil, p. 40. Report on the Work Undertaken by the British Government in the Reception and Care of the Belgian Refugees, p. 53. The institutional history of the Jewish War Refugees Committees and its relations with the national and governmental agencies is dealt with in Cahalan, Belgian Refugee Relief, pp. 142–9.
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Originating from Russia and Galicia, most ‘Belgian’ Jewish refugees had fled Antwerp in the wake of the invasion and formed a multinational group. During the war, 8,000 of them sought refuge in Britain and were supported by a host of Jewish relief organisations.37 Despite the persistence of social and political tensions within the community, the mobilisation of British Jews and their collaboration with local and state authorities enabled them to provide their co-religionists in exile with dedicated refuges across London. Their employment, however, proved rather more problematic than their accommodation. Indeed, according to the WRC, the strict observance of the Sabbath among these predominantly orthodox Jews raised a serious difficulty that compounded the situation of a largely unskilled population.38 The support provided to refugees shows how important specific group solidarities were for the general war effort. The Railway Executive Committee, on behalf of the British railways, decided to offer hospitality to Belgian railwaymen while the National Fire Union held its hand out to Belgian fire-fighters.39 Civil society thus contributed a formidable effort in favour of the Belgian refugees, encouraged by a government keen to leave philanthropic organisations to carry this burden. In the Commons debate held on 31 August 1914, Herbert Asquith, the prime minister, summed up the state’s initial response: We all have the greatest sympathy with these destitute refugees from a country for which we feel so much as we do at this moment, but there is a certain number of funds which are being raised by private action for the purpose, and I would rather wait and see how that works out before answering the Noble Lord’s question.40
However, in keeping with the broader dynamics of social mobilisation, the government soon found itself compelled to assert state control over refugee relief as civil society organisations struggled to meet the demands of the war effort. Soon, the state had not only to sustain but also to substitute for private philanthropy in cases where charitable energy flagged.41 Two chronologies 37 38
39
40
41
The Times, 24 March 1919. Report on the Work Undertaken by the British Government in the Reception and Care of the Belgian Refugees, p. 26. ‘Memorandum (n°2) for the use of Local Committees for the Care of Belgian Refugees’, in Report on the Work Undertaken by the British Government in the Reception and Care of the Belgian Refugees, p. 94. See also Herbert Samuel’s remarks on 9 Sep. Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 9th volume of session 1914, 66, House of Commons Debates, 18 September 1914. For a broader perspective, see Pierre Purseigle, ‘1914–1918: Les combats de l’arrière. Etude comparée des mobilisations sociales en France et en Grande-Bretagne,’ in Anne Duménil, Nicolas Beaupré and Christian Ingrao (eds.), Experiences de guerre. 1914–1945 (Paris: A. Viénot, 2004). Report on the Work Undertaken by the British Government in the Reception and Care of the Belgian Refugees, p. 15.
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must be considered. One is that of the material support to the refugees, the other is of the attitudes towards refugees. As early as 1915, local and national organisations worried that their financial resources were drying up.42 In Britain, the WRC and the Local Government Board responded by launching a remobilisation campaign. Herbert Samuel, chairman of the Local Government Board, forwarded a letter to the British press on 7 January 1915, reminding it of the principles that governed refugee relief and contrasting the British effort to that of neutral Holland: The sympathy of the British people for the Belgians had shown itself, among other ways, by the widespread offer of hospitality to the refugees. . . . But the small country of Holland is generously giving refuge to twice as many Belgians as the United Kingdom. . . . In view of all that these refugees have suffered and of all that Belgium has done for the cause of the Allies, I trust that it is only necessary for the present urgent need to be made known to the country in order to evoke a response adequate to meet the situation.43
Admittedly, shortages and economic disruptions weighed heavily on philanthropic initiative, of which the middle and upper classes were the backbone. By the summer of 1916, even the support for ‘better-class refugees’, largely funded by upper-middle-class and aristocratic donors, could no longer be sustained [see Fig. 16.1]. Lady Lugard, who had led this particular relief operation, felt compelled to approach the Local Government Board as her Belgian Hospitality Committee could ‘no longer count upon the substantial help from private subscriptions’.44 But the discrepancy between this chronology and that of the national mobilisation, whose crisis is traditionally deemed to begin in 1916, is revealing. Up to the beginning of 1915, refugees were regarded as the heroic victims of German militarism. Thereafter tensions surfaced and incidents broke out between refugees and their hosts. ‘Dirty Belgians’, ‘German’ and other abuses were hurled at the exiles, prompting their spokesmen to demand greater respect. Sources of tensions between the refugees and the host communities varied both in nature and importance. Refugees were party to the ‘social relations of sacrifice’: the strains generated by the situation on the housing market for example constituted a major bone of contention between refugees and local communities.45 Close examination of private sources and official and 42 43
44 45
National Archives, London MH 8 / 7 and Cahalan, Belgian Refugee Relief, p. 86ff. Report on the Work Undertaken by the British Government in the Reception and Care of the Belgian Refugees, p. 99. TNA, MH 8/7. Letter dated 22 June 1916. For the situation on the metropolitan housing market, see Susanna Magri, ‘Housing,’ in J. Winter and J.-L. Robert (eds.), Capital Cities at War: London, Paris, Berlin, 1914–1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 374–417.
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Figure 16.1 Refugees No. 4: the station, lithograph by John Copley, 1915. Private collection: photo by Abbott and Holder.
charities’ reports suggests something of the prejudices, frustrations and sufferings that soured relations between the Belgian refugees and their hosts. The diary of Miss Coules, written in London between June 1914 and November 1915, describes these successive changes of attitude: Everyone was Belgian mad for a time. Mother helped furnish a home for Belgians & gave a monthly subscription & Mercedes got up a choir of 20 girls – we called ourselves the Black Dominoes, as we wore long black cloaks and masks – to sing the national anthems of the allies in the streets, in aid of the Belgians. We made quite a considerable sum, & it was great fun. But the Belgians are not grateful. They won’t do a stroke of work & grumble at everything & their morals. . .! It may be true enough that Belgium saved Europe, but. . . save us from the Belgians! As far as I am concerned, Belgianitis has quite abated.46
Recriminations led to tensions which occasionally erupted into physical confrontations. An anti-Belgian riot broke out in May 1916 in London when the crowd subjected Belgian citizens and property to the same kind
46
I. W. M., Coules Miss, M 97/25/1.
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of treatment inflicted on suspected Germans at the outbreak of the war.47 That local residents identified refugees with the ‘enemy’ is exemplified in a letter written by Mrs Fernside from Fulham, where these disturbances took place: The Belgians here are causing a lot of trouble. On Sunday, they nearly murdered a policeman and a soldier and yesterday the English people and kids collected in hundreds in Liller [illegible] Rd where a lot of Belgians have opened shops & last night the scene was beyond description. They have served them like they served Landsdowne [sic: presumably a reference to the Marquess of Lansdowne, then a member of the government who would publicly call for a negotiated end to the war in November 1917] and the other Germans. Windows & shops smashed up everywhere. With the Irish Germans etc. now the Belgians we have our share of the troubles.48
WRC officials quoted a letter from the Charity Organisation Society of Fulham dated 24 May 1916, to stress how the perceived ‘preferential treatment’ of Belgians in receipt of allowances was arousing hostility, particularly among the working classes.49 Two years after their arrival in Britain, Belgian refugees were often accused of lacking enthusiasm for work while they preserved an ‘alien’ lifestyle and failed to assimilate. In many ways, attitudes towards refugees mirrored those towards immigrant communities. Yet these tensions, like anti-Belgian riots, owed a great deal to the specific strains of wartime mobilisation. Since August 1914, the soldier-in-arms had stood at the top of the wartime social hierarchy. Civilians were fully aware of being ancillaries to the conduct of the war; the patriotic sacrifice of the British Tommy provided the benchmark against which their comportment was to be assessed. The home front was accordingly defined as the civilian performance of duty, sacrifice, and solidarity. As the war dragged on, however, civilians faced their own process of victimisation caused not by the violence of the battlefield, but restrictions, hardships, and above all, by soaring casualties and the subsequent grief. As result, the home front played a different part in the national wartime script; an ambivalent role defined by both participation in the war effort and victimisation. The changing attitudes towards Belgian refugees, reinforced by deep and reciprocal ignorance as well as linguistic or legal marks of otherness, testified to this ambivalent transformation of civilian society. No longer were the refugees exclusively granted the status of victim. Now that many families confronted material hardship, separation, and grief, refugees also found themselves accused of enjoying undue
47
48 49
Panikos Panayi, The Enemy in our Midst: Germans in Britain during the First World War (Providence – Oxford: Berg, 1991). I. W. M., Fernside Mrs E Con shelf & 92/49/1; 23 May 1916. TNA, MH 8/7.
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comfort, of idleness, and grim opportunism. The disappointment of the host communities matched the initial investment in the figure of the ‘refugee’. This trope of mobilisation was eventually turned against the exiles themselves, who became victims of their hosts’ self-delusion by the end of 1915, as evidenced in Panteg, Wales. A general impression of the Belgians after a years’ acquaintance with them shows us that they – in common with our own nation – possess the weakness of human nature. Their trying and troublous [sic] past, the present misery and desolation of their land, and the despairing uncertainty of their future, have possibly combined to make a people, who were temperamentally emotional and excitable previously, nervous and irritable and difficult to please. We have had the ungrateful and the appreciating. On the whole, harmony has prevailed, and we look back on a year’s work with feelings of joy and satisfaction, conscious that we have done what we could to relieve the dire needs of a gallant nation in time of trouble.50
Local populations no longer ascribed to them any dignifying quality and increasingly demanded from them a total participation in the war effort. Belgian elites were consequently called upon to defend the reputation of their fellow countrymen for fear of seeing a few ‘black sheep’ compromising refugee relief and undermining Britain’s support to Belgium. In response, Madame Vandervelde, a prominent Belgian notable and wife of Socialist minister Emile Vandervelde, toured the country in 1917 to denounce misunderstandings and abuses.51 In the speeches she gave throughout her journey around Britain, she strove to rebut anti-Belgian accusations and rumours of shirking.52 The Glasgow Herald reported the address she gave in the city on 6 November 1917: Madame Vandervelde who was received with great cordiality, said she thought that for some time there had been a great deal of misunderstanding about the Belgian soldier and what he was doing, and this she was desirous of trying to remove. She read a letter from London, in which it was stated that on one occasion, when 300 brave Belgian soldiers had arrived at Liverpool Street Station, after making their way out of their own country occupied by the enemy, by hairbreadth escapes on their way to join the fighting forces, a comment was made in the press as to why these men were making a hiding place of England. The rumour once started gained currency at the expense of a country always willing to give to the uttermost of its manpower. Several times young Belgians had come to her 50
51 52
BDIC, O 8947, Reports of the Newport (Mon.) Belgian refugees committee, and forty other Belgian refugees committees in Monmouthshire and neighbourhood. A.G.R. T 476 Comité officiel belge pour l’Angleterre. The Glasgow Herald, 7 November 1917.
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in her office in the most absolute despair because they had been insulted in the streets by people who said they ought to be fighting. These poor boys showed her their medical certificates declaring to be absolutely unfit, generally on account of heart disease or consumption, which often showed no outward sign to the uninitiated.
Vandervelde’s speech underlined the central and unsurprising place ascribed to military service in the assessment of patriotic and Allied sacrifice. Back in June 1915, a letter sent to the editor of The Times by a local interpreter had already underlined the sensitivity aroused by the presence of male refugees of military age on the British home front. The correspondent wrote to report the difficulty that a village constable had in convincing three young Belgian men of his right to enforce Belgian conscription law. The letter ended with the policeman’s complaint about ‘some of these Belgiums [sic] [who] gave a rare lot of trouble’.53 These tensions were in no small part due to the specificities of military mobilisation in Belgium. In June 1915, the country only required the conscription of unmarried men between eighteen and twenty-five years of age. Overall, because of its invasion and occupation, the country mobilised only 20 per cent of its male population aged fifteen to forty-five.54 This stood in sharp contrast to the mobilisation of 53 per cent of British males through volunteering or conscription. The latter’s establishment in 1916 across England, Wales and Scotland after a long and divisive debate only underlined the incongruous situation of potential Allied soldiers who were spared the rigours and dangers of military service while sheltered in Britain. This probably explains why 1916 saw the outbreak of anti-Belgian riots and disturbances; the eruption of pent-up frustration which had been building up for months in some communities. The integration of Belgian workers in Britain’s war economy was another issue framing attitudes towards refugees. In an industrial conflict, labour was indeed a key resource whose supply and allocation could determine the success or failure of armies in the field. War work was also central to the political and cultural definition of patriotic and Allied sacrifice. In this regard, British criticism of refugees grossly underestimated their economic contribution – a staple of anti-immigrant discourse in wartime as well as in peacetime.55 The sudden influx of refugees in the first weeks of the war added to the economic disruptions entailed by the mobilisation, prompting the Local Government Board to appoint a departmental committee devoted to 53 54
55
The Times, 3 June 1915. R. Olbrechts, ‘La population’, in Ernest Mahaim (ed.), La Belgique restaurée: étude sociologique (Brussels: Lamertin, 1926), p. 4. For wider debates over immigration in Britain, see Colin Holmes, John Bull’s Island: Immigration and British Society, 1871–1971 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1988).
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employment of Belgian workers. Under the leadership of Sir Ernest Hatch, its task was to facilitate the productive employment of Belgian refugees and to avoid or mitigate the risk of competition with British industrial workers.56 Soon, however, the demands of the war economy allowed for a successful integration of Belgian workers, who had brought with them to Britain the skills and experience gained in another advanced, industrial economy. To a large extent, the economic geography of Britain explained the spatial distribution of refugees across the country. As a major centre of employment, London therefore concentrated the bulk of the Belgian populations. The capital was also perceived as a site of opportunity for a few Belgian entrepreneurs, including Charles Pelabon who set up a large munition factory at Richmond.57 Other Belgian-led initiatives led to the creation of primarily Belgian-staffed enterprises that set out to meet the needs of the British and Allied armed forces. This was, for instance, the case in the garden city of Letchworth, Hertfordshire, where the Kryn and Lahy Metal Works were founded in March 1915. Before long, large clusters of Belgian workers could be found across the country.58 Further repatriation of Belgian refugees from the Netherlands brought up to 30,000 extra industrial workers to Britain. By 1917, 1,900 Belgians were working for Jacksons in Salisbury, while Vickers employed 5,800 of them in Barrow-in-Furness.59 Official Belgian reports confirmed the image of a community overwhelmingly at work in Britain. In March 1918, few individuals among the 17,000 Belgian refugees in Glasgow still relied on charitable support in the absence of paid employment. Predominantly working class, relatively skilled, Belgian refugees – often with previous experience of trades and industries central to the war effort – rarely struggled to find jobs on the British home front. Many members of the Belgian professional or upper-middle classes did however experience real and at times lasting difficulties.60 Despite their significant contribution to the economic life of wartime Britain, refugees were regularly denounced as idling profiteers of British generosity. In response, relief organisations and Belgian notabilities strove to set the record straight. Among them, Emile Cammaerts – a poet and intellectual who had moved to Britain in 1908 and soon became a fixture of Anglo56 57
58 59
60
The Manchester Guardian, 13 February 1915. BDIC O 9044: Wallon, Justin, Une cité belge sur la Tamise, n.d., p. 18. For a recent study, see Christophe Declercq and Helen Baker, ‘The Pelabon Munitions Wand the Belgian Village on the Thames: Community and Forgetfulness in Outer-Metropolitan Suburbs’, Immigrants & Minorities, 34 (May 2016), pp. 151–70. AGR, Comité officiel belge pour l’Angleterre, Rapport au Min de l’Int, 31 août 1917, p. 97. Report on the Work Undertaken by the British Government in the Reception and Care of the Belgian Refugees, p. 24. AGR T 476, Rapport sur la situation des Belges résidant à Glasgow Glasgow, 6 March 1918.
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Belgian relations – wrote in the British press that most refugees had ‘become an independent worker, worthy of [their] King and of [their] country, and taking, in many cases, [their] share of war work’. Cammaerts acknowledged the existence of a few regrettable exceptions, but he made a point of stressing the willingness of ‘better-class’ refugees to make up for them. Practically every sound workman is working, and if there are still a few idlers here and there their place has been filled by men belonging to the professional classes. I am told several lawyers and doctors are employed at the Letchworth factory, and I know for a fact that one of our poets is turning out shells in Twickenham.61
Early in 1918, the Belgian consul in Edinburgh was moved to publish, in the same vein, an open letter that illustrates the persistent gap between dominant British representations of Belgian refugees and the reality of their experience. I am equally ready to concede that many of the best Belgian refugees have been demoralised by exile, pauperised by indiscriminate charity, humiliated by police supervision. I grant that it is often very difficult to recognise in those poor people either ‘the honoured guests of the British nation’ or representatives of a breed heroes. But when all is said, I submit that grievous injustice is done to the mass of Belgian refugees. They do not ask for CHARITY, they only ask for honourable work. . . . The best proofs that the Belgian refugees are only anxious to earn their livelihood is provided by statistics of the Glasgow Belgian Refugees Committee, who are not likely to under estimate their financial needs . . . Nineteen Belgians out of every twenty are earning their livelihood.62
The economic integration of Belgian refugees does not simply reveal the tensions inherent in communities whose multicultural character was sharply and suddenly reinforced as a result of the war. It also underlines another and often neglected transnational dimension of the British home front: the presence and operation of war-related industrial ventures that were not simply initiated, managed, and staffed by Belgian entrepreneurs and workers, but supported by the Belgian government and run – in part – in accordance with Belgian legislation. There is perhaps no better illustration of this transnational home front than the National Projectile Factory, created at Birtley, between Newcastle and Durham, as a result of an Anglo-Belgian convention signed on 11 February 1916. To meet the needs of its Ministry of Munitions, the United Kingdom government committed itself to finance the construction of a munitions factory that would be operated by Belgian personnel recruited and managed by the Belgian government, including military personnel. This transnational undertaking also relied on private sector expertise from 61 62
The Observer, 20 February 1916. AGR T 476 – Rapport du 18 Février 1918, par Paul Zech-Dupont.
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the British firm Armstrong Whitworth Ltd, which provided technical and professional support. We owe a great deal to local and amateur historians who have unearthed key private archives to document the creation and life of this Belgian factory and its attendant ‘colony’, Elizabethville.63 A recent article by Danial Laqua focused on the relationship established between the Birtley Belgians and their surrounding community and the subsequent memorialisation of an ambivalent encounter defined by partial segregation, tensions, and intermarriage.64 The Birtley factory is perhaps more significant for the peculiar combination of domestic and foreign jurisdiction it brought about to facilitate Allied economic cooperation. The disturbances that erupted in the colony on 21 December 1916 evoked the conflicts that often pitted soldiers mobilised in war industries across Europe against their management. In this case, however, Birtley operatives – including Belgian soldiers – challenged the authority of the Belgian Gendarmerie that enjoyed a limited extraterritorial jurisdiction by virtue of the 1916 convention.65 A thorough analysis of this conflict lies beyond the scope of this chapter. Nonetheless, this example illustrates how the experience of Belgian refugees reveals the transnational features of the British home front, a belligerent society not simply defined by multiculturalism but also by a process of economic mobilisation for coalition warfare that occasionally entailed creative accommodation with national sovereignty in the name of inter-Allied solidarity.66 Attitudes towards refugees did not change with the dip in morale during 1917 or the military success of 1918. In fact, the reception of refugees and the subsequent tensions reflected the inner strains of the belligerent societies. Again, the prominent position bestowed upon the Belgian victims of the military operations by the war cultures did not prove sufficiently resilient to overcome tensions brought about by the pressures of social mobilisation. While commentators initially reacted to the unfamiliar traits and voices of the exiles with genuine sympathy and solidarity, the strains imposed by the war on the host communities soon led to tensions with refugees whose otherness and idiosyncrasies abetted confusions with enemy aliens.67 In Alton, Hampshire, a refugee 63
64
65
66 67
Robert Debauche, ‘Birtley-Elisabethville’. www.birtley-elisabethville.be (accessed 17/10/ 2018). Daniel Laqua, ‘Belgian exiles, the British and the Great War: The Birtley Belgians of Elisabethville’, Immigrants & Minorities, 34 (May 2016), pp. 113–31. TNA, MUN 5/78/327/15, Report on disturbances at Birtley Belgian colony on 21 December 1916; MUN 5/78/327/10, Notes of interview with Ministry representative at Birtley National Projectile Factory on unrest at the factory, 25 April 1919. AGR, T 567 / 111; I 494 / 241. ‘This invasion has turned London into a city where allied tongues may be heard everywhere. In omnibuses and trains, in the shops and theatres one sees foreigners and one listens to foreign speech.’ The Times, 10 September 1914.
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recalled how a Scottish officer had mistaken Flemish for German and therefore proceeded to arrest a group of such suspicious Belgians.68 Wartime social mobilisation rested on discriminatory processes that turned out to be successively inclusive and exclusive, at the benefit or at the expense of refugees and other war victims. Whilst the evidence presented above is consistent with a gradual shift from solidarity to confrontation, one ought nonetheless to be wary of concluding that bitterness and tensions obliterated the refugees’ gratitude. Undeniably, the British communities that welcomed them derived a legitimate and well-founded pride from the help they provided. As a matter of fact, this national or inter-Allied solidarity was celebrated on several occasions even before the refugees’ homecoming, as in Cardiff in 1916, where the refugees planted a tree in tribute to the city’s hospitality.69 The centenary commemorations of the First World War in Britain made a significant contribution to the reintegration of Belgian refugees in the collective memory of the conflict. Significant enough in its own right, this does not exhaust the value of our renewed historiographical interest in the experience of Belgian refugees of the Great War. A social history of refugees, equally attentive to its cultural and economic aspects, does indeed underline the original features of the British home front in 1914–18. It, too, serves as a reminder that local, national, and transnational perspectives should no longer be artificially opposed but productively integrated in the national historiographies of the First World War.
68
69
Tony Kushner and Katharine Knox, Refugees in an Age of Genocide. Global, National and Local Perspectives during the Twentieth Century (London: Cass, 1999), p. 61. See Cardiff Refugee Committee in Report on the Work Undertaken by the British Government in the Reception and Care of the Belgian Refugees.
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17 Prisoners of War and Internees
During the First World War, Britain interned hundreds of thousands of people within its shores. From about 1917 the majority of these came from French battlefields, but throughout the conflict a significant percentage consisted of non-combatants. The latter came from two sources. Most originated from the German community in Britain, whose number totalled 53,324 according to the census of 1911. They consisted of both permanent settlers and those who happened to find themselves in Britain in the summer of 1914.1 However, London became the centre of an international system of incarceration of Germans and other enemy aliens during the Great War. This coordination of imperial internment meant that different parts of the empire from Canada to India and Australia followed the Home Office lead once it began imprisonment from August 1914. This global system also meant that Germans, in particular, found themselves transported from one part of the British Empire to another, while overrun German imperial possessions in Africa also witnessed a system of transportation, which resulted in journeys to camps in Britain.2 Furthermore, Germans found upon ships on the high seas during August 1914 could also face arrest and incarceration in Britain.3 Little of the planning had focused upon interment before 1914 but by September 1914 the Directorate of Prisoners of War had come into existence under the War Office.4 The Directorate initially devoted most of its attention to civilians, as captured soldiers remained few until the end of 1917, growing substantially following the failure of the German spring offensive and ultimate defeat of the Central Powers the following year. After the Germanophobic hubris of May 1915, following the sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania by a 1
2
3
4
Panikos Panayi, German Immigrants in Britain during the Nineteenth Century, 1815–1914 (Oxford: Berg, 1995). Stefan Manz and Panikos Panayi, ‘The Internment of Civilian Enemy Aliens in the British Empire’, in Stefan Manz, Panikos Panayi and Matthew Stibbe (eds.) Internment during the First World War: A Mass Global Phenomenon (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), pp. 19–40. See the case of the Potsdam described in Hans Erich Benedix, In England Interniert (Gotha: F. A. Perthes, 1916), pp. 1–2. Report of the Directorate of Prisoners of War, September 1920, N[ational] A[rchives] H[ome] O[ffice] 11025/410118.
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German submarine off the coast of Ireland, Asquith’s government introduced a policy of wholesale civilian internment, demanded by extreme nationalists, on 13 May. This would affect all adult male enemy aliens between the ages of seventeen and fifty-five, and would remain in force until 1919.5 In October 1916, a Prisoners of War Department had come into existence, headed by Lord Newton.6 As well as the British government, other bodies also took an interest in the internees. The United States and subsequently the Swiss Embassies looked after German internees on behalf of the German government.7 Furthermore, the Prisoners of War Information Bureau, established in London in accordance with article 14 of the Hague Convention, tracked, maintained and distributed information on individual internees in Britain.8 An examination of the make-up and numbers of prisoners of war in Britain demonstrates the importance of developments on French battlefields. The only constants in the period 1914–19 consisted of the fact that Germans made up the overwhelming majority, joined by a small number of Austrians at the end of the conflict, and the fact that officers captured in France faced automatic removal to Britain. Only 3,100 of the 13,600 internees held in Britain on 22 September 1914 originated on the battlefields. Most of the remaining 10,500 came from the German civilian community in Britain.9 The total figure of 13,600 included people captured by the British on the seas, both civilians and naval personnel.10 Gunther Plüschow ‘a wealthy German aristocrat, a peacetime professional officer . . . was captured in the first year of the War when he was returning from neutral America aboard an Italian liner that was stopped in the Channel’. After interrogation the authorities also took him to Dorchester.11 Numbers of captured naval and military personnel remained low throughout the early stages of the war [See Table 17.1]. By 1 February 1915 ‘there were 400 officers (including a few Austrians), 6,500 soldiers and naval sailors, and
5
6
7
8
9 10 11
Panikos Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst: Germans in Britain during the First World War (Oxford: Berg, 1991), pp. 70–98. Report of the Directorate of Prisoners of War, September 1920, NA/HO11025/410118; Responsibility of the War Office for Questions Regarding Prisoners of War, November 1916, NA/W[ar]O[ffice] 32/5376; Lord Newton, Retrospection (London: John Murray, 1941), pp. 214–19. Richard B. Speed III, Prisoners, Diplomats, and the Great War: A Study in the Diplomacy of Captivity (London: Praeger, 1990). Ronald F. Roxburgh, The Prisoners of War Information Bureau in London: A Study (London: Longmans, 1915). Internment of Alien Enemies, 1914, NA/WO32/5368. Robert Jackson, The Prisoners, 1914–18 (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 234. James Leasor, `Escape’, Observer Magazine, 27 October 1974, p. 30; Gunther Plüschow, My Escape from Donington Hall (London: John Lane, 1922), p. 161.
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Table 17.1. Number of internees in Britain, 1914–19 Date
Civilian
Military
Total
22 September 1914 1 May 1915 20 November 1917 1 November 1918 5 July 1919
10,500 20,000 29,511 24,522 3,373
3,100 6,900 49,815 91,428 86,903
13,600 26,900 79,326 115,930 90,276
Sources: Statistical Information Regarding the Armies at Home and Abroad, 1914–1920, NA/WO394/20; Statistical Abstract, December 1916, NA/WO394/1; Statistical Abstract, November 1917, NA/WO394/5; Statistical Abstract, 1 November 1918, NA/WO394/10; Statistical Abstract, 1 September 1919, NA/ WO394/15.
between 19,000 and 20,000 merchant sailors and civilians (German and Austrian) interned’.12 By November 1915, following the decision in May to intern all enemy aliens of military age, the number of civilian internees had reached 32,440.13 Military prisoners did not begin to increase until 1917 when the numbers of German soldiers captured in France grew. Thus, in that year, 73,131 combatants fell into British hands on French soil, followed by another 201,633 during 1918, the vast majority of them – 186,684 – captured between 12 August and 9 December as the German armies faced defeat.14 These figures translated into an increase in the numbers of military personnel held in Britain. Thus, in December 1916 the figure stood at 876 officers and 24,251 men. Naval figures totalled 120 officers and 1,286 men, all but one of them Germans.15 By 20 November 1917, 79,329 people found themselves interned in British camps, including 29,511 civilians.16 By November 1918, the British held a total of 207,357 prisoners of war throughout the world. The figure within Britain had reached 115,950, of whom 89,937 consisted of military staff (including 5,005 officers) together with 1,491 naval personnel.17 By 5 July 1919, the British were responsible for an amazing 458,392 internees globally. On home soil the
12 13 14
15 16 17
The Times History of the War, vol. 6 (London: The Times, 1916), p. 272. Panayi, Enemy, pp. 75–81. Statistical Information Regarding the Armies at Home and Abroad, 1914–20, NA/ WO394/20. Statistical Abstract, December 1916, NA/WO394/1. Statistical Abstract, November 1917, NA/WO394/5. Statistical Abstract, 1 November 1918, NA/WO394/10.
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figures had declined to 90,276, including 3,373 civilians, 2,899 naval personnel and 84,004 soldiers.18 During the early stages of the war, military and civilian prisoners lived in the same camps, although usually separated from each other within them. As the conflict progressed, different camps evolved for the two groups. The fairly stable civilian population became overwhelmingly concentrated upon the Isle of Man, together with other locations on the mainland, notably Alexandra Palace, Stratford and Wakefield. While a small number of locations housed a significant proportion of the naval and military prisoners during the war, a large number of camps evolved for such internees during the course of the conflict especially in 1918 and 1919 as their numbers grew. Several sources point to the existence of more than 500 camps by this time.19 A list from January 1918 gives the names of 566 places of internment. These cover a wide variety and size of locations, which held anything from a few individuals to thousands of prisoners. Many places were working camps which fed off the larger places of internment. At this stage even the smallest farm which employed prisoners of war counted as a place of internment. The list also included any number of hospitals which may have looked after a few German casualties.20 At the start of the Great War, with few German prisoners in Great Britain, only a few camps existed. A publication from the end of 1914 claimed that: ‘In mid-October we held German prisoners of war at Blackdown, Camberley, Dyffryn Aled (North Wales), Douglas (Isle of Man), Frimley, Handforth, Lofthouse Park (between Leeds and Wakefield), Newbury, Queensferry, Templemore (Ireland), York and Olympia in London’.21 Most of these catered mainly for civilians, including Handforth, Lofthouse Park, Douglas and Olympia.22 The first ‘permanent POW camp’ consisted of Dorchester, a ‘hastily converted army camp’, which opened in the middle of August 1914. As well as housing soldiers it also initially served as home to civilians and people captured on the high seas. The first military internees arrived on 27 August, followed by others on 4 September and 18 October. On 8 October, 450 civilians faced transfer to the Isle of Man. During the first few months of the war Dorchester held an average of 1,000 men, although by the start of 1915 this
18 19
20 21
22
Statistical Abstract, 1 September 1919, NA/WO394/15. Hampden Gordon, The War Office (London: Putnam, 1935), p. 313, states that they reached over 500, while ‘German Prisoners of War in Great Britain, 1914–1918’, I [mperial] W[ar] M[useum], lists 584. Report of the Prisoners of War Information Bureau, NA/WO162/341. Tighe Hopkins, Prisoners of War (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1914), p. 108. Panayi, Enemy, pp. 99–108.
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figure seems to have increased to over 2,000.23 Gunther Plüschow later wrote that: ‘The prisoners were extremely comfortable, as the food was good and plentiful, the treatment irreproachable, and there were many opportunities for sport’.24 A report to the US Embassy in London (which looked after German interests in Britain until the USA entered the war) from 23 October 1914 wrote that ‘the combatant prisoners of war are at present, in the main, interned at Frith Hill Camp’.25 They quickly established their own control over the camp and set up their own institutions.26 The camp at Newbury was actually established on the race course and the prisoners lived in horse boxes with neither heat nor light. In October 1914, it housed 1,200 people, including 200 wounded German soldiers. Newbury faced closure at the start of 1915 because of its unsuitability.27 At the start of 1915, due to the lack of accommodation for internees, the War Office made use of nine trans-Atlantic liners divided into three groups of three near Ryde, Gosport and Southend. The ships housed both civilian and military internees but seem to have ceased operating by the summer of 1915.28 In the spring of 1915 several new camps housing military prisoners came into existence. D. W. Pult, captured in France, arrived at a military hospital in a girls’ school near Portsmouth on 10 March 1915, which held about forty wounded officers, where he remained until June.29 He then faced transfer to what would become one of the most important camps for military prisoners at Stobs, near Hawick in Scotland, which existed until 1919. This actually opened in November 1914 and held naval, military and civilian prisoners until July 1916 when the last group moved to Knockaloe on the Isle of Man.30 One US embassy official described Stobs in the following way: ‘The camp is set on the side of a sloping hill and the camp has been in use for several years as a summer camp for manoeuvres and the training of Scottish Regiments.’ In June 1915, Stobs held 2,377 prisoners made up of 23
24 25
26 27 28 29
30
Jackson, Prisoners, p. 135; Bruno Schmidt-Reder, In England Kriegsgefangen! Meine Erlebnisse in dem Gefangenlager Dorchester (Berlin: Georg Bath, 1915), pp. 47, 52, 54; Plüschow, My Escape, p. 163. Plüschow, My Escape. Correspondence between His Majesty’s Government and the United States Ambassador Respecting the Treatment of Prisoners of War and Interned Civilians in the United Kingdom and Germany Respectively (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1915). The Times History of the War, vol. 6, pp. 272–3. Panayi, Enemy, p. 100; Die Eiche, 3 (July 1915), 437. Panayi, Enemy, pp. 101–2. D. W. Pult, Siebzehn Monate in Englischer Kriegsgefangenschaft (Siegen: Hermann Montanus, 1917). Stefan Manz, ‘“Enemy Aliens” in Scotland in Global Context, 1914–1919: Germanophobia, Internment, Forgetting’, in Hannah Ewence and Tim Grady (eds.) Minorities and the First World War: From War to Peace (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017), pp. 125–31.
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1,098 civilians, 783 soldiers and 496 naval personnel.31 By April 1916, a total of 4,592 prisoners lived in the camp including 1,821 soldiers and 502 sailors, all of them Germans. Stobs became one of the most established and sophisticated camps for prisoners of war, with its own newspaper, Stobsiade, and much educational activity. In addition, it also acted as the supply centre to numerous working camps in Scotland and the north of England from 1917, including those at Catterick, Port Clarence and Crawford.32 The officers’ camp at Donington Hall in Derbyshire also developed a sophisticated camp life. It attracted much negative attention in the House of Commons and the British press because of its allegedly luxurious conditions.33 It seems to have come into existence at the beginning of 1915. It ‘was a large, old castle dating from the seventeenth century, surrounded by a lovely old park’.34 In June 1916 it held ‘102 military officers, 39 naval officers, 50 military orderlies and 1 naval orderly, and 3 civilians, of whom 98 military officers and 38 naval officers were German, 4 military officers were Austrian, and 1 naval officer was a Turk. The civilians and orderlies were German’.35 Other officers’ camps existing from the early stages of the war included Holyport Castle near Maidenhead in Kent. When Pult lived there during 1915 it held 100 German officers and 40 orderlies and developed a sophisticated camp life.36 A detailed description of the military camps which existed during the latter stages of the war would prove impossible because of the sheer numbers of places of internment which had sprung up by 1917 [Table 17.2]. A list from January 1918 gave the following ‘parent camps’, which provided labour supplies for other smaller places of internment: Handforth, Blandford (Dorset), Dorchester, Leigh (Lancashire), Frognoch, Pattishall (Northants), Brocton (Staffordshire), Catterick (Yorkshire) and Shrewsbury. The officers’ camps included those at Donington Hall, Holyport, Dyffryn Aled as well as others at Kegworth (Leicestershire), Sandhill Park (Somerset), Colsterdale (Yorkshire) and Southampton.37
31
32
33 34 35 36 37
Reports on Visits made in June 1915 by US Embassy staff to various camps, NA/F [oreign] O[ffice] 383/33. Reports of Visits of Inspection Made by Officials of the United States Embassy to Various Internment Camps in the United Kingdom (London: His majesty’s Stationery Office, 1916); Stobsiade, May, June and August 1917. See, for instance, Hansard (Commons), fifth series, vol. 70 (1915), 557–560. Plüschow, My Escape, pp. 178–9. Reports of Visits of Inspection. Pult, Siebzehn Monate, pp. 61, 62, 66, 72, 81, 85. List of All Prisoner of War Camps in England and Wales (with Postal and Telegraphic Addresses), 1 January 1918, NA/ADM [Admiralty] 137/3868. See also Panikos Panayi, Prisoners of Britain: German Civilian and Combatant Internees during the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), pp. 101–7.
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Table 17.2. Major internment camps in Britain, 1914–19
Name
Location
Type of camp
Duration
Approximate numbers held at any one time
Alexandra Palace Brocton Colsterdale Dartford Donington Hall Dorchester Douglas Dyfryn Aled Frimley
London
Civilian
1915–19
3,000
Staffordshire Yorkshire Kent Leicestershire
Military Officer Hospital Officer
1917–19 1917–18 1916–18 1915–19
5,000 400 Up to 3,726 500
Dorset Isle of Man North Wales Hampshire
1914–19 1914–19 1915–18 1914–15, 1916–18
3,000 2,500 100 Up to 6,000
Hampshire
Military Civilian Officer Civilian then Military Civilian
1914–15
3,600
London
Civilian
1916–17
100
Cheshire
Civilian then military Officer Civilian Military Officer Civilian Military Civilian
1914–18
2,000–2,500
1915–19 1915–19 1915–19 1916–19 1914–19 1914–19 1914–19
150–600 600–700 1,100 600 20,000 1,500
Gosport (Ships) Hackney Wick Handforth Holyport Islington Jersey Kegworth Knockaloe Leigh Lofthouse Park (Wakefield) Nell Lane Newbury Olympia
Pattishall (Eastcote) Ripon
Berkshire London Jersey Derbyshire Isle of Man Lancashire Yorkshire
Manchester Berkshire London
Hospital 1917–19 Early Civilian 1914–15 Early August– Civilian September 1914 Northamptonshire Civilian then 1914–19 Military Yorkshire Officer 1919
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Up to 1,665 c. 3,000 300–1,500
Up to 4,500 900
Table 17.2. (cont.)
Name
Location
Type of camp
Duration
Approximate numbers held at any one time
Ryde (Ships) Southend (Ships) Stobs
Isle of Wight Essex
Civilian Civilian
1914–15 1914–15
2,500 5,000
Scotland
4,500
Stratford
London
Civilian then 1914–18 military Civilian 1914–17
Up to 740
Source: Panikos Panayi, Prisoners of Britain: German Civilian and Combatant Internees during the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), pp. 88–9.
Several accounts give details. Walther Scheller, for instance, spoke of ‘das Paradies in Southampton’.38 E. Wolff did not use such a complementary phrase for Brocton, recalling that on arrival, ‘All pockets, bags, boxes, valses and packets were exhaustively searched and many a thing was flung on the piles of prisoners property’.39 A report of January 1918 from the Swiss Embassy, which had taken over responsibility for looking after German interests in Britain after the USA had entered the war, stated that Brocton housed 4,715 prisoners of war, ‘of whom 4,423 belong to the German Army and 292 to the German Navy. These figures include the patients at present in Brocton Hospital’.40 The civilian camps had become fully operational after the introduction of wholesale internment in May 1915. By far the most important of these lay on the Isle of Man. The first, and smaller of the two establishments here, utilised the site of a former holiday camp in Douglas.41 The first batch of 203 prisoners arrived on 22 September 1914. Further boatloads of internees followed from a variety of locations over the following weeks, so that by the beginning of 1915 around 3,000 men lived here.42 The camp survived until the end of the war and the number of internees averaged out at between about 2,200 and 38
39 40 41
42
Walter Scheller, Als die Seele Starb: 1914–1918: Das Kriegserlebnis eines Unkriegerischen (Berlin: Reuther und Reinhardt, 1931), p. 89. Transcript of E. Wolff entitled ‘My Adventures in the Great War 1914/18’, IWM82/35/1. Inspection of Brocton, 16 January 1918, NA/FO383/431. Jill Drower, Good Clean Fun: The Story of Britain’s First Holiday Camp (London: Arcadia, 1982). Douglas Camp Journal, M[anx] N[ational] H[eritage]/MS06465/1.
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2,800. As late as 16 February 1919 a total of 1,354 still lived here, awaiting repatriation. Some men may have spent almost five years in Douglas, but the population appears to have changed quite regularly because prisoners moved in and out to other places of internment.43 The internees initially lived in the bell tents used to house the holidaymakers before the outbreak of war, but standardised huts replaced these fairly quickly. Douglas was divided into two separate compounds by early 1915, consisting of the ‘ordinary’ camp and the privilege camp. In addition to the ordinary and privilege camp at Douglas, Jewish internees had special provision made for them, especially a kosher kitchen.44 While Douglas may have begun to take prisoners earlier than its sister camp on the Isle of Man, Knockaloe quickly overshadowed it and developed into a small town populated entirely by men. It covered the grounds of a farm, Knockaloe Moar, which had previously served as ‘a camping ground for up to sixteen thousand territorial reserves’.45 The first prisoners arrived on 17 November 1914. Although initially intended for 5,000 internees, a figure it had reached by the end of May 1915, the total shot up as a result of the wholesale internment of males of military age following the Lusitania riots, reaching a peak of perhaps 24,000, including staff, and remaining at over 20,000 for much of 1915 and 1916. This figure would decline from 1917, but only gradually as the last prisoners did not leave until 10 October 1919.46 The scale of Knockaloe struck both contemporary observers and subsequent commentators. Karl von Scheidt and Fritz Meyer described it accurately as a ‘prisoner town’ in a ‘valley basin’ surrounded by hills and close to the Irish Sea and the small town of Peel. They also pointed out that the Isle of Man itself only stretched to 33 miles in length and 12 miles in breadth. Just as interestingly, the island only had a population of 52,000 and the city of Douglas counted 21,000 people, which meant that the camp exceeded the size of the capital during much of 1916 and 1917.47 Margery West has more recently calculated that the camp covered 22 acres, within which over 23,000 people
43
44
45
46
47
Swiss Embassy Report on Douglas, 29 May 1917, NA/FO383/276; Douglas Camp Journal, MNH/MS06465. James John Wolf to E. S. Montefiore, 5 May 1916, L[ondon]M[teropolitan]A[rchives] Acc 2805/4/4/19; ‘Committee for the Supply of Kosher Food to Interned Jews: Prècis of Present Position’, 20 September 1915, LMA/Acc2805/4/4/7. Derek Winterbottom, ‘Economic History’, in John Belchem (ed.) The New History of the Isle of Man, vol. 5, The Modern Period, 1830–1999 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), p. 237. Daily Return of Prisoners Interned, Isle of Man Constabulary Archive, Box 5, MNH/ MS09310; Pat Kelly, Hedge of Thorns: Knockaloe Camp, 1915–19 (Douglas: Manx Experience, 1993), p. 5. Karl von Scheidt and Fritz Meyer, Vier Jahre Leben und Leiden der Auslandsdeutschen in den Gefanagenenlagern Englands (Hagen: Hagener Verlagshandung, 1919), pp. 70, 73.
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lived, and had a perimeter fence of 695 miles of barbed wire and three miles of internal roads.48 Such a large camp could only function if broken down further and it actually operated as four separate camps, simply designated by their numbers and subdivided into compounds. At its height in 1916 a total of twenty-three compounds existed divided in the following way: camp I had 7; camp II had 5; camp III had 6; camp IV had 5. Each of these could take up to a thousand men.49 The camps and the compounds within them operated as autonomous units with their own sub-commandants and deputies. Visitors from the US and Swiss Embassies counted the populations of the individual camps separately. Thus, in May 1917 the following figures emerged: camp I counted 5,913 internees; camp II, 4,279; camp III, 4,741 and camp IV, 5,481. The same report also pointed out that: ‘The four camps are entirely divided from one another and their inmates are not allowed to communicate with each other. Camps III and IV are on the higher ground’. Even the compounds within each of the sub camps remained ‘separated one from the other by barbed wire fences.50 The prisoners lived in wooden huts ‘of the regular War Office pattern of 30 feet by 15 feet, each section holding thirty men. Six huts are placed together, and each hut is capable of accommodating 180 men. They are provided with trestle-tables and chairs for each group of men, and each man has a bed board, mattress and three blankets’.51 In these spaces the internees would ‘sleep, eat, work, play, chat and smoke’.52 The two major civilian camps on the mainland consisted of Alexandra Palace and Lofthouse Park. The former became the largest and longest lasting of the four major London camps, which also included Stratford, Hackney Wick and Islington.53 Other places of internment in London included Brixton Prison and military hospitals. Alexandra Palace simply made use of the facilities of this pre-war entertainment and cultural centre. It held a peak of 3,000 prisoners at any one time, although as many as 17,000 men may have passed through it, often on their way to Knockaloe. The last prisoners did not leave until March 1919. Long term residents consisted especially of the German community of London.54 Outside London, several civilian camps 48
49
50 51 52
53 54
Margery West, Island at War: The Remarkable Role Played by the Small Manx Nation in the Great War, 1914–18 (Laxey: Western Books, 1986), p. 92. James Cantlie, Report upon the Conditions of the Internment Camps at Knockaloe, Isle of Man, NA/HO45/10947/266042; Manchester Guardian, 19 July 1916. Swiss Embassy Report on Knockaloe, 30 May 1917, NA/FO383/276. Reports of Visits of Inspection, p. 20. Adolf Vielhauer, Das englische Konzentrationslager bei Peel (Insel Man) (Bad Nassau Lahn: Evangelische Blättervereinigung für Soldaten und Kriegsgefangene Deutsche, 1917), p. 2. Panayi, Prisoners, p. 91. Panayi, Enemy, pp. 106–7; Rudolf Rocker, ‘Alexandra Palace Internment Camp in the First World War’, unpublished British Library Typescript; Janet Harris, Alexandra
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emerged in northwest England during the early stages of the war, reflecting pre-war settlement of Germans in Manchester and Liverpool.55 An early camp in Lancaster used an old wagon works, although this does not seem to have survived beyond 1915. Its population of 2,000 in early 1915 included 200 boys taken from ships who remained there well into 1915.56 Nearby Queensferry emerged on the site of an ‘industrial village’ in Flintshire57 but did not survive beyond 1915. The camp at Handforth, which lasted until 1918, came into existence in November 1914 on the site of a former printworks. Although it had developed into a military camp by 1916, it initially held a combination of local Germans largely from Manchester, the crews of German trawlers, and people brought from the colonies, whose numbers totalled between 2,000 and 2,500.58 Rather like Alexandra Palace, the camp at Lofthouse Park utilised the site of a former entertainment site for the West Riding Tramway Company near Wakefield, opened in 1908, but actually no longer in operation in 1913 and taken over by the War Office when the war broke out. The first prisoners arrived here in October 1914, mainly from northern towns, although the camp held people from a variety of locations, including Hermann J. Held, a student studying law at Cambridge, and Paul Cohen-Portheim, transferred there from the camp in Stratford. It appears to have reached a peak of around 2,400 prisoners, averaging out at around 1,500 for most of the conflict, overwhelmingly Germans, but also including some Austrians and a handful of Turks. The camp actually divided into 3 compounds.59
55
56
57 58
59
Palace: A Hidden History (Stroud: The History Press, 2005), pp. 63–118; Otto Schimming, 13 Monate hinter dem Stacheldraht: Alexandra Palace, Knockaloe, Isle of Man, Stratford (Stuttgart: Missionsagentur, 1919), pp. 7–17; Scheidt and Meyer, Vier Jahre, pp. 32–73. Panikos Panayi, German Immigrants in Britain during the Nineteenth Century, 1815–1914 (Oxford: Berg, 1995), pp. 101–7. Panayi, Enemy, p. 102; M. L. Waller to Under Secretary of State, Foreign Office, 20 August 1915, NA/F0383/31. Manchester Guardian, 21 August 1914. F. E. Heusel, Handforth through the Ages (Chester: Cheshire Libraries and Museum, 1982), p. 43; Wilhelm Kröpke, Mein Flucht aus englishcher Kriegsgefangenschaft 1916: Von Afrika über England nach Deutschland zur Flandern-Front (Flensburg: Soltau in Komm, 1937), p. 21; National Zeitung, 4 July 1915; translated extract from Zürcher Zeitung, 30 December 1914, NA/FO383/107; L. Bogenstätter and H. Zimmermann, Die Welt Hinter Stacheldraht: Eine Chronik des Englischen Kriegsgefangenlagers Handforth bei Manchester (Munich: Piloty und Loehle, 1921); Handforth Internment and Prisoner of War Camp, https://handforthpowcamp.com (accessed 22/10/2018). Wakefield Express, 26 September, 24 October 1914; US Embassy reports on Wakefield, 25 March, 12 June 1916, NA/FO383/163; Swiss Embassy reports on Wakefield, 9 March, 24 September 1918, NA/FO383/423; Paul Cohen-Portheim, Time Stood Still: My Internment in England, 1914–1918 (London: Duckworth, 1931), pp. 104–9; Peter Wood, ‘The Zivilinternierungslager at Lofthouse Park’, in Kate Taylor (ed.) Aspects of Wakefield 3: Discovering Local History (Barnsley: Wharncliffe, 2001), pp. 97–9; Henning
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Figure 17.1 German prisoners of war (in the back row) employed in limestone quarrying at Landybie, Carmarthenshire. National Library of Wales.
The confinement of adult men within camps away from their families for periods which could total several years often proved a distressing experience, which could lead to neurosis. In such circumstances the internees had to find ways to bring some sort of normality to their lives. The internees largely organized their affairs themselves by establishing camp committees and other ways of killing time. The increase in numbers which occurred during the latter stages of the war coincided with labour shortages in the British economy, which meant that the military prisoners worked in all manner of areas, particularly agriculture [see Fig. 17.1]. Those not employed, including officers and most civilians, found other ways to use their time such as education, theatre and music.
Ibs, Hermann J. Held (1890–1963): Ein Kieler Gelehrtenleben in den Fängen der Zeitläufe (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 38–40; Albrecht Hermann Brugger, Meine Flucht aus dem Kriegsgefangenen=Lager Lofthouse-Park (Berlin: Siep, 1937), pp. 9–11; Claudia Sternberg and David Stowe, eds., Pleasure, Privilege, Privations: Lofthouse Park Near Wakefield, 1908–1922 (Leeds: Biddles Books, 2018).
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Little evidence exists to suggest that internees faced deliberate mistreatment. The most objective accounts, provided by American and Swiss Embassy observers in Britain, paint a generally positive picture. They immediately passed on any complaints they received from the prisoners, which happened on a regular basis, to the relevant British authorities. One of the only deliberate examples of the mistreatment of internees in Britain, during the early stages of the war, consisted of ‘the somewhat unfortunate decision. . .to place thirtynine men captured on German submarines in confinement apart from ordinary prisoners of war’. However, following a month of negotiations through the American Embassy ‘the British Government agreed to return the thirty nine submarine prisoners to the ordinary officer’s and men’s camp’.60 We also need to mention the riot which took place in the Douglas Camp in November 1914 as a result of its rapid expansion, which meant prisoners lived in poor accommodation in which tents collapsed. A disciplinarian commandant added to a charged atmosphere, in which food quality became a symbolic issue. On 19 November prisoners started throwing tables, chairs, crockery and cutlery across the dining room. The unsupervised guards began shooting in the air but then at the prisoners, resulting in the death of five of them and the wounding of nineteen others. The inquest held after the event found that the soldiers had acted correctly to maintain military discipline.61 Protection for prisoners of war came from various quarters. The Hague Convention of 1899 guaranteed their rights, although the British and German governments reached agreements about various aspects of the treatment of captives during the conflict, which essentially extended pre-war treaties.62 Various mechanisms went into place to protect the position of captives. The most important of these consisted of the visits by staffs of neutral embassies.63 Furthermore, the Prisoners of War Information Bureau, established in London in accordance with article 14 of the Hague Convention, tracked, maintained and distributed information on individual internees in Britain.64 As we have seen, internment camps included schools, hospitals, disused factories, tents, stables, farms and castles. The standard installation consisted
60
61
62
63 64
Manchester Guardian History of the War, vol. 4 (Manchester: Manchester Guardian, 1916), p. 219. See especially Disturbance at the Aliens Detention Camp at Douglas on Thursday November 19th, 1914: Inquiry by the Coroner of Inquests on Friday, November 20th, and Friday, November 27th, 1914 (Douglas: Brown and Sons, 1914). An Agreement between the British and German Governments concerning Combatant Prisoners of War and Civilians (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1918). Speed, Prisoners, Diplomats, and the Great War. Report of the Prisoners of War Information Bureau, NA/WO32/341; Ronald F. Roxburgh, The Prisoners of War Information Bureau in London: A Study (London: Longman Green, 1915).
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of huts which simply resembled army barracks. As a rule, in the class and status ridden societies which existed during the First World War, officers remained separate from their men, unless they used them as orderlies. Civilian internees also received preferential treatment if they could pay for it: in Wakefield prisoners paid ten shillings a week ‘for the privilege of being there’.65 Stobs provided a good example of a location that might merit the description of a standard camp. An American Embassy official who visited Stobs on 15 June wrote: ‘The prisoners are housed in huts 120 feet long by 30 feet broad. These are built for 60 men. I found, on an average, 33 men in each hut. There are doors at either end of these huts and four or five windows on each side, each window being about 3½ by 4½ feet’.66 The Knockaloe camp was also constructed of the standard type of military barracks used at Stobs and elsewhere. One Swiss Embassy report noted that: ‘Perhaps no complaints have been so persistent on the part of the prisoners as those in regard to the condition of the huts.’67 Camps which housed officers usually provided superior accommodation. A US Embassy report from December 1914 wrote that: ‘Their quarters are comfortably furnished but without luxury’.68 Public opinion in Britain focused upon Donington Hall as a camp where officers lived in apparent comfort.69 Those who stayed here did not paint such a positive picture. Carl Spindler, for instance, who arrived in 1916, wrote that the ‘camp was too small to accommodate the ever increasing number of prisoners’.70 Other official accounts of officers’ camps paint a positive picture. A Swiss Embassy report on Dyffryn Aled in Wales, following a visit in December 1917, for instance, left the impression that the seventy-seven officers lived in luxury: ‘This spacious and comfortable house offers every desirable convenience’. For instance, the dormitories ‘are comfortable, well lit and well ventilated, and some of them have been newly papered’.71 Overall, prisoners generally lived in decent accommodation, even if luxury was unusual. An examination of the food rations which the internees received also points to their fair treatment, although complaints surfaced about the quality of English fare. In 1914 the daily ration consisted of the following:
65 66
67 68 69 70 71
Cohen-Portheim, Time Stood Still, especially pp. 64–5, 100, 104–9. Reports on Visits of Inspection made in June 1915 by US Embassy Staff to Various Camps, NA/FO383/33. Swiss Embassy Report on Knockaloe and Douglas, 11 September 1918, NA/FO383/432. Correspondence, p. 1. See, for instance, Hansard (Commons), fifth series, vol. 70 (1915), p. 559. Carl Spindler, The Phantom Ship (London: Collins, 1931), p. 192. Swiss Embassy Report of a Visit to Dyffryn Aled of 19 December 1917, NA/ FO383/431.
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Bread, 1lb. 8oz, or biscuits, 1lb. Meat, fresh or frozen, 8oz., or pressed, 4oz. Tea, ½oz. or coffee, 1oz. Salt, ½oz. Sugar, 2oz. Condensed milk, 1/20th tin (1lb). Fresh vegetables, 8oz. Pepper, 1/72oz. 2oz. cheese to be allowed as an alternative for 1g. butter or margarine. 2oz. of peas, beans or lentils, or rice. In addition, prisoners could also purchase ‘tobacco, small luxuries, and other things’ from canteens, throughout the war.72 The above ration remained fairly constant, although some change did take place in the items served. Reductions occurred in the latter stages of the war due to the scarcity of some items as a consequence of German submarine activity. In March 1918 ‘meat was reduced to 4ozs. per day, and in July this was changed to an issue of 4ozs. of beef or horseflesh on 3 days per week, 13/5ozs of Chinese bacon on two days, and 10 ozs. of cured or pickled herring on the remaining two days’. An improvement took place during 1919. Those prisoners who worked received higher rations.73 Internees usually cooked their own food.74 While the rations may have proved sufficient, the prisoners did not find them especially appetising. Plüschow described the food at Donington Hall as ‘very good’ but also mentioned that ‘it was English, so that many did not like it.’75 The fair treatment and sufficient food which the German internees received did not hide other difficulties. One of the most significant problems, especially during the early stages of the war, when most captives did not work, as well as for officers and most civilians, who never worked, consisted of boredom. Internees developed sophisticated methods to overcome the monotony. As Paul Cohen-Portheim recalled, time ‘really had to be killed, for it was the archenemy, and everyone tried to achieve this as best he could’.76 A routine developed as outlined by Fritz Sachse and Paul Cossmann, interned in Skipton during 1918 and 1919. They described their day in the following way: the trumpet sounded at 8am; the prisoners drank coffee at 9.15; at 10 they walked outside the camp; they returned at midday for their lunch;
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Correspondence. Report of the Directorate of Prisoners of War, 1920, NA/HO45/11025/410118. Bogenstätter Zimmermann, Die Welt hinter Stacheldraht, p. 27. Plüschow, My Escape, p. 180. Cohen-Portheim, Time Stood Still, p. 91.
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they received their post at 2; and they ate their supper at 7.30.77 Plüschow also described the routine at the various camps in which he found himself interned. For instance, in Dorchester: ‘Every afternoon 300 to 400 prisoners, of course closely guarded by English soldiers, were led out for their exercise’. In Holyport, ‘The post was the Alpha and Omega of our existence. We divided our whole day according to its delivery, and the temper of the camp was regulated by it.’78 This collective mood existed in several camps and outside events determined it. The November 1918 armistice understandably had a negative effect upon internees.79 Two prisoners held in the military camp in Skipton described the situation as follows: ‘On the morning of the Armistice day of 11 November as, from outside the camp gate the sound of the jubilation of the English guards rang above the barbed wire and everywhere on the English accommodation huts the flags fluttered in the wind, the pain and sorrow struck our German souls with almost outlandish hardness. One genuinely saw strong men cry like children.’80 By the end of the war the concept of a concentration camp psychosis had developed, an idea perpetuated by one of the inspectors from the Swiss Embassy in London, A. L. Vischer, who published a book on the subject. He actually spoke of a ‘mental unity’ amongst prisoners, although he recognized that ‘there are many degrees’ of ‘barbed wire disease’ from ‘the easily excited to the introspective’. He claimed that ‘very few prisoners who have been over six months in the camp are quite free from’ it. Vischer put forward several causes of the disease, including complete absence of any chance of being alone; ignorance of the duration of the captivity; and irregularity of communication from home. Barbed wire served as the symbol of the misfortune of prisoners.81 Personal accounts written after the war certainly reveal a consciousness of barbed wire psychosis. Franz Rinteln von Kleist claimed that several of those held at Donington Hall began to suffer from this problem.82 77
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Fritz Sachse and Paul Nikolaus Cossmann, Kriegsgefangen in Skipton: Leben und Geschichte deutscher Kriegsgefangenen in einem englischen Lager (Munich: Ernst Reinhardt, 1920), pp. 92–7. Plüschow, My Escape, p. 173 Bogenstätter and Zimmermann, Die Welt hinter Stacheldraht, p. 88. Sachse and Cossmann, Kriegsgefangen in Skipton, p. 123. The German original reads: ‘Als am Vormittag des 11. November, des Waffenstillstandtages, von draußen vor dem Lagertor der Laute der Jubel der englischen Wachmannschaften über den Stacheldraht klang und überall an den englischen Wohnbaracken die bunten Fähnchen im Winde flatterten, da stand der Schmerz und der Leid mit fast fremdartiger Härte in unserer deutschen Seele auf. Man sah ernste, starke Männer wie Kinder weinen’. A. L. Vischer, Barbed Wire Disease: A Psychological Study of the Prisoner of War (London: John Bale, 1919), pp. 3, 50–1, 53–5. Franz Rinteln von Kleist, The Dark Invader: Wartime Reminiscences of a German Naval Intelligence Officer (London: Lovat Dickson, 1933), p. 240; Plüschow, My Escape, p. 185.
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Prisoners of war devised a variety of ways of relieving their boredom – one of the main causes of ‘barbed wire disease’ – by creating instead a prison camp society.83 Education represented one of these methods, so that several of the long-established camps developed substantial libraries and numerous courses. For instance, the first catalogue compiled at Handforth in autumn 1916 listed 2,522 books. These came from a series of German charities. By April 1917 the camp also ran fifty-six courses with 1,600 students.84 Camp IV at Knockaloe possessed 18,080 volumes by 1919.85 At Lofthouse Park, in Wakefield, a ‘very thorough Educational scheme’ was organized ‘on University lines’, enrolling about 500 prisoners, one third of the total, and beginning on 1 October 1917.86 Prisoners in Britain also established camp newspapers, reflecting a global development.87 A total of thirty-two different camp newspapers emerged in Britain, including four at Douglas, five at Handforth and seven at Knockaloe, although their number points to the fact that they tended to remain shortlived. Those at Handforth had a circulation of 250–300, while Stobsiade reached 4,000 and the Knockaloe Lager-Zeitung totalled 4,500.88 Jennifer Kewley Draskau, using the newspapers produced upon the Isle of Man, has focused upon their function in creating a sense of Heimat or home, fuelled by the prisoner’s feelings of alienation and encouraged by the overwhelmingly German male environment in which they lived.89 Religious services became one of the first forms of communal activity following the initial establishment of a place of internment, and it took place in the most basic of camps through the efforts of local British churches and German clergymen in Britain.90 As the largest and longest lasting camp, Knockaloe developed the most complex religious activities. Each of the individual camps here appears to have held services for both Roman Catholics and Protestants,91 although a Home Office survey suggests a fairly low rate of 83
84 85
86
87
88 89
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John Davidson, Ketchum, Ruhleben: A Prison Camp Society (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1965). Bogenstätter and Zimmermann, Die Welt hinter Stacheldraht, pp. 165, 169. ‘Final Report on the Internal Administration of the Prisoners of War Camp IV, Knockaloe’, NA/HO45/10947/266042/361. Cohen-Portheim, Time Stood Still, pp. 92–3; FEWVRC/CAMPS/2/3, Society of Friends Library. Rainer Pöppinghege, Im Lager unbesiegt: Deutsche, englische und französische Kriegsgefangenen-Zeitungen im Ersten Weltkrieg (Essen: Klartext, 2006). Ibid., pp. 318–20. Jennifer Kewley Draskau, ‘Relocating the Heimat: Great War Internment Literature from the Isle of Man’, German Studies Review, 32 (2009), pp. 83–106. Swiss Embassy Report on Hendon, 27 September 1917, NA/FO383/277. Vielhauer, Das englische Konzentrationslager bei Peel, p. 5; F. Siegmund-Schultze, ‘Die Gefangenenseelsorge in England’, Die Eiche, 6 (1918), p. 319; Bericht über die Evangelische Kirchengemeinde des Kriegsgefangenen Lagers Knockaloe, MNH/B115/xf; Home Office to Foreign Office, 29 May 1916, NA/FO383/181.
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attendance at services and confirms Gerald Newton’s assertion that most men held at Knockaloe had become ‘kirchenfremd’ (or alien to the church).92 While a minority of prisoners may have participated in organized religious activity, many more appear to have celebrated the key festivals of the year, whether Jewish, Catholic or Protestant. One of the highpoints for the Jewish Camp in Douglas consisted of Passover, which the 500 Jews confined here celebrated annually.93 Christian prisoners also commemorated the key festivals of their religious calendar. These included New Year’s Eve, Fasching and Whitsun94 and, above all, Christmas.95 Theatre became especially important for internees. This was recognized in 1933 by Hermann Pörzgen who viewed it as an escape from the monotony of captivity and as a development which could prevent barbed wire disease: it helped to divert attention from the everyday realities of internment, it provided an intellectual stimulus, and it allowed for the development of a communal life by serving as a meeting point for new interests.96 More recently, Alon Rachamimov and Jennifer Kewley Draskau have focused upon the ways in which cross-dressing actors helped to keep the image of women alive in camps.97 Pörzgen calculated that sixty-nine camp theatres existed in Britain, made up of nine for officers, twenty-seven for privates and thirty-three for civilians.98 Several camps had their own orchestras. For instance, Handforth had a band with between twenty-five and thirty players, while the internees in Skipton had performed forty-two concerts by August 1919, with programmes that included everything from Weber to Wagner.99 A sophisticated musical life developed in the camps on the Isle of Man, as analysed by Jutta Raab Hansen. She has pointed to symphony orchestras, choirs and ensembles, as 92
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Home Office to Foreign Office, 29 May 1916, NA/FO383/181; Gerald Newton, ‘Wie lange noch? Germans at Knockaloe, 1914–18’, in Gerald Newton (ed.) Mutual Exchanges: Sheffield Münster Colloquium II (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999), p. 111. Pesach, 1917, Bundearchiv Militärarchiv [henceforth BA/MA]/MSG200/703. Deutsche Zeitung Broctonlager, Ostern 1919, BA/MA/MSG200/2225; Die Hunnen, 1 June 1917, BA/MA/MSG200/1837; Sylvester Zeitung, Skitpon, 1918, BA/MA/ MSG200/1878; Faschingzeitung, Holyport, 1919, BA/MA/MSG200/2219. Panayi, Prisoners, pp. 174–6. Hermann Pörzgen, Theater ohne Frau. Das Bühnenleben der Kriegsgefangenen Deutschen 1914–1920 (Königsberg: Ost Europa Verlag, 1933), pp. 5–6. Alon Rachamimov, ‘The Disruptive Comforts of Drag: (Trans)Gender Performances among Prisoners of War in Russia, 1914–1920’, American Historical Review, 111 (2006), pp. 362–82; Jennifer Kewley Draskau, ‘Drag Performance and Its Effects in Great War Internment Camps on the Isle of Man’, Proceedings of the Isle of Man Natural History and Antiquarian Society, 12 (April 2007–March 2009), pp. 187–204. Pörzgen, Theater ohne Frau, p. 166. Bogenstätter and Zimmermann, Die Welt hinter Stacheldraht, p. 232; Sachse and Cossmann, Kriegsgefangen in Skipton, pp. 182–6.
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well as music critics and the use of music in religious festivities and plays.100 In Knockaloe each of the four camps had both a string and a brass orchestra. Although these partly accompanied theatrical performances, they also regularly performed purely orchestral concerts.101 Some internees spent their time producing items for sale or display, as described by an officer held at Donington Hall in a letter to his wife. He wrote: ‘we have a continuous display of things we have made’, including oilpaintings, pastels, ‘engine-construction’ and ‘carving work’.102 Art and craft work also became part of everyday life at Alexandra Palace.103 Paul CohenPortheim was able to continue his pre-war professional painting within Wakefield, although he had to readjust to his new surroundings. Some of his fellow internees practised woodcarving.104 Similarly, a report on Holyport mentioned these two activities amongst the prisoners held there.105 The Isle of Man inmates used all sorts of materials to create artistic objects, especially bones from the meat cooked in the camp.106 The other major form of popular culture consisted of sport and exercise. The British authorities provided recreational facilities in most of the camps, irrespective of their size. The seventy-two combatants held at Rosyth in Scotland and working 9½ hours per day in the local brickworks in June 1917 had access to a ‘sports field outside the camp . . . every evening, where the prisoners have a bowling alley and a football ground’.107 The more established places of internment, whether military or civilian, developed more sophisticated sporting facilities. For example, Wakefield had several sports fields, while the men ‘are taken for route marches three or four times a week’. Furthermore, a total of eight tennis courts existed here for the predominantly middle-class prisoners, together with ‘a gymnasium, fitted with all the usual gymnastic appliances’.108 Those held at Douglas had access to two recreation fields totalling over ten acres by the spring of 1916, together with at least five tennis courts, a football field and a running track.109 Knockaloe provided a 100
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103 104 105 106
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Jutta Raab Hansen, ‘Die Bedeutung der Musik für 26.000 internierte Zivilisten während des Ersten Weltkrieges auf der Isle of Man’, in Richard Dove (ed.) ‘Totally un-English?’ Britain’s Internment of ‘Enemy Aliens’ in Two World Wars (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), pp. 63–81. US Embassy Report on Knockaloe, 18 May 1916, NA/FO383/163. Translation of a Letter from ‘Von Pabst’, Prisoner of War at Donington Hall to His Wife, dated 14 October 1915, NA/ADM 137/3855. Harris, Alexandra Palace, pp. 99–101. Cohen-Portheim, Time Stood Still, pp. 138–45. Swiss Embassy Report on Holyport, 9 August 1917, BA/R901/83077. Yvonne Cresswell, ‘Behind the Wire: The Material Culture of Civilian Internees on the Isle of Man in the First World War’, in Dove, ‘Totally un-English?’ pp. 46–61. Swiss Embassy Report on Rosyth, 29 June 1917, NA/FO383/277. US Embassy Report on Wakefield, 12 June 1916, NA/FO383/163. US Embassy Report on Douglas, 18 May 1916, NA/FO383/163.
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similar range of facilities, including a ‘large recreation field open to each compound as a rule twice a week, alternately morning and afternoon’, while each compound also had its own hall of 150 by 30 feet.110 The most important activity, however, consisted of work, especially for military prisoners. The reason for their transportation to and increase in numbers in Britain lay in the fact that the British government needed their labour from 1917, especially for the harvest.111 Many civilians also worked. A US Embassy report from 1916 claimed that 72 per cent of Knockaloe internees ‘are at work’ including ‘bootmakers, tailors, cap workers, plumbers, woodworkers, gardeners, latrine men, police, coal and railway workers, quarry workers, post-office workers, and parcel-post workers’. This report also included those cultivating vegetables.112 Many internees became involved in the internal administration of the camps in tasks which would have remained unpaid and essentially represented attempts at finding employment for as many men as possible. Camp IV at Knockaloe, for example, developed a complex internal bureaucracy.113 Some productive work did, however, take place in the civilian camps. Hackney Wick in London housed sixty-five prisoners in October 1916, fiftythree of whom consisted of ‘skilled volunteer mechanics’, gathered from other places of internment and employed by Vickers for the purpose of ‘fashioning tools, fixtures and gauges for the manufacture of sewing machines’. The rest of the prisoners ‘are occupied in the kitchen, laundry, barber’s shop and in camp fatigue work generally’.114 The internees held at the camp in Cornwallis Road in Islington carried out a variety of paid tasks including the making of artificial limbs and other equipment for the Red Cross.115 A variety of schemes, in which the Society of Friends Emergency Committee (FEC) played an important role, attempted to make use of the labour available in Knockaloe, as well as in some of the other civilian camps. The FEC provided tools and equipment and helped to organise the industrial committees established by the prisoners. It also tried to sell the goods which internees manufactured. Camp III in Knockaloe, for example, held four professional basketmakers, leading to the establishment of a basketmaking industry in which the four instructed sixty-
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US Embassy Report on Knockaloe, 8 January 1916, NA/FO383/162. Panayi, Prisoners, pp. 203–7. Reports of Visits of Inspection, p. 22. Internal POW Administration Camp IV, 30 March 1917, BA/MA/MSG200/2071; Camp IV, Knockaloe, I. O. M., Final Report and Statistical Record on the Internal Administration of the Prisoners of War Camp No. IV. 1915–1919, MNH/B115/43q. US Embassy visit of 20 October 1916, BA/R901/83106; Swiss Embassy visits of 13 March and 10 July 1917, NA/FO383/164. Reports of Visits of Inspection, p. 5; Scotsman, 21 July 1916; NA/MEPO [Metropolitan Police]2/1633.
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five others. In Camp IV meanwhile, internees worked at a variety of tasks, including the manufacture of boots, suits, tables and cupboards.116 As well as those civilians working inside camps, others worked outside them, particularly on the Isle of Man. By the summer of 1916, civilians could ‘with their consent, be employed on behalf of the state or by private individuals’. Employers would pay ‘the standard rate in the district in which the prisoner is employed’.117 As early as March 1916 the Isle of Man government had already instituted a scheme for the use of internees for agricultural work whereby farmers would apply to the commandant.118 Although this scheme initially remained confined to agriculture, during the course of 1916 the Manx government devised others.119 Despite these schemes, the rates of employment amongst civilians remained low. In contrast, most military internees started working almost immediately upon their arrival in Britain from 1917. While a significant percentage laboured in rural locations in agriculture, many others found themselves employed in other forms of physical work, including mining, quarrying and road making. Prisoners employed in farming worked mostly to secure the harvest as ploughmen and harvesters, ‘helping to produce the corn and other articles the country needs so badly’.120 In the camp at Blairfield House near Chichester in March 1918, where prisoners were ‘employed as ploughmen by the farmers of the district’, they started ‘work at 7am and are conveyed to and fro by horse vehicles’.121 Prisoners focused upon the gathering of hay, corn and potatoes.122 They also became involved in fruit picking, including the seventy-five employed on the Toddington orchards and fruit farms in Gloucestershire.123 Although those prisoners working in agriculture appear to have played an important role in food production during the final few years 116
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120 121 122
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Panayi, Enemy, pp. 117–18; Leslie Baily, Craftsman and Quaker: The Story of James T. Baily, 1876–1957 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1959), pp. 104–5; Industrial Department, Camp III, Knockaloe to Swiss Legation, German Division, 16 April 1918, NA/FO383/405; Knockaloe Lager-Zeitung, 10 May 1917; Papers of James T. Baily, FEC 1915–19, Isle of Man, MNH/MS10417/1. Army Council Instruction No. 1280 of 1916, Grant of Working Pay to Interned Civilians, 27 June 1916, NA/FO383/237. Government Circular No. 188, Alien Labour on Farms, 21 March 1916; Government Circular No. 211, Alien Labour on Farms, 14 July 1916. Both of these documents are in MNH/MS09845. Government Circular No. 240, Reclamation of Waste Land by Prisoner of War Labour, 24 November 1916, MNH/MS09845. The Times, 19 November 1917. Swiss Embassy Report on Blairfield House, 12 March 1918, BA/R901/83129. J. K. Montgomery, The Maintenance of the Agricultural Labour Supply in England and Wales during the War (Rome: International Institute of Agriculture, Bureau of Economic and Social Intelligence, 1922), p. 47. Manchester Guardian, 26 March 1917.
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of the war, a report from 1918 stated that they worked methodically but remained slow compared to English counterparts. While part of the explanation for this might lie in the fact that they had no real desire to help their enemies, unfamiliarity with the work conducted may have played a bigger role.124 Many Germans also worked in forestry schemes. By April 1918, for example, a letter from the Controller of Timber Supplies pointed out that his ‘Department’ utilised over 3,000 prisoners ‘distributed in 17 working camps’.125 One of these consisted of Bwlch in South Wales, where ‘92 men work in the forest, 8 of whom drive the lumber wagons’.126 Meanwhile, prisoners held at Eartham, near Chichester, ‘are employed at lumber work’. When their working hours went up to ten per day they went on strike, which resulted in a reduction to nine.127 In the Scottish Highlands, prisoners found themselves employed in ‘felling trees’ in several camps by the autumn of 1916 including Lentran and Nethybridge.128 Despite the importance of agriculture for the employment of prisoners of war, most appear to have worked in non-agricultural activity. A breakdown from July 1918, which listed 50,585 working prisoners, gave a figure of just 17,100 in agriculture, together with 4,500 in timber. The rest of the total included: 5,300 in R. E.129 services; 4,370 constructing aerodromes and seaplane stations; 4,020 in mining and quarrying; 2,000 in roads; 3,000 in the erection of munitions stores concentrated at Bramley; 2,850 in shipyard construction; and 1,300 employed on camp duties. In addition, the list mentioned sixteen other occupations in which prisoners worked.130 Another breakdown from the end of February 1918 indicated the involvement of government ministries in the employment of prisoners, pointing to their role in the war effort, directly or indirectly. Therefore, 2,338 worked with the Admiralty involved in: ‘waterworks for Rosyth’ in the Glendevon camp; ‘brick and tile making for the Admiralty’ at Inverkeithing; and shipyard construction in Beachley. A total of 5,430 prisoners in twenty different camps found
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P. E. Dewey, ‘Farm Labour in Wartime: The Relationship between Agricultural Labour Supply and Food Production in Great Britain during 1914–1918, with International Comparisons’, unpublished Ph.D dissertation, University of Reading (1978), pp. 153–4; Pamela Horn, Rural Life in England in the First World War (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1984), pp. 249–53. Controller of Timber Supplies to Director Prisoners of War, 20 April 1918, NA/Ministry of National Service [hereafter NATS]/1331. Swiss Embassy Report on Bwlch, 10 October 1917, NA/FO383/277. Swiss Embassy Report on Eartham, 16 March 1918, BA/R901/83129. US Embassy Visit to Nethybridge, 13 September 1916 and US Embassy Visit to Lentran, 13 September 1916, both in NA/FO383/164. Probably referring to Royal Engineers. Details of Prisoners of War – Week Ended 14.7.18, NA/NATS1/571.
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themselves under the Ministry of Munitions, mostly in various types of quarrying. The twelve camps under the War Office worked at aerodromes totalling 3,750 people. Meanwhile, 3,070 prisoners worked under the Royal Engineers Works in eleven camps.131 Internment came to an end in Britain gradually. During the Great War a series of exchange schemes developed which targeted specific groups, especially women who, while they may not have experienced internment en masse, nevertheless, faced poverty because of the loss of the breadwinner and returned to a Germany suffering greatly in social and economic terms.132 Other schemes tried to return disabled people and ministers of religion, for example. When war concluded, the return took place gradually, largely because of the vindictive Germanophobic atmosphere of the immediate post-war years. Germans remained at the bottom of the list of those awaiting repatriation so that the final prisoners may not have returned until 1921, although the vast majority returned by the beginning of 1920.133 An overall assessment of the life of internees in Britain between 1914 and 1919 would describe it as relatively comfortable. Instances of deliberate mistreatment seem rare. The British state seems to have fulfilled most of its obligations under the Hague Convention. But this relatively good treatment did not prove of much comfort to those individuals incarcerated in a British concentration camp. Isolated from their families, they had to find new temporary meaning for their lives, desperately looking forward to the end of their captivity. They tried to create a relatively normal lifestyle, as normal as it could be surrounded entirely by men of military age with little time for privacy. Most of them managed to keep themselves sane through educational, cultural, sporting and religious activity. When employment became the norm for soldiers in 1918, this group had more of an opportunity to take their minds off their surroundings. Once released they returned to the chaos of post-war Germany.
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Prisoners of War Employment Committee, First Interim Report, 1918, NA/NATS1/ 1332. Zoe Denness, ‘Gender and Germanophobia: The Forgotten Experiences of German Women in Britain, 1914–1919’, in Panikos Panayi (ed.) Germans as Minorities during the First World War: A Global Comparative Perspective (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 71–97. Panayi, Prisoners, pp. 271–9.
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https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009025874.021 Published online by Cambridge University Press
PART IV Production
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https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009025874.022 Published online by Cambridge University Press
18 Munitions
In his War Memoirs, David Lloyd George recorded a visit paid by King George V to a Sheffield shell factory in late September 1915 during one of his tours of arms factories. The king exchanged words with some of the workers, among them an ex-naval colleague, with whom he reminisced about old times. Afterwards, the king’s attention was drawn by a man working with particular effort. Having observed the man’s labours, the king told the unnamed worker, ‘I am glad you realise the importance of the work in hand. Without an adequate supply of shells we cannot expect to win.’1 This was a lesson which had already been impressed upon the country; earlier in the year a shortage of shells on the western front had led to the formation of a coalition government, and facilitated the further rise of David Lloyd George, not as a radical leader, but as a war leader. By the end of the war Britain’s economy had been reorganised to supply the mass armies it was putting into the field, a process which required massive government intervention in private industry, the organisation of labour and capital, and the employment of large numbers of women in industries where they had previously been a negligible presence. The commercial and political talent of the country was yoked to the goal of supplying the growing British armies. New factories and even towns were constructed as the country became aware, to quote one contemporary commentator, ‘that the Herculean struggle was not merely a conflict between armies and navies, but between British chemists and German chemists, between British workshops and the Workshops of Germany.’2 Whilst there were missteps along the way, and the means adopted led at times to unintended consequences, Britain, despite its initial unpreparedness, was able, through the mobilisation of the population and by embracing of innovation, to survive four years of industrial warfare. To obtain some idea of what this entailed, this chapter introduces some features of the struggle for munitions during the Great War. It examines: first, 1
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David Lloyd George, War Memoirs (London: Odhams Press, 1938), p. 191 (all citations of this work relate to the cheap edition). L. K. Yates, The Woman’s Part: A Record of War Work (modern reprint: no place of publication, no date), p. 1.
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the pre-war munitions scene, in order to grasp the scale of the challenge which faced the United Kingdom in the early months of the Great War; second, the initial, hesitant response to the challenges which swiftly arose; third, the taking shape of a co-ordinated response to those challenges, in the creation of the Ministry of Munitions; fourth, and last, the changes in British politics and society which flowed from the work of the Ministry of Munitions.
Before the Deluge The British Army on the eve of the Great War was not resting upon its laurels. The shock of the South African War and Kipling’s ‘imperial lesson’3 had delivered a much- needed jolt to a force which had become accustomed to fighting ill-equipped enemies. Modernisation, begun under Arthur Balfour’s Unionist government, had been completed by R. B. Haldane, Liberal Secretary of State for War between 1905 and 1912. The ordnance branch received specific attention, with the re-creation of the post of Master General of the Ordnance, and the establishment of a specific munitions organisation to address the shortfalls in ammunition which had affected the British Army at the outset of the South African War.4 In 1914, most munitions were produced at the army’s Royal Ordnance Factories, and almost all shell-filling was performed at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich. Additional manufacturing capacity could be provided by private firms on the War Office approved list.5 The army was largely equipped for its duties as an imperial police force; what artillery it possessed consisted largely of field pieces, and the majority of shells held in reserve were shrapnel, designed to break waves of charging natives (or Boer Commandos) who could not be cowed with the Maxim gun, or cavalry charges by a mobile field force, rather than the high explosive munitions required to reduce fortifications or penetrate dugouts. For heavier artillery, the army was largely dependent upon what it could borrow from the navy or coastal fortifications, as it had been in South Africa and China. One 9-inch howitzer had been delivered, and others were on the way, but the ammunition they required was in short supply.6 This was not due wholly to the attitude of the army, but to domestic priorities: the social reforms of the Liberal government had necessitated economies elsewhere, and increases in military spending had been largely eaten up by the need to surpass Germany’s naval programme. 3 4
5
6
See Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘The Lesson 1899–1902’. David French, ‘The Rise and Fall of “Business as Usual”’, in Kathleen Burk (ed.), War and The State (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982), p. 11. R. J. Q. Adams, Arms and the Wizard: Lloyd George and the Ministry of Munitions 1915–1916 (London: Cassell, 1978), pp. 12–13. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, pp. 76–7.
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A further complication was the army’s lengthy procurement process, which required the field commanders’ assessment of its needs to be passed up the chain of command, eventually finding their way to the desk of the Secretary of State for War. From there, they would be passed to the Master General of Ordnance to decide how the supplies were to be obtained. Lloyd George’s observation, that ‘After due discussion, a contract would eventually be placed’, gives some idea of the time taken by such a process, even allowing for the bias of its author.7 The arrangements in place for the supply of munitions were in part dictated by the vision of the army which had motivated the reformers who had refashioned the British military after the lessons of the South African War. The army was a small professional force, possessing an organised general staff and dedicated procurement section, intended to intervene swiftly and decisively in order to deny Germany control over the northern Channel ports.8 These reforms were not intended to prepare Britain for a conflict in which the ability to supply the munitions of war on a hitherto unprecedented scale would be required. The reformers seem, also, to have fallen into a trap to which all such plans are vulnerable and assumed modernisation to be an event, rather than a process. The Haldane reforms had been intended to create a British Army able to respond quickly and effectively to crises in the empire or on the continent, a rapid-reaction force, rather than a mass army capable of undertaking a lengthy war of attrition.
Faltering in the Face of the Challenge 1914–15 Sir John French’s verdict that the government was guilty of criminal apathy in failing to make provision for the war which Britain ended up fighting from August 1914 to November 1918 may be appealing with the benefit of hindsight, but no government accurately forecast the events of the Great War. Equally, the 1905–14 Liberal governments had been faced with the need to choose between guns and butter, and the majority of spending on guns went to the navy. So long as the dreadnoughts of the Grand Fleet could maintain a blockade of Germany, the people of Britain could, it was believed, sleep safely, while Britain financed its allies’ armies. If the British Army were to have a continental role, it would be simply as part of a general thrust into Germany. The war would be either a war of movement, which would essentially be the Franco-Prussian War in reverse, or a war with some large set-piece battles, but with lulls between them whilst the great armies manoeuvred into position or fell back, as had been the case with the Russo-Japanese War. Even David Lloyd
7 8
Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 81. Richard Burdon Haldane, Autobiography (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1929), p. 187.
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George, the most vociferous critic of the pre-war munitions arrangements, conceded that the old methods of procurement and supply might have been adequate for the expected conflict.9 The Army’s plans were challenged almost from the outbreak of war: the rush to the colours in response to Lord Kitchener’s call for the creation of a mass army exposed a lag in the army’s supplies. Magic lantern slides used to accompany recruiting talks depicted recruits drilling in their civilian clothes. The War Office had insisted on retaining the tailoring contracts for the army, although existing resources were unable to supply the uniforms required for some time.10 Although the uniform shortage had been overcome by the time that battle was joined, other shortages soon appeared. Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, one of the few people who anticipated a long war, soon complained that the munitions required by his new armies were not forthcoming, blaming the shortfall on the incompetence and obstinacy of officials.11 By late October Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, was drawing Kitchener’s attention to the dire shortage of shells, and daily allowances of ammunition were being drastically reduced in an attempt to prevent exhaustion of stocks. Although shrapnel had proved ineffective in trench warfare, the War Office refused French’s request to increase the supply of high explosive shells.12 This shortfall was not unique to Britain but affected all the belligerent nations, France being the worst affected in the early months of war. Even Germany, held up as a model of preparedness by Lloyd George, found its existing munitions resources stretched by the requirements of prolonged trench warfare. The shell shortage was a symptom of the fact that the war in which the belligerents found themselves engaged was not the war for which any of them had planned. The number of shells fired was far in excess of estimates, in part due to technical advances in field artillery; when the war began, no one knew how many shells would be needed, and all the belligerent nations found themselves on a steep learning curve.13 The initial response of the army’s Ordnance Department was to assume that the existing arrangements were basically sound, and, given time, would cover the army’s needs. R. J. Q. Adams has argued that the professionalisation of the British Army, rather than amateurism, retarded the munitions supply process in the early days of the Great War:
9 10 11
12 13
Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 97. Ibid., p. 76. J. A. Spender and Cyril Asquith, Life of Lord Oxford and Asquith (London: Hutchinson, 1932), vol. II, p. 135. Adams, Arms and the Wizard, p. 16. Hew Strachan, The First World War: Volume 1: To Arms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 993–9.
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Perhaps the problem of the Ordnance Department, in its inability to overcome the munitions shortage which appeared in the autumn of 1914, began with its outlook. Its chief, Major-General Stanley von Donop, and his colleagues and subordinates never surrendered the view that only professional soldiers were qualified to express opinion on a matter so technical as the supply of munitions to the Army. The World War, however, was a conflict of unprecedented scale; it was a war of nations, a war of people, not a contest to be rapidly decided by armies which could afford such a limited over-professional attitude.14
The suggestion that Britain ought to follow the example of France, in allowing further private firms to make good deficiencies in the system, was initially dismissed.15 Manufacturers also faltered in the early days of the war. One challenge facing these firms was a shortage of manpower; the successful recruitment campaign overseen by Kitchener had drawn many skilled men from the factories to the colours [see Fig. 18.1]. Some estimates suggest that as many as a quarter of employees in the chemical and engineering industries had joined up, and about a fifth of those previously employed in coal mining or metalworking.16 In light of this, it is unsurprising that increases in production did not keep pace with the army’s needs Kitchener, whose previous wars had, in the words of Asquith’s biographers, ‘been one-man jobs,’17 required convincing that munitions supply could not be left in his hands alone. He initially kept the difficulties at the front from his cabinet colleagues, believing they were best dealt with by the soldiers themselves. When difficulties in production did come to light, it was David Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer but already emerging as one of the leading war ministers, who sought to involve other ministers in addressing the issue. A ‘shells’ committee of the cabinet was established on 12 October 1914 (but only after Kitchener had vetoed the first attempt to do this), including Lloyd George, R. B. Haldane, Reginald McKenna (Home Secretary), Winston Churchill, and others, to aid Kitchener and the War Office in securing adequate supplies of munitions, a recognition that the existing process was not adequate for the task before the country.18 On the committee’s prompting, orders were placed with firms not previously used by the War Office and approaches made to American firms to make up shortfalls
14 15
16
17 18
Adams, Arms and the Wizard, p. 13. Christopher Addison, Politics from Within 1911–1918 (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1924), vol. I, p. 55. Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 96. Spender and Asquith, Life, p. 136. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 88.
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Figure 18.1 Making guns: lifting an inner tube, lithograph by George Clausen, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 30, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917. National Museum of Wales.
in production.19 The Prime Minister, Asquith, recollected that: ‘By the end of April 1915 we were, despite heart-rending delays in delivery by contractors, producing in three days the amount of ammunition produced before the War in a whole year.’20 Nevertheless, production lagged well behind the Army’s needs. Contractors complained that von Donop refused many of their offers and moved too slowly in other cases. In his defence, von Donop argued that he was ensuring
19
20
John Grigg, Lloyd George: From Peace to War 1912–1916 (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 183. Lord Oxford and Asquith, Memories and Reflections (London: Cassell, 1928), vol. II, p. 77.
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that the supplies received were fit for purpose. This caution is perhaps understandable, given complaints from some soldiers that more men were being lost to defective shells than to German artillery fire.21 Despite (or perhaps because of ) the work done by the Shells Committee, Kitchener made his disdain for it clear, and eventually brought its usefulness to an end by refusing to attend its meetings. Nevertheless, the committee had not only rendered valuable service in itself, but had drawn Lloyd George into questions affecting munitions supply, engendering in the Chancellor of the Exchequer the belief that new methods and men were required to effect a longterm solution to the munitions difficulty. In a memorandum dated 22 February 1915, he called for a co-ordinated approach, backed by legislation empowering the government to commandeer all factories in the United Kingdom, control labour relations, and close public houses near arms factories (the latter a favourite Lloyd George theme).22 Lloyd George made his view public in a speech to his constituents. Contrasting the British and German preparations for war, the Chancellor declared: This is an engineers’ war, and it will be won or lost owing to the efforts or shortcomings of engineers. Unless we are able to equip our armies our predominance in men will avail us nothing. We need men, but we need arms more than men, and delay in producing them is full of peril for this country.23
Behind the scenes, Lloyd George had established contact with the former prime minister, Arthur James Balfour. In a letter to Balfour, Lloyd George opined that the only way of ending the crisis was the placing ‘of an energetic, fearless man who will not be cajoled and bamboozled by von Donop nor bullied by anyone else’ at the head of a new executive to control the production of munitions.24 Lloyd George later spoke of the government’s looking for ‘a good strong business man with some “push and go” in him’, to manage production.25 Kitchener attempted to regain the initiative by creating a committee, headed by industrialist and shipowner George Macaulay Booth, to examine output. This did not put an end to Kitchener’s difficulties, for Booth concluded that the shortage of labour, which Kitchener believed was the chief factor, was only part of a far bigger picture, and that the existing arrangements were wholly 21
22 23
24
25
John Bremer, C. S. Lewis, Poetry, and the Great War 1914–1918 (Plymouth: Lexington, 2012), pp. 144–5. Quoted in Lloyd George, War Memoirs, pp. 100–1. Speech at Bangor, 28 February 1915, published in David Lloyd George, Through Terror to Triumph (London: Hodder & Stughton, 1915), p. 81. David Lloyd George to A. J. Balfour, 6 March 1915, reproduced in David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, pp. 104–5. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 107.
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inadequate, concurring with Lloyd George’s view that a new organisation was required to render Britain fit to wage the war ahead.26 Nevertheless, Kitchener’s employment of Booth, and Sir Percy Girouard, a director at Armstrong’s, as advisers represented a first, tentative step towards the involvement of the business world in munitions organisation.27 Contemporary with these developments, Parliament was becoming restive. Many Conservatives, some employing information supplied by contacts in the army (Asquith went so far as to accuse Sir John French of being in contact with ‘leading statesmen of the Opposition’) expressed serious disquiet.28 The Unionist Business Committee, a ‘ginger group’ established before the war to revitalise Conservative policy, took a leading role in bringing attention to the shortage of munitions, revealed by sources at the front, and calling for an effective response on the part of the government.29 Balfour, whose star had risen since his disastrous premiership, emerged as a leading proponent of state control of munitions production. The press, too, was moving in the same direction; several newspapers previously opposed to state control began to warm towards the concept, among them the Manchester Guardian.30
Towards a Co-Ordinated National Response The shells crisis of 1915, which took place after Colonel Charles à Court Repington, military correspondent of The Times, at the prompting of Sir John French, revealed that British offensives were being checked for want of shells, proved, along with the Dardanelles disaster, the final nail in the coffin of the Liberal government and of ‘business as usual’.31 Shocking revelations in The Times and Daily Mail about the shortage of shells, coupled with the resignation of Admiral Fisher as First Sea Lord over the Dardanelles, were only exacerbated by Asquith commenting that: ‘There is not a word of truth’ in the statement that the army was hampered by lack of shells.32 On 25 May the government was reconstructed on coalition lines. Unionist ministers were brought in, and Lloyd George moved from the Treasury to head up a new Ministry of Munitions.
26 27
28 29 30 31
32
Adams, Arms and the Wizard, pp. 25–7. Chris Wrigley, ‘The Ministry of Munitions: An Innovatory Department,’ in Burk (ed.), War and the State, p. 3 6. Asquith, Memories and Reflections, vol. II, p. 79n. Walter Long, Memories (New York: E. P. Dutton, no date), pp. 219–20. Marwick, The Deluge, p. 210. Adrian Bristow, A Serious Disappointment: The Battle of Aubers Ridge 1915 and the Munitions Scandal (London: Leo Cooper, 1995), p. 148. Quoted in S. J. Taylor, The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1996), p. 156.
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It was David Lloyd George’s emergence as the leading advocate of new methods to control, direct, and expand munitions production which led to his becoming the leading British politician of the war, an achievement all the more remarkable when one considers that his opposition to the South African War had seen him suspected of pacifist leanings, and his activities as the leading radical, first in Wales, and later in the Liberal governments of 1905–14, had earned him the enmity of many Unionists. By May 1915, this one-time scourge of the peerage, ‘Welsh Nonconformist genius,’ and supposed latterday Cromwell had become close to several of the Conservative leaders, and he represented in the eyes of many Britain’s best hope for victory. The change had been largely wrought by his advocacy of extraordinary methods for mobilising and organising the industrial capacity of the country and would in time propel Lloyd George to the premiership. The initial staff of the Ministry of Munitions consisted of a mere four people. On arrival at 6 Whitehall Gardens, the home of the new Ministry, Lloyd George found that the furniture consisted of only two tables, a chair and some mirrors. Shortly after, removal men arrived for these, informing the minister that the furniture was not the property of the new ministry. Lloyd George had to employ his considerable persuasive powers to convince the men to leave him something to work on until the ministry could acquire some new furniture. It says much for Lloyd George’s belief in the importance of munitions that he was prepared to leave the security of the Treasury for an entirely new department. He set to work creating a department unlike anything Whitehall had seen before. In addition to experienced civil servants, he sought out businessmen. Eric Geddes, a director of the North-Eastern Railway, was placed in charge of artillery production, and others followed. Lloyd George set out his motives in seeking to employ businessmen to his former parliamentary colleague and rival, D. A. Thomas, in a letter requesting the services of Leonard Llewelyn, general manager at Thomas’ Cambrian Collieries: I am very anxious not to have my plans strangled by officialdom for that purpose I am trying to gather round me a staff of good business men who will sit here in the office and undertake the direction of some of the work.33
This was not wholly a pragmatic response – during the crisis of 1910, Lloyd George had suggested a coalition government of national efficiency, including businessmen. Not every businessman who joined Lloyd George’s ministry got on. The most notable casualty was Sir Percy Girouard: in a letter to his
33
Parliamentary Archives: Lloyd George Papers: D/12/1/1; David Lloyd George to David Alfred Thomas, 8 June 1915.
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brother, Lloyd George described Girouard as ‘not an efficient organiser.’34 Christopher Addison, Parliamentary Secretary to the new department, believed the true reason was that Girouard’s focus on detail upset Lloyd George, who favoured a broad-brush approach, while others have suggested Girouard was attempting to become operational head of the ministry, something which Lloyd George had no intention of allowing.35 In time, the ministry would employ all manner of men, scientists, captains of industry, military men, and even a Welsh aristocrat, in the person of Baron Dynevor, who, after offering his services gratis, found himself working twelve and a half hour days with barely any holiday.36 The dangers inherent in a department comprising so many individuals of differing talents and backgrounds were not lost on Lloyd George who recalled: If not a Ministry of all the talents it was undoubtedly a Ministry of all the industries – war and peace, production, transport, law, medicine, science, the Civil Service, politics and poetry – and all at their best. It was a wonderful array of talent. It was a formidable battery of dynamic energy. But I saw that unless firmly controlled and carefully watched there would be constant explosions which would make the whole machine unworkable.37
The boundless self-confidence of Lloyd George played a large role in preventing this, although he himself contributed to the difficulties of the ministry in its early years. After Eric Geddes discovered Lloyd George was in the habit of giving orders, only to countermand them hours later, he resorted to writing down Lloyd George’s instructions, and getting him to sign them.38 This tendency in the new Minister of Munitions was ameliorated by his experience of politics, and the ability of his staff (including his long-term mistress, Frances Stephenson), to sense his moods. Soon after the creation of the ministry, Lloyd George returned from a visit to Lancashire convinced that the best way to solve the shells shortage would be to place all munitions factories under military control, conscript the labour required, and put it too under military discipline.39 Sir Glyn West, chief expert at Armstrong Whitworth, another recruit to the ministry, was of the same opinion, suggesting that the government ought also to be able to conscript industrial plants.40 34
35 36 37 38
39 40
National Library of Wales: William George Papers 2959: David Lloyd George to William George, 26 July 1915. Addison, Politics from Within, vol. I, p. 64; Wrigley, ‘Ministry of Munitions,’ p. 41. Lord Dynevor, My Reminiscences (Carmarthen: Spurrell, 1937), p. 53. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 151. Duncan Crow, A Man of Push and Go: The Life of George Macaulay Booth (London: Hart-Davis, 1965), p. 117. Addison, Politics from Within, vol. I, p. 86. George A. B. Dewar, The Great Munitions Feat (London: Constable, 1921), pp. 117–18.
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Addison and others were able to talk Lloyd George out of this idea, which was likely to have led to serious industrial unrest. Initially, the War Office expected the Ministry of Munitions to act as an enlarged procurement department, but Lloyd George’s low opinion of the Ordnance Department meant it would become much more. Over the course of 1915, Lloyd George fought to wrest more powers from the War Office, writing to his brother: ‘I am gripping this job, but it will need all the grip I can give it.’41 By late summer, the ministry was well on the way to securing control over most of the elements of armaments production and raw material supply. Following Lloyd George’s departure from the Ministry of Munitions in July 1916, his successors carried on the work, expanding the scale and scope of the ministry’s operations. In 1916–17, under the direction first of Edwin Montagu, then Christopher Addison, the ministry acquired powers over British mineral resources, the manufacture of motor engines and aircraft. By the time Winston Churchill took over in 1917, the scale of its operations was so great that he placed the co-ordination of policy in the hands of a Munitions Council, composed of the heads of the ministry’s various departments, a procedure more in keeping with normal Whitehall practice than Lloyd George’s often ad hoc system, which it was felt had led by 1917 to ‘empire-building’, hampering the efficiency of the department, as departments competed with one another for the limited supplies of men and materiel. This, combined with the reorganisation of the civil service element of the ministry, not only rendered it less dependent upon the personality of its chief, but, Churchill asserted, made it a model of co-operation between the civil service and men drawn from industry.42
The Functioning of the Response Soon after its creation, the Ministry of Munitions began the process of exploring new sources of supplies, dispatching agents to the United States and Canada to assess munitions, supply possibilities and to check rumours that the existing procurement mechanisms were not fit for purpose. These missions, led by businessmen, discovered that rumours of inefficiency had little basis in fact.43 From the missions sprang the British Munitions Board, established to expedite the delivery of munitions and obtain ‘accurate and
41
42
43
National Library of Wales: William George Papers 2945: David Lloyd George to William George, 9 June 1915. The Official History of the Ministry of Munitions: Volume II/1: General Organisation for Munitions Supply (London, 1921, reprinted Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, no date), pp. 76–8. NLW: David Evans papers 35: Ralph Carr, ‘Mission to America’, pp. 1–5.
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systematic information on the facilities of contractors.’44 This latter function was vital; the mission to America, led by D. A. Thomas of the Cambrian Combine, revealed that some firms which had promised a ready supply of munitions were either not equipped for the task, or a cover for charlatans.45 At home, James Stevenson of Johnny Walker distillers, was placed in charge of increasing the efficiency of production. Addison, whose appointment had been attacked by those who expected the new ministry to consist solely of businessmen, observed that, had the press known of this appointment, it would have concluded the new ministry was not fit for purpose, although Stevenson proved highly effective.46 This was done according to a system of defined areas; committees being established in each area to coordinate the response of industry. The idea of local committees had not originated in Whitehall; even before the munitions crisis there had been moves towards such an organisation. In late 1915, a number of Leicester engineering firms had approached the War Office with a view to converting their factories to munitions work. The War Office had blown hot and cold about the idea, and only the intervention of Kitchener, encouraged by Booth and Lloyd George, had saved the idea.47 Other areas created Local Armaments Committees, and by the end of May Birmingham, together with a number of West Yorkshire towns, possessed such bodies, and the Welsh towns of Aberystwyth and Caernarfon sought to organise committees with the aim of channelling the patriotic fervour of industry.48 The Ministry of Munitions rationalised the pattern, Stevenson dividing the UK into ten areas, each coming under the control of an Area Board of Management, which would dictate what was needed, and when.49 Whilst the Local Armaments Committees had been the product of local enthusiasm, the Boards were the creation of Whitehall, designed to ensure that the will of the Ministry of Munitions was done.50 A ‘bottom-up’ approach had been superseded by a ‘top-down’ model. On the outbreak of the war, the export of certain chemicals necessary for the manufacture of explosives was prohibited. Later, this would extend to definite steps being taken to acquire a monopoly of manganese ore for Britain and France, with the aid of steel manufacturers in the United Kingdom.51 In a few 44 45
46 47 48
49 50 51
NLW: David Evans: 35: ‘Draft Report,’ December 1915. NLW: David Evans papers 35: Ralph Carr, ‘Mission to America’, p. 5; Addison, Politics from Within, vol. I, pp. 78–80. Addison, Politics from Within, vol. I, p. 81. Adams, Arms and the Wizard, p. 57. NLW: Lord Davies of Llandinam Papers 17/11: John Mills & Co. to John Owen, 26 August 1915. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 165. G. D. H. Cole, Trade Unionism and Munitions (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923), pp. 75–6. NLW: E. T. John Papers 1537, E. T. John to Leonard Llewelyn, 4 December 1915; 1151: E. T. John to David Lloyd George, 17 December 1915.
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cases, small factories were expanded to supply items previously obtained from Germany, such as optical glass and magnetos. Factories considered vital for the war effort were placed under government control for the duration of the war. Such control, which guaranteed orders and meant employees were less likely to be moved elsewhere, was welcomed, and many firms actively sought to have their plants declared ‘controlled establishments’.52 Even before the creation of the Ministry of Munitions, Girouard had impressed upon Lloyd George the need for additional factories under direct government control in order to expand production. These National Factories began to be constructed in 1915, and by the end of the war some 250 had been built, most between 1915 and 1916.53 Although it took about a year for them to reach operational efficiency, their creation proved vital in addressing the shortage. Concentration of men and plant on a single site increased efficiency, whilst their being state-run brought down the price of munitions, affecting even the sums which could be charged by private firms.54 Many factories were sited in existing industrial districts, such as the Nottingham suburb of Chilwell, although some were built on entirely new sites, such as the factory built by Pearsons at Gretna, straddling the Scottish border. Started in August 1915, the vast factory and its associated towns covered some 9,000 acres, and took over a year to build.55 Fifteen to twenty thousand workers were employed there, housed in a new town, ‘which, by general consent, was clean, wholesome and sightly’, a prototype for post-war housing projects.56 Rotherwas, in Herefordshire, another shell-filling factory, came into being in 1916, and at its height employed some 8,000 workers, drawn from all over the United Kingdom. This is an indication of the scale of the effort: Herefordshire had been omitted from Stevenson’s area plan, in the expectation that its only contribution to the war effort would be agricultural.57 The German offensive in March 1918 proved the value of these changes: despite the capture of many guns and a great deal of ammunition, losses which would have proved dire indeed in the war’s early stages were swiftly made good.58
52
53 54
55
56
57 58
National Library of Wales: Lord Davies of Llandinam Papers 17/11: John Mills & Co. to John Owens, 26 August 1915. Marwick, The Deluge, pp. 209–10. Dewar, The Great Munitions Feat, pp. 49–52; The Official History of the Ministry of Munitions: Volume II, p. 39. Grace’s Guide to British Industrial Heritage: www.gracesguide.co.uk/H.M._Factory,_ Gretna (viewed 13/6/1918). John A. Spender, Weetman Pearson, First Viscount Cowdray 1856–1927 (London: Cassell, 1930, republished New York: Arno, 1977), p. 222. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 165. Dewar, The Great Munitions Feat, p. 272.
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Figure 18.2 Building aircraft: making the engine, lithograph by Christopher Wynne Nevinson, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 37, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917. National Museum of Wales.
The Ministry of Munitions was not only concerned with the production of existing weaponry. July 1915 saw the establishment of an Inventions Branch, headed by Ernest Moir, an experienced engineer [see Fig. 18.2]. Whilst a great many of the ideas which were brought before this branch were wholly impractical (if not fraudulent), and others ill-suited to the realities of trench warfare,59 some of the ideas handled by the Inventions Branch proved of lasting value. The most valuable of these was the Stokes mortar. Designed by Wilfred Stokes, director of an Ipswich-based manufacturer of farm machinery, the mortar, of simple design, was rejected by the War Office due to concerns about the fuse. Lloyd George grasped the possibilities of the mortar, and, using private funds donated by an Indian maharajah, produced
59
Lloyd George, War Memoirs, pp. 370–1.
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about 1,000, together with 100,000 bombs. Shipped to France, they proved their worth.60 Although Lloyd George placed the blame for the initial refusal on War Office blindness, Addison observed that Stokes had not helped himself: ‘for he did not pretend to endure fools gladly, or to be a pattern of meekness’.61 The tank, perhaps the best-known innovation of the war did not originate with the Ministry of Munitions but with Winston Churchill. The First Lord of the Admiralty dreamed of a ‘land battleship’, able to roll over the trenches and rout the Germans.62 Eustace Tennyson d’Eyncourt, director of naval construction, chaired a ‘Landships Committee’ charged with making Churchill’s dream a reality. Developed with Sir William Tritton, managing director of Foster’s of Lincoln, Churchill’s land battleship idea was modified to become the early tank (the name being chosen to conceal the true nature of the machine). On Churchill’s departure from the Admiralty the project was transferred to the Ministry of Munitions, Balfour, Churchill’s successor, being more suspicious of the ‘faddish’ idea.63 A prototype, ‘Little Willie,’ was produced, and at a demonstration in Hatfield Park so delighted Balfour, a motor-car enthusiast, that it was with difficulty that he was persuaded not to ride in the tank during the whole of the test.64 The Hatfield tests convinced the government that the tank programme was worth pursuing. Before they could be manufactured in bulk, however, tanks were employed in a minor action on 15 September 1916, in which the prototypes performed poorly.65 The general staff in France bluntly informed Colonel Stern, director of the tanks programme, that ‘. . .the Tank in its present form was of no value as a fighting unit’.66 Numerous modifications were made to the tank, complicated by the diversion of skilled labour, both to the front and for the construction of merchant ships.67 These created the fear that practice machines might be deployed in combat, resulting, Stern warned Christopher Addison, then Minister of Munitions, in ‘failure [which] will ruin the confidence of the troops in the future of Mechanical Warfare’.68 Following
60 61 62
63 64 65
66 67
68
Ibid., pp. 369–70. Addison, Politics from Within, vol. I, p. 127. Churchill dreamed of an armoured behemoth, supported on fifteen-inch wheels and carrying 100 men (Adams, Arms and the Wizard, p. 156). Addison, Politics from Within, vol. 1, pp. 133–4. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 383. NLW: Lord Davies of Llandinam Papers: C2/2: Memorandum concerning the history of the tank, 26 January 1917. NLW: Davies: C2/2: Memorandum, no date. NLW: Davies: C2/2: E. S. Montagu to the Secretary of the War Office, 27 October 1917; 17/11, A. G. Stern to the Adjutant General, no date, but early 1917; A. T Griffiths to A. G. Stern, no date. NLW: Davies C2/2: A. G. Stern to Christopher Addison, 18 March 1917.
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its use at the battle of Cambrai in November 1917, the tank was felt to have proved itself, and large quantities ordered, further stretching British manufacturing capacity.
Labour Supply and Relations From an early point in the war, both politicians and employers had concluded that the only way in which the shortage of labour arising from the creation of Kitchener’s new armies and the expansion of industry could be made up was by the employment of semi-skilled or unskilled workers in posts previously reserved for skilled workers, a process known as ‘dilution’. The engineering unions, especially the largest, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, were dismayed by the prospect that hard-won gains in terms of employment rights and status might be rolled back under cover of wartime exigencies. Unions therefore insisted that any changes should be only for the duration of the war, and employers’ profits would be limited.69 The first sign of friction arose in November 1914, when workers at Vickers’ Crayford works threatened to strike over proposals for the employment of female dilutees. A strike was only averted when the unions secured the employer’s written agreement that women would only be employed on automatic machines set up by skilled workers. Nationally, unions expected the government to explore alternative sources of skilled labour before agreeing to dilution. Attempts were made to find skilled workers in the empire and the ranks of the army, but neither source proved adequate for the needs of the hour. Attempts were made to employ Belgian refugees, but differences in working practices and the language barrier rendered this impractical. The creation of a wholly Belgian-staffed factory near Birtley, County Durham, proved the most effective way of employing these refugees.70 A conference between employers, government and the trade unions produced the Shells and Fuses Agreement in March 1915, allowing the introduction of automatic machines, or the adaptation of existing machines so that they could be worked by unskilled labour, paving the way for widespread dilution.71 In August, all men and women between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five were required to register their occupation, skills, name and employer, to give the Ministry of Munitions a better idea of the labour force. These measures could not produce sufficient men to meet the needs of the hour, but they paved the way for dilution by illustrating that there was no practical alternative. Nevertheless, serious difficulties remained, as demonstrated by a strike at John Lang on Clydeside in the autumn over attempts 69 70 71
Cole, Trade Unionism and Munitions, p. 3. Adams, Arms and the Wizard, p. 100. Cole, Trade Unionism and Munitions, p. 36.
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to introduce semi-skilled and female workers. Only a lengthy conference between employers’ and trade union representatives, and the Ministry of Munitions averted more serious trouble.72 Once more, there was agreement as to the tasks unskilled or semi-skilled workers might perform. However, as the shortage of labour increased, semi-skilled men were upgraded with the dwindling number of skilled workers acting as supervisors. The needs of the army, and the eventual introduction of conscription in 1916 had a further impact upon munitions production. As further semi-skilled or unskilled workers were drawn into the Army, women were employed to take their place. In the spring of 1917, the Ministry of Munitions planned that 80 per cent of all workers employed on new and existing contracts to supply shells up to 4.5 inches were to be women.73 This was the most visible aspect of dilution, and Vickers began to employ women in a limited number of roles from November 1914. Further expansion of women’s employment was planned, and the government gave support to a march organised by women previously involved in the suffrage movement on 18 July 1915 which called for women to be allowed to do munitions work.74 Given that, of the 1.5 million workers in munition-related industries before the outbreak of the Great War, a negligible number were women, this was, as G. D. H. Cole observed, ‘a profound revolution of workshop practice’.75 Although the press focused on cases of upper middle-class women who went to work in shell factories to ‘do their bit’, the vast majority of women workers came either from other factories or domestic service.76 Although initially limited to simple repetitive tasks, the employment of women was expanded to more complex operations, as their competence was realised. By the end of the war, more than 1.5 million women were employed in munitions work.77 War work was, despite often flowery contemporary accounts, arduous and dangerous. An explosion at Barnbow National Filling Factory, Leeds, in December 1916 killed thirty-five women and injured many more, while accidents at Silvertown and Chilwell had far higher death tolls.78 Women 72 73 74 75 76
77 78
Adams, Arms and the Wizard, pp. 106–7. Dewar, The Great Munitions Feat, p. 268. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 174. Cole, Trade Unionism and Munitions, p. 21. Gail Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 47–8. The forewoman in a shell factory in Hayes, for example, had been a lady’s maid before the war (Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 353). Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 175. ‘Honour for Factory Where Female Workers Died in First World War,’ The Guardian, 10 October 2016: www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/10/barnbow-national-filling-fac tory-female-workers-first-world-war (accessed 30/5/2018); Angela Woollacott, On Her Their Lives Depend: Munitions Workers in the Great War (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
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working away from home faced strict limitations on freedom outside factory accommodation. Although the onerous nature of these restrictions and the long hours should not be exaggerated – a woman in domestic service, then one of the major areas of female employment, would have worked hours just as long, and if living-in would have been subject to a far greater level of control. The efficiency, ‘fine devotion and courage’79 displayed by women munitions workers was commented upon by public figures, from Lloyd George to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.80 Montagu, Lloyd George’s successor as Minister of Munitions, expressed the opinion that: ‘our armies have been saved and victory assured by the women in the munitions factories’.81 Much of this admiration was expressed in terms which even some contemporary observers recognised as condescending, such as Lloyd George’s declaration that women’s courage was shown more by their risking disfigurement than death.82 The years immediately before the outbreak of the Great War had seen serious labour unrest, and although an industrial truce had been declared at the outbreak of war, once it became clear that the war was to be of long duration, tensions began to rise again. Although there were numerous local causes of these disputes, it must be noted that the actions of the Ministry of Munitions often exacerbated local tensions. Despite his reputation as a radical and his identification with the common man, Lloyd George was a product of the petit-bourgeois, capable of sympathy, rather than empathy, with the working man: perhaps the most obvious sign of this was his frequent assertions that drink was the enemy of victory. This irritated workmen, who saw in it the suggestion that they were shiftless, as well as an attempt to remove a source of needed relaxation.83 Government mediators identified the impression on the part of workers that employers were being permitted to make great profits from the war as a major contributing factor in the 1915 Clydeside labour unrest.84 The agreements underlying the acceptance of dilution required the limitation of profits as a quid pro quo for the suspension of certain hard-won rights on the part of the workers, and limits on wage increases. Nevertheless, the feeling that the degree of sacrifice required of labour was far greater than that demanded from capital
79 80 81 82 83
84
University of California Press, 1994), pp. 84–5. 134 died at Chilwell, among them 109 women, and 69 at Silvertown. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 174. Marwick, The Deluge, p. 139. Ibid., p. 138. Ibid., p. 352; Dewar, The Great Munitions Feat, p. 319. Cole, Trade Unionism and Munitions, pp. 76–7; Marwick, The Deluge, p. 105; David Lloyd George, Through Terror to Triumph: Speeches and Pronouncements of the Right Hon. David Lloyd George, M.P., since the Beginning of the War, ed. F. L. Stevenson (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915), p. 104. Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes (London: John Murray, 1920), p. 373.
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contributed to distrust of Lloyd George by workers who had once seen him as a radical.85 The report of Lord Balfour of Burleigh into the Clydeside disturbances observed that the workers’ drinking, along with their restiveness, was motivated by poor living conditions.86 Among the chief grievances of workmen was section seven of the Munitions of War Act, forbidding employers from hiring a man who had been engaged in munitions work within the past six months, unless that man possessed a certificate from his former employer, or a munitions tribunal (set up under the act) recorded that the certificate had been unreasonably withheld. The intention was to prevent wage demands driving up costs: Lloyd George, addressing the House of Commons, spoke of ‘deliberate discouragement of what they regard as turning out too much work, which might have the effect of revision of prices’ on the part of some workmen.87 This was, in effect, the argument which D. A. Thomas, then managing director of the Cambrian Combine, had made against increasing wages at the time of the 1910–11 Rhondda lock-out.88 Although Lloyd George asserted that employers were ‘responsible far more than the men’ for the difficulties facing industry, references to the men affected by the creation of leaving certificates as ‘slack or disobedient to a reasonable order’, still rankled with Labour. Additionally, the soaring cost of living during the war made limits on collective bargaining and the mobility of labour odious to many. In the debate on the act, William Pringle, MP for northwest Lanarkshire, observed: ‘there is no free competition for labour, the only commodity which the worker has to sell, whereas there is open competition for every commodity which he has to buy’.89 The fact that employers were permitted to add a negative reference to leaving certificates deepened the resentment of workers. Workers on the Clyde openly referred to the Munitions of War Act of 1915 as the ‘Slavery Act’,90 David Kirkwood, one of the workers’ leaders introducing Lloyd George at a meeting of the men commented that, ‘every action with which he is associated has the taint of slavery about it’.91
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87
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89 90 91
C. J. Wrigley, David Lloyd George and the British Labour Movement (Hassocks & New York: Harvester, 1976), pp. 90, 236. Lady Frances Balfour, A Memoir of Lord Balfour of Burleigh (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1924), pp. 177–9. The Official History of the Ministry of Munitions: Volume I, part IV, p. 38; David Lloyd George, ‘Speech delivered in the House of Commons on the introduction of the Munitions Bill, 23 June 1915,’ reprinted in: Through Terror to Triumph, p. 148. D. A. Thomas, The Industrial Struggle in Mid-Rhondda: Some Points in the Case for the Owners (Cardiff: Western Mail, 1911), p. 2. Quoted in The Official History of the Ministry of Munitions: Volume I, Part IV, p. 41. Quoted in Wrigley, David Lloyd George and the British Labour Movement, p. 143. Quoted in Marwick, The Deluge, p. 114.
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The Munitions of War (Amendment) Act of 1916 went some way towards alleviating workers’ grievances by forbidding employers from adding comments to leaving certificates. Nevertheless, certificates remained unpopular with workers, who viewed them as a badge of servitude. Addison attempted to amend them during his tenure as Minister of Munitions, and they were abolished altogether by his successor, Winston Churchill, in October 1917, in part due to fears aroused by the Russian Revolution.92 Nevertheless, restrictions on the free movement of labour ‘by methods less direct and no more popular’ were retained.93 One of these, the mutual agreement of employers not to hire men working for other firms without the agreement of their employers, led to an increase in unrest and in July 1918 the threat of strike action against this ‘embargo’ policy. The investigation which followed the settlement of these strikes severely criticised the policy, but attempts to find an alternative means of preventing the migration of labour affecting production had not been fully worked out before the cessation of hostilities.94 The role of government in regulating working hours, conditions and (latterly) pay, which had slowly grown from the early nineteenth century onwards, expanded with a vengeance during the war. The 1916 Munitions of War (Amendment) Act gave the minister power to regulate the conditions in factories doing government work. Using powers concerning female dilutees, working hours were limited, and the provision of factory canteens was encouraged. This was intended to end the practice of eating meals beside machines, but also to prevent men visiting public houses during lunch. Although in part motivated by Lloyd George’s belief that drink was a great enemy to British production, a holdover from his early days (despite the fact that Lloyd George was by no means teetotal), such changes meant that after the war many establishments possessed recreational facilities. This welfare function did not end after the war – indeed, Lloyd George frankly confessed to having used the war as a pretext to improve industrial conditions. The Ministry of Munitions would also introduce controls over housing stock to prevent landlords in towns which had seen a large influx of munitions workers exploiting housing shortages, and it also built new housing where it was needed. Although many female workers were housed in hostels, over the course of the war the construction of new working-class houses went some way towards ameliorating the shortage of adequate working-class housing in Britain.95 The field of munitions was not only one in which failure to expand production would have left Britain’s forces in France and elsewhere 92 93 94 95
Lloyd George, War Memoirs, pp. 1159–60. The Official History of the Ministry of Munitions: Volume I, part IV, p. 42. Cole, Trade Unionism and Munitions, pp. 155–6. Adams, Arms and the Wizard, p. 132.
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dangerously exposed, it was one which, through the interest of David Lloyd George, profoundly affected the country. The Ministry of Munitions became the test bed for a form of war socialism later to be implemented elsewhere. D. A. Thomas, who, as Lord Rhondda would successfully implement rationing as Food Controller, first cut his teeth as an agent of the Ministry of Munitions. Whitehall Gardens was a place for ‘blue skies thinking’ before the term was invented, bringing together capital and labour, science and civil service, with a view to a common end. Mistakes were made, and the plans of some of the more ardent spirits within the Ministry of Munitions, including the minister, for total state control of industry were watered down to a level less likely to alienate business and labour alike. The effect of the expansion of the munitions industry upon the home front was wide ranging; from the bringing of women into the factories to the construction of whole new factory villages. No field affecting the workplace was left untouched, although the extent to which some of these changes proved lasting as the labour shortages of wartime were replaced by unemployment is another matter. The same may be said of developments on the labour front; whilst the efforts made by labour were prodigious, it is clear that the great strides made in production, and acceptance of government control, were not without unintended consequences. One such was the feeling that the workers were being asked to make sacrifices out of proportion to those required from their employers, an impression that was shared beyond the ranks of labour, as illustrated by Stanley Baldwin’s observation that the House of Commons, after the General Election of 1918, contained ‘a lot of hard-faced men who look as though they had done well out of the war’. Although fewer made fortunes out of the war than popularly supposed, this impression, coupled with some of Lloyd George’s wartime utterances, would play a part in the rise of the Labour Party. What one contemporary called ‘the great munitions feat’ played a significant role in putting David Lloyd George into Number 10. However, in the long term, the political consequences of the push for munitions favoured the Labour Party; state direction of industry had been tried and appeared to deliver the required goods; even the concept of profit limitation in certain circumstances had been conceded. Although war socialism did not directly produce a demand for peacetime socialism, it suggested that such socialism might be practical politics. The Great War made hitherto unprecedented demands upon Britain’s munitions industry, quickly exposing the limitations of the government’s war planning. The initial response of the Army and industry served to underline the weaknesses of the existing arrangements. Although the War Office under Kitchener took tentative steps towards the involvement of businessmen in the work of war planning, the creation of the Ministry of Munitions in May 1915 saw a decisive break with ‘business as usual’. Innovative solutions to difficulties of production and supply were actively
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sought, with the eventual outcome that Britain was able to sustain a military contribution to the Allied war effort far in excess of that envisaged by pre-1914 plans. Politically, this paved the way for David Lloyd George to enter Downing Street, whilst in the long term contributing to the rise of the Labour Party. Following the disturbances on Clydeside, there could be no entertaining the thought that Lloyd George would one day lead a radical party. The innovative work of the Ministry of Munitions, although not continued after the war, remained a testimony to how government could respond to a crisis of this nature. Certainly, the ministry was not perfect, particularly in the means employed to address the labour shortage, but to have succeeded in transforming the nature of munitions supply to sustain a mass army in the field was no mean achievement.
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19 Clothing and Uniforms
Britain’s notorious ‘khaki shortage’ in the first year of the war has become symbolic in the historical literature of the country’s chaotic and belated industrial mobilisation. Juxtaposed with similar deficiencies in munitions supply, discussions of the army’s ‘clothing crisis’ have contributed to a broader narrative about the government’s failure to convert the manufacturing sector to war production in 1914.1 The similar timelines of rectifying uniform and munitions shortages have reinforced the impression that both were indicative of the same problem. Supplies of army uniforms finally met demand in mid1915 – the same time when the newly established Ministry of Munitions began coordinating the engineering trades, regarded as the turning point in organising Britain’s industries for ‘total war’.2 Although the lack of army clothing was less damaging than the shell shortage, scholars have emphasised its detrimental effects. They argued that improvised, ill-fitting and ragtag uniforms undermined soldiers’ health and morale, and impeded recruiters’ efforts to counter falling enlistment rates from late 1914.3 These critical arguments stem partly from specialised scholarly approaches. Military historians have regarded uniform production from the position of army authorities, exploring how the structures of clothing procurement affected output.4 Cultural historians have been interested in the impact of
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David French, British Economic and Strategic Planning, 1905–1915 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982, reprint, 2006), pp. 98–169; Trevor Wilson, Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Polity, 1986), pp. 215–50; David Silbey, The British Working Class and Enthusiasm for War, 1914–1916 (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 21–33; Catherine Price-Rowe, First World War Uniforms: Lives, Logistics, and Legacy in British Army Uniform Production, 1914–1918 (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2018), pp. 36–42. Peter Simkins, Kitchener’s Army: The Raising of the New Armies, 1914–16 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. 256–95; Price-Rowe, First World War Uniforms, p. 42. Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, pp. 260–7; Jane Tynan, British Army Uniform and the First World War: Men in Khaki (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 46–54. Simkins, Kitchener’s Army; Charles Messenger, Call to Arms: The British Army, 1914–18 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), pp. 94–129.
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uniform provision on wartime definitions of masculinity and material culture. Therefore, they have examined the supply of army clothing from the viewpoint of soldiers and cultural commentators.5 Both schools have considered uniform production from the perspective of procurement agencies and consumers, and their aggregate clothing demands. Consequently, historians have overlooked uniform producers’ socio-economic demands, and the political necessity for authorities to accommodate such needs, which informed procurement policies. Economic historians have also shaped arguments by defining the terms through which scholars assessed the construction of war economies. Influenced by the writings of interventionist civil servants who ran the newly created war ministries, economic studies have focused on munitions production and defined industrial mobilisation as the establishment of centralised state control over manufacturing.6 Judged by these criteria, uniform production, and its impact on industrial mobilisation in 1914, was indeed a failure. However, these arguments fail to consider that mobilisation policies were determined by different conditions and requirements at particular stages of the war and by the structural differences of specific industries mobilised for the war effort. This chapter reassesses the production of army uniforms in the first year of the war, and its role in Britain’s industrial mobilisation.7 To rectify omissions in existing approaches, the discussion explores the subject in a broader analytical framework established by John Horne. He defined mobilisation as a two-way process between state persuasion and self-mobilising social groups, involving political negotiations and cultural incentives.8 Based on this, the chapter considers uniform production during this period as a collaboration between army procurement agencies and civilian producers shaped by their respective interests under emergency war conditions. The discussion starts by 5
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Tynan, British Army Uniform, pp. 13–16, 34–70; Price-Rowe, First World War Uniforms, pp. 25–36, 97–117. Clive Trebilcock, ‘War and the Failure of Industrial Mobilisation: 1899 and 1914’ in J. M. Winter (ed.) War and Economic Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 139–64; French, British Economic and Strategic Planning; Stephen Broadberry and Peter Howlett, ‘The United Kingdom during World War I: Business as Usual?’ in Stephen Broadberry and Mark Harrison (eds.) The Economics of World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 206–34. See these points discussed in Chris Wrigley, ‘The Ministry of Munitions: An Innovatory Department’ in Kathleen Burk (ed.) War and the State: The Transformation of British Government, 1914–1919 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014, 1st ed. 1982), pp. 32–56, 32–3. For the purposes of this chapter, army uniforms are defined as all clothing worn by private soldiers and non-commissioned officers issued by recruiting agencies under WO sanction, including service jackets, trousers and caps, greatcoats, boots, puttees, socks, shirts and underwear, but excluding equipment, such as haversacks and webbing. John Horne, ed., State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 1–6.
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exploring the impact of the war on the uniform procurement system of the War Office (WO). This includes examining the pre-war organisation and its policies, and the initial responses to the unprecedented challenges posed by the war. The next section discusses the existing production capacity. It identifies relevant producers in the textile, clothing and shoe industries, and explores their ambitions, strategies and ability to become government contractors, depending on their size, business model and wartime trading conditions. The final sections explore the new emergency procurement system negotiated by the two sides and evaluate its impact on uniform supplies and on the mobilisation of the industries concerned. The chapter suggests that in autumn 1914 military authorities modified their initial procurement policies adopted after the outbreak of war. They did this mainly out of political considerations, particularly the need to cement patriotic unity by alleviating economic distress among producers caused by wartime disruptions of trade. Overall, government policies helped convert a significant section of the relevant industries to war production. They achieved this, however, not by direct state intervention, but through collaboration with manufacturers and union leaders. This process included self-mobilisation by the industries, the use of patriotic propaganda by military authorities, and a joint reorganisation of uniform production through negotiations and compromise.
Uniform Procurement before 1914 and the Challenge of the War In the pre-war decades, the army’s uniform procurement was governed by the liberal virtues of integrity, economy and efficiency. Its main priorities were eradicating corruption from the system, reducing costs to save public money and safeguarding soldiers’ welfare by improving the quality of their clothing.9 These objectives were achieved between the 1850s and the 1900s through a series of government reforms which reorganised both the purchasing and the production of uniforms. Previously, clothing provision had been organised by regimental colonels, whose right to profit from the transactions generated fraud, price fixing and inferior garments.10 Therefore, after yet another scandal in the Crimean War, uniform procurement was centralised by the state. In order to prevent financial errors and negligence, however, reformers created a system of checks and counterchecks by dividing control over procurement between the military Army Clothing and the civilian Contracts Departments in the WO. The former determined quantities and specifications, and received, 9
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E. M. H. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control: At the War Office and the Ministry of Food (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924), pp. 6–7, 12–13.16–17. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 7–14; Lt-Col. H. de Watteville, ‘The Royal Army Clothing Department’, RUSI Journal, 77, 507 (1932), pp. 607–12.
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inspected and stored patterns, samples and finished goods. The latter purchased clothing through a competitive tendering system, negotiating prices, placing contracts and monitoring suppliers to prevent price fixing collusion by ‘rings’.11 The production of uniforms was similarly divided between civilian and military agencies. Private companies manufactured only about half of all army clothing, while the other half was produced by the army’s own uniform factory in Pimlico. This was to ensure cost-effectiveness and quality control by creating competition between the two sectors and providing a basis for regularly comparing their products and prices.12 The pre-war system of procurement satisfied all the criteria which shaped its design, according to former critics of the regime. The press regularly acclaimed the Pimlico factory as an example of modern economic management, while civil servants admitted that the machinery ‘worked smoothly and efficiently’, delivering ‘sound and durable’ goods ‘at the cheapest possible price’ by reliable contractors and administrators.13 Despite repeated reforms, weaknesses remained. Placing orders was a slow process due to the repeated exchanges between the Clothing and Contracts Departments necessitated by their divided authority. This was deliberate, however, and intended to reduce mistakes and increase accountability.14 The system was also small, regarding both the range of producers and WO staff. In the last financial year before the war, the army’s entire stock of service jackets, trousers and boots were supplied by c. 1,300 workers in Pimlico, ten clothing and twenty-five boot-making firms, with fifty-six officials in the Contracts Department handling all army purchasing.15 This was also by design due to the small size of Britain’s peacetime army.16 Crucially, the system had built-in capacity for wartime expansion, as the South African War revealed. In October 1899, as the Army 11
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Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 11–16; ‘Memorandum regarding the Duties of the Army Clothing Department’, The National Archives (TNA), WO 33/3A (80) 1856; Director of Army Contracts, ‘Report for the Year 1st April 1924 to 31st March 1925’ (hereafter Contracts Report for 1924–25), pp. 12–13, TNA, WO 33/1076. de Watteville, ‘The Royal Army Clothing Department’; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, p. 16. ‘The Army Clothing Department at Pimlico’, Penny Illustrated Paper, 25 November 1899, p. 325; ‘The Making of a Red Coat’, Sphere, 17 October 1908, p. 60; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 12, 17. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 14–15, 27–8. ‘A Visit to the Royal Army Clothing Factory’, Taylor & Cutter, 6 August 1914, pp. 636–8, 638; Director of Army Contracts, ‘Report for the Year Ending 31st March 1914’ (hereafter Contracts Report for 1913–14), pp. 60–2, 68–70, TNA, WO 395/3; Gen. Sir J. S. Cowans, ‘Equipment and Ordnance’ in WO, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War, 1914–1920 (London: HMSO, 1922), p. 870; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, p. 15. Cowans, ‘Equipment and Ordnance’, p. 868.
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Corps left for South Africa, the WO placed large new contracts with its regular suppliers, and expanded these in December, when military setbacks necessitated the recruitment of further troops.17 In addition, staff numbers and working hours at Pimlico were increased, boosting production more than twofold.18 Apart from minor difficulties with sourcing fabric and replacing worn-out garments, no problems were reported in the press. This indicated that, even under the extreme strain of the South African War, the system worked.19 In August 1914, the outbreak of the war dramatically shifted both the military and commercial foundations of uniform procurement. The most vital change was the massive and rapid increase in troop numbers. By the end of the year, almost 1.2 million recruits had joined the New Armies and the Territorial Force, with over 700,000 more enlisting by mid-1915.20 Consequently, the army’s uniform demands rose by a staggering 2,000–6,000 per cent. Requirements grew from annual peacetime orders of 250,000–5,250,000 service jackets; 43,000–1,500,000 greatcoats; 245,000–6,500,000 pairs of army boots and 114,000–7,000,000 pairs of underpants.21 The WO also had to clothe the Indian Army, resupply the original BEF and accommodate Allied armies which were buying vast quantities of cloth and boots in Britain.22 Simultaneously, wartime trade disruptions reduced supplies of raw materials needed for uniform production. The most serious problem was the shortage of synthetic khaki dyes, most of which had been imported from Germany. As legislation forbade trading with the enemy, such imports became unavailable, while their legal production in Britain was prohibited by commercial
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20 21
22
‘Big War Office Contracts’, Irish News, 14 October 1899, p. 5. See also references to contracts for the Limerick Clothing Factory in the Limerick Chronicle, 2 November 1899, and the Munster News, 6 December 1899, cited in Tadhg Moloney, The Impact of World War One on Limerick (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), p. 28. Staff numbers at Pimlico increased from c. 1,400 to c. 2,400, while their weekly output grew from c. 6,730 outfits to c. 15,000. See, ‘Clothing the Army’, Navy & Army Illustrated, 28 January 1899, p. 468; ‘The Army Clothing Department at Pimlico’, Penny Illustrated Paper, 25 November 1899, p. 325; ‘Soldiers’ Clothing’, Eastern Daily Press, 19 December 1899, p. 6. ‘Making Army Uniforms’, Leominster News, 29 December 1899, p. 3; ‘Army Clothing at Fault’, Bridgnorth Journal, 27 January 1900, p. 7. WO, Statistics of the Military Effort, p. 364. ‘Needs of the New Armies’, The Times, 7 November 1914, p. 9. Each soldier required two sets of khaki suits so that he could change wet or dirty clothes. See Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, p. 256. See letters between Generals Cowans and Robertson, 23 November and 14, 16, 18, 23 December, 1914, TNA, WO 107/13; Minutes of Directors’ meetings, QMG’s Department, 11 August and 8 November, 1914, TNA, WO 107/21; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 19–20, 94; and G. R. Carter, ‘Clothing the Allies’ Armies’, Economic Journal, 25, 97 (March 1915), pp. 97–103, 98.
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patents.23 Buttons were also in short supply and from mid-October scarcity of leather and wool delayed the manufacturing of boots, yarn and cloth.24 Competition for goods and materials by Allied armies, the WO and producers seeking contracts worsened matters. Described as a ‘wild scramble’, it caused feverish buying and selling by speculators, increasing prices steeply for all uniform supplies and materials.25 The Contracts Department of the WO was slow to respond to the crisis. Due to the lack of wartime contract reports, their policies have to be reconstructed from a variety of sources.26 These indicate that initially civil servants failed to realise the magnitude of the task facing them.27 In the first month of the war, the Clothing Department requested material and garments for more than a million sets of uniforms with ‘appeals for special urgency’; yet purchasing officials continued to use modified peacetime procedures similar to those adopted during the South African War.28 These included increasing working hours at Pimlico and placing additional, vastly increased contracts with existing and some new suppliers.29 Thus, Bradford woollen mills shared orders for 1 million yards of khaki cloth and large quantities of puttees with newly contracting tweed mills in the Scottish Borders and West of England firms, while Northamptonshire and Leeds shoemakers, who provided all army boots before, split large orders with companies in Leicester.30 Placing orders with new suppliers was designed to speed up deliveries. However, pre-war practices continued, with new companies receiving smaller orders than established ones 23 24
25 26
27
28
29
30
Carter, ‘Clothing the Allies’ Armies’, p. 98. Cowans, ‘Equipment and Ordnance’, p. 868; Carter, ‘Clothing the Allies’ Armies’, p. 98; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, p. 112; ‘Shortage of Army Boots, Daily Record, 21 October 1914, p. 4. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 18–19, 26–7, 31–2, 94. The Director of Army Contracts issued annual reports between 1878 and 1938 about the work, expenditure and orders placed by the department. However, as the TNA guide for WO 395 states, ‘No reports were produced for the period April 1914 to May 1920, not even the planned retrospective for the First World War.’ Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 18–19. See this point also in Stephen C. Sambrook, The Optical Munitions Industry in Great Britain, 1888–1923 (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 92–3. Report of Committee on Royal Army Clothing Department Organisation (London: HMSO, 1915), pp. 7, 11, 22, TNA, WO 32/5540 (hereafter Debenham Report); Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 18–19. ‘An Urgent Matter for Tailors’ and ‘Skilled Tailors at Pimlico’, Tailor & Cutter, 3 September 1914, p. 731 and 10 September 1914, p. 735. ‘Wool. Bradford’, Grantham Journal’, 8 August 1914, p. 3; ‘Clothing the Army’, Falkirk Herald, 26 August 1914, p. 4; For pre-war boot contractors, see Cowans, ‘Equipment and Ordnance’, p. 870 and Contracts Report for 1913–14, pp. 68–9. Mabane from Leeds was a new supplier in 1913–14 and received additional orders in August 1914, along with new contractors Bonner & Son (Stanningley) and companies in Northampton and Leicester. See ‘The Army and the Leather Trade’, Yorkshire Post, 21 August 1914, p. 8.
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and they obtained their contracts through the competitive tendering system which took weeks to process.31 After 28 August, when Kitchener called for another 100,000 recruits, order sizes placed with established suppliers were further enlarged. Purchasing officials also took steps to expand their list of producers. Retaining their careful selection process, they first surveyed the production capacity and reliability of potential woollen and clothing contractors, using officers of the local Labour Exchanges to visit individual firms.32 Military administrators altered their clothing policies more quickly than their civilian colleagues.33 Responsible for storing supplies, they would have been aware that existing stocks of uniforms and cloth were exceptionally low, enough only to clothe the original BEF and first-line Territorial units for a few weeks.34 This was due to the reduction of reserve margins after 1907 and delays in placing orders for 1914.35 The Quartermaster-General therefore started reserving available stocks for units departing for active service.36 Two weeks after Britain declared war, orders were issued to collect surplus clothing from the Irish Command and to withdraw second sets of suits from the 4th Division before it left for France.37 From late August, this policy was further developed. As recruitment for the second New Army surged, ‘emergency’ dress patterns were approved temporarily to meet the growing demand. While training in Britain, New Army recruits would receive blue serge suits and caps of a simplified pattern adopted because the fabric was available in large quantities and the design was faster to make.38 The Clothing Department also approved substitute headgear for Scottish regiments, along with the purchase of civilian pattern boots and blue and grey overcoats.39 These measures were based on Kitchener’s decision that it was not essential to adhere to standard patterns, ‘provided each unit was clothed alike’.40 In early September, Kitchener also decentralised clothing procurement. In order to boost supplies, he authorised regional commands and voluntary bodies to buy
31
32 33 34 35 36 37 38
39
40
‘War Office Orders for the Borders’, Hawick News, 21 August 1914, p. 3; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 27–8. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 18, 29–30. Debenham Report, p. 11. Cowans, ‘Equipment and Ordnance’, p. 868; Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, p. 257. Debenham Report, pp. 4–7. ‘More Contracts for Leeds Industries’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 12 September 1914, p. 5. Minutes of Directors’ meetings, 17–18 August 1914. ‘Recruits to be Clothed in Blue Serge’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 10 September 1914, p. 3; Peter Doyle and Chris Forster, Kitchener’s Mob: The New Army to the Somme (Stroud: History Press, 2016), pp. 57–60; Imperial War Museum (IWM), UNI 12205 and 8017. Minutes of Directors’ meetings, 8 and 10 September 1914; Cowans, ‘Equipment and Ordnance’, p. 868; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 93–4. Minutes of Directors’ meetings, 29 August 1914.
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clothing locally for the New Army units which they raised for the WO.41 Other policy changes followed in the autumn, prompted by rising troop numbers and efforts to mitigate the effects of the wartime trade depression.
Self-Mobilisation for War Production in the Textile, Clothing and Shoe Trades Coinciding with the rising demand for uniforms, was a desperate demand for work in the textile, clothing and shoe industries. The economic downturn caused by the war affected these trades particularly badly.42 As the outbreak of hostilities disrupted international commerce and the financial system, all three trades were left with unpaid invoices on orders delivered to enemy states, along with the loss of their Continental export markets, sources of raw materials and credit providers. Shrinking domestic demand worsened the crisis. Cancellation or withholding of orders was widespread in the three industries, as people were urged by patriotic agencies to cut back on needless purchases or saved their money for more essential goods.43 Consequently, the sharp decline in production in the first two months of the war was the among the worst in these trades. The contraction of employment in the clothing and textile sectors was above the national average of 10.2 per cent for men and 8.4 per cent for women.44 Larger firms survived by reducing working hours and wages. Many smaller companies, however, had to dismiss staff or close down entirely, especially in the ‘luxury trades’ of tweed, lace and dressmaking, millinery and bespoke tailoring.45 The shoe industry was less seriously affected. But even here, most export-orientated firms were ‘idle’, ‘at a standstill’ or ‘on short-time’.46 Desperate for work, leaders of these industries called increasingly for government contracts. During August, WO enquiries about 41
42
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44
45
46
Telegram from WO to GOCs-in-Commands, OCs Districts and OCs Depots, 9 September 1914, TNA, WO 159/18, quoted in Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, pp. 262, 275. Report of the Board of Trade on the State of Employment in the United Kingdom in October 1914, Cd. 7703, pp. 5–7, 9, 15; Report of the Board of Trade on the State of Employment in the United Kingdom in December 1914, Cd. 7755, pp. 4–5. See also, Jon Lawrence, ‘The Transition to War in 1914’ in Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert (eds.) Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin, 1914–1919, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 135–63. Carter, ‘Clothing the Allies’ Armies’, p. 97; ‘The War’s Effect on Industry’, Leeds Mercury, 22 August 1914, p. 4; Report of the Board of Trade, Cd. 7703, p. 5; Boot and Shoe Trades Journal, 14 August 1914, pp. 204, 206–07 and 11 September 1914, p. 323. In clothing this was 13.7 per cent for men and 8.6 per cent for women in September; in textiles, 11.7 and 8.8, respectively. See Report of the Board of Trade, Cd. 7703, pp. 5–6, 9–10. Report of the Board of Trade, Cd. 7703, pp. 5, 15–16; Tailor and Cutter, p. 27 August 1914, p. 698; ‘Hawick Government Orders’, Scotsman, 26 August 1914, p. 10. Report of the Board of Trade, Cd. 7703, p. 9; Boot and Shoe Trades Journal, 7 August 1914, p. 177; 21 August 1914, p. 234.
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available stocks and production capacity heightened expectations of reducing unemployment through large army orders. Therefore, numerous companies declared their readiness in newspapers and the trade press to supply materials and clothing for uniforms.47 However, the ability of companies to become WO contractors varied greatly, depending on their size, profile and mechanisation. Before 1914, the standard WO supplier was a well-established, reputable firm with specialised machinery, skilled labour and sufficient premises to produce large quantities to strict specifications relatively quickly, in return for moderate profits. The number of such firms was limited, as the official WO list of clothing suppliers indicated.48 There were numerous companies in all three trades which could meet most of the criteria, subject to negotiating others. These included the majority of shoe factories which were adaptable and energetic mass producers, having become the world’s leading exporters through rapid modernisation in the 1900s. But they needed time to install new machinery for heavy army boots and guarantees for continued orders.49 A large number of woollen mills and wholesale clothing factories were also sufficiently mechanised and specialised to turn out high-quality goods to precise requirements. However, many of the former varied in size and were more suitable for medium-sized orders, while the latter had never tendered before and needed help with the process.50 Finally, there were thousands of smaller clothing firms whose staff and outworkers could execute reduced orders for shirts, underwear and simplified pattern suits if somebody arranged contracts for them and organised their work. Most of these businesses viewed WO preference for large established companies as unfair.51 They mobilised themselves through their trade associations and special interest groups to persuade military authorities to modify procurement procedures. 47
48
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Boot and Shoe Trades Journal, 7 August 1914, p. 177; 14 August 1914, pp. 207–8; 21 August, 1914, p. 234; 28 August, 1914, p. 266; See also Laura Ugolini, Men and Menswear: Sartorial Consumption in Britain, 1880–1939 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016, 1st ed. 2007), pp. 155–6. The Official History of the Ministry of Munitions, Vol. I (London: HMSO, 1922), pp. 51, 57–58; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 15, 29; Contracts Report for 1913–14, pp. 50–53, 57–58, 60–62, 68–70. Harold A. Burch, Boot and Shoe Industry and Trade in Great Britain (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1929), pp. 1–4; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 93, 96; Boot and Shoe Trades Journal, 14 August 1914, p. 207. E. M. Sigworth, ‘The Woollen Textile Industry’ in Roy Church (ed.), The Dynamics of Victorian Business: Problems and Perspectives to the 1870s (London and New York: Routledge, 2013, 1st ed. 1980), pp. 181–98, 185; Katrina Honeyman, Well Suited: A History of the Leeds Clothing Industry, 1850–1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 20–52, 107–17. Boot and Shoe Trades Journal, 21 August 1914, p. 233; ‘Government Contracts for Hosiery’, Leicester Daily Post, 17 August 1914, p. 2.
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By taking collective action, manufacturers initiated key changes in uniform procurement. Chief among these was the principle of distributing contracts more evenly among companies by reducing order sizes and providing assistance with tendering. This request was conveyed to the WO by local MPs and deputations from the chambers of commerce. The first such group of Huddersfield woollen producers raised this point in early August with Lloyd George in the Treasury, the Contracts Department in the WO and through their MP in Parliament.52 Similar messages were delivered from the Scottish Borders, Colchester, Londonderry, Leeds and Hull.53 Another change to existing policies was suggested by British companies’ collaboration with the French government. In the first month of the war, as French army agents were seeking contractors for 2 million pairs of boots, Edward Penton, a prominent shoe manufacturer, offered to organise the work by using his business contacts to subdivide the order among thirty British shoe factories. Besides selecting the firms, he also arranged the tendering process and the inspection of the finished goods. His offer was accepted, and the scheme enabled the completion of the unfeasibly vast order on time.54 Leaders of the Wholesale Clothing Manufacturers’ Federation further developed this scheme. Despite securing orders, by mid-October clothing factories struggled to fulfil their contracts, as they had to compete constantly for shrinking supplies of raw materials and skilled labour. The directors of the main wholesale factories suggested negotiations with the WO to replace competitive tendering with a collective bargaining system administered by the Federation.55 Further innovations in uniform procurement derived from efforts to obtain work for unemployed women. Female workers were hit particularly hard by the downturn, losing their jobs not just in the textile and clothing sectors, where they were heavily concentrated, but in other ‘women’s trades’ as well.56 In addition, their employment prospects remained limited for the rest of the year. Out-of-work male tailors and cotton workers could enlist in the army or adapt their skills to the production of cloth and uniforms in woollen and
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‘Huddersfield Manufacturers and the War’, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 10 August 1914, p. 4; ‘Army Contracts for Huddersfield’, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 13 August 1914, p. 4; ‘Government Contracts’, Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 8 August 1914, p. 4. ‘Peebles. Tweedside Mills’, Southern Reporter 27 August 1914, p. 5; ‘War News in Brief, Essex Newsman, 22 August 1914, p. 2; ‘Londonderry Shirt Trade’, Londonderry Sentinel, 25 August 1914, p. 2; ‘Overtime on Army Contracts’, Yorkshire Post, 3 September 1914, p. 8; ‘Army Clothing Contracts for Hull’, Yorkshire Post, 4 December 1914, p. 7. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 92, 94–5; ‘French Army Boots’, Northampton Chronicle, 12 September 1914, p. 3; Shoe and Boot Trade Journal, 18 September 1914, pp. 356–7; ‘By the Way’, Northampton Chronicle, 3 October 1914, p. 2. Debenham Report, p. 7. Edith Abbott, ‘The War and Women’s Work in England’, Journal of Political Economy, 25:7 (July 1917), pp. 641–78, 642–7.
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clothing factories. In contrast, openings for women were restricted by their gendered needlework skills, domestic duties and exclusion from the army.57 Thus, female unemployment rates failed to drop significantly until early 1915.58 The main agency tasked with achieving this was the Central Committee on Women’s Employment. Appointed by the Home Secretary on 20 August, the remit of its female union leaders, civil servants and social workers was to help provide work for women who had lost their jobs due to the war.59 The committee identified uniform production as an expanding sector which could absorb female workers. It also recognised, however, that women’s large-scale entry into this trade required changes to existing procurement procedures. Therefore, at an interview with WO officials, committee members suggested modifying the regulation pattern khaki service dress so that women workers unaccustomed to military tailoring could produce these garments. They also sought permission to submit tenders on behalf of small dressmaking firms and to sublet WO orders obtained by the committee’s own contracts department to such companies.60
Collaboration between the WO and the Textile, Clothing and Shoe Industries WO approval for these initiatives was shaped by government policy to cement national unity by providing economic relief. Using army contracts to help distressed regions while boosting their loyalty to the state was not a new strategy. Since the 1880s, the WO had worked with Irish trade associations to support local companies, like the Limerick Clothing Factory, by encouraging them to submit tenders and become army suppliers.61 This policy was extended in 1914. To mobilise Britain for the war effort and raise mass New Armies, politicians stressed the need for public solidarity, fairness and equality of sacrifice. Refusing appeals for army orders to mitigate unemployment would have undermined this patriotic moral order.62 Therefore, the government announced that army contracts would be distributed ‘as widely as possible’ ‘to equalise employment’ between regions, as part of a broad national
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58 59
60 61 62
Report of the Board of Trade, Cd. 7703, pp. 3, 9–10, 19; and Cd. 7755, pp. 5–7; Abbott, ‘The War and Women’s Work’, pp. 642–3. See Table I in Abbott, ‘The War and Women’s Work’, p. 643. Interim Report of Central Committee on Women’s Employment (hereafter Interim Report) 1915, Cd. 7848, pp. 1–4; Abbott, ‘The War and Women’s Work’, pp. 647–8. Interim Report, Cd. 7848, pp. 4–5; Abbott, ‘The War and Women’s Work’, pp. 650–1. Contracts Report for 1924–5, pp. 6–7. Catriona Pennell, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 57–67, 72–83.
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scheme to relieve distress caused by the war.63 Other new procurement policies of the WO also aimed to maintain the patriotic consensus. To avoid alienating manufacturers, details of large clothing orders placed with American and Canadian firms were kept confidential, while suggestions by Board of Trade officials, to boost uniform production by placing factories under army control, were rejected.64 Instead, Kitchener sent signed patriotic appeals to factories to rally staff for greater efforts and discourage male employees from enlisting. These letters urged textile and garment workers to ‘push on’ orders ‘as rapidly as possible’, assuring them that by supplying the troops they were ‘doing their duty for their King and country equally with those who have joined the Army for service in the field’.65 The requirement to distribute government employment, while expanding and expediting production, inspired radically new clothing procurement policies. Relaxing the strict ban on subletting was the first key innovation.66 From September 1914, the WO placed special contracts negotiated directly with representatives of recognised trade associations, which authorised subdividing the order within these networks. This step had a dual purpose. Besides widening the distribution of work and reducing unemployment, it aimed to speed up the completion of large orders by reliable firms.67 The first such contract was issued to the Cooperative Wholesale Society. Its initial order for 100,000 blue suits, to be divided between the society’s own and six other wholesale factories, was gradually extended to 400,000 outfits and about 30,000 greatcoats to be shared with other wholesale clothiers in Leeds.68 The Central Committee on Women’s Employment negotiated similar agreements. Acting ‘as a bridge’ between the WO and more than 130 idle dressmaking firms, the committee either tendered on behalf of these firms or sublet contracts to them, which it secured for the production of tens of thousands 63 64
65
66 67
68
‘To Provide Work’, Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 8 August 1914, p. 4. Letter from QMG to General Robertson, BEF, 23 December 1914, TNA, WO 107/13; For rumours about placing woollen mills under army control, associated with Board of Trade enquiries, see ‘Commandeering the Khaki’ and ‘A Warning’, Tailor & Cutter, 26 November 1914, pp. 921 and 936. ‘Kitchener and Aberdeen Firm’, Aberdeen Evening Express, 11 November 1914, p. 2; ‘Workers’ Duty’, Manchester Evening News, 1 December 1914, p. 7; ‘Clothing the Army’, Leeds Mercury, 2 December 1914, p. 3. Similar letters were sent to engineering firms earlier in autumn 1914, while companies holding Admiralty contracts received a naval version of the appeal from Churchill. Official History, pp. 65–6. See WO letter quoted in ‘Overtime on Army Contracts’, Yorkshire Post, 3 September 1914, p. 8. On special contracts and direct negotiations, see Debenham Report, pp. 12–13 and Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, p. 29. Debenham Report, p. 12; ‘Blue Serge Uniforms for Training’, Yorkshire Post, 11 September 1914, p. 6; ‘More Contracts for Leeds’ and ‘Another Huge Army Order for Leeds’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 12 and 17 September 1914, pp. 5 and 3.
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of army shirts, socks and belts.69 The largest special contract combined subletting with a modified uniform design suggested by the Central Committee. Glanfield & Son, an East End wholesale clothier and established WO supplier, received a negotiated contract for 1 million khaki suits and coats to be produced in twenty weeks by subletting the order. The contract aimed to boost supplies while providing work specifically for unemployed women. Robert Glanfield developed the new ‘simplified pattern’ khaki service dress which could be made by workers unfamiliar with military tailoring and sublet the contract to ‘a large number of firms’.70 Direct negotiations facilitated growing collaboration between WO staff and manufacturers. Formerly, procurement administrators had been separated from producers by the formal tendering system and by purchasing officials’ distrust of companies suspected of price-fixing. In return, potential suppliers had been wary of the rigid specifications and long delays in the army’s procurement process.71 Emergency war conditions forced these groups into cooperation. In order to locate all potential producers and raw materials, civil servants needed commercial and technical advice from manufacturers who, in turn, wanted greater trust and control over procurement.72 New working relations between the parties evolved gradually. Starting with interviews at Whitehall and purchasing trips to trade centres, they developed into conferences about boosting supplies and formal job appointments for suppliers in the WO.73 The latter included hiring Edward Penton, a leading shoe manufacturer, along with a director of I. & R. Morley, Britain’s largest hosiery firm, and their staff, to manage the new Army Boot Department and hosiery depot of the WO.74 Other businessmen advised WO officials on buying wool and on accelerating the inspection and shipment of supplies.75 These collaborations were made easier by administrators seconded from other ministries to assist uniform production. They involved Home Office staff, who advised on
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71 72 73
74 75
Interim Report, pp. 5–8; Abbott, ‘The War and Women’s Work’, pp. 651–3; ‘Work of the Women’s Employment Committee’, Oxfordshire Weekly News, 16 December 1914, p. 8. ‘Army Estimates’, Hansard, House of Commons Debates (hereafter HC Deb), 22 April, 1915, vol. 71, cc434–542, Mr. Baker, cc535–541; Debenham Report, p. 12; ‘Death of Sir Robert Glanfield’, East London Observer, 23 August 1924, p. 2; Chris Pollendine, Campaign 1915: Uniforms and Equipment of the British Servicemen in the First World War, vol. 2 (Hitchin: Military Mode, 2015), pp. 8–9, 14–15; IWM, UNI 12247, 2162 and 5140. Official History, pp. 51–3, 55–8; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 15, 29, 32. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 29–30; Official History, pp. 67–8. ‘Northampton’, Boot and Shoe Trades Journal, 14 and 21 August 1914, pp. 207, 234; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 29, 94; Official History, pp. 67–8. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 92–5; Debenham Report, p. 8. Debenham Report, pp. 7, 9.
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extending working hours by suspending the Factory Acts, and Board of Trade civil servants, who worked with manufacturers to establish a new chemical firm, British Dyes Ltd.76 Overseeing these changes was another Board of Trade official, U.F. Wintour, who took over as the new Director of the Contracts Department in the WO.77 Increased collaboration enabled the adoption of a new procurement system. By October, the use of competitive tendering, through which most contracts were still awarded, reached a crisis. Processing tenders could take up to six weeks, with no guarantees for applicants to receive contracts. Therefore, firms often withdrew their bids if they had received other orders or if their option for the materials had expired in the meantime.78 Soaring prices caused by competition for materials and labour created further problems. Companies hesitated to invest in expanding their production without assurances of orders, while the WO grew so desperate about rising costs and delayed shipments that it placed vast contracts with US and Canadian firms.79 Negotiations initiated by the Wholesale Clothing Manufacturers’ Federation clarified positions. Suppliers wanted certainty about WO contracts and ending competition, while the authorities sought lower prices and a commitment to prioritise army orders. As Kitchener appealed for patriotic unity, the two sides reached agreement in mid-November. This replaced competitive tendering with collective bargaining between the Federation and the WO, whose representatives negotiated fixed flat-rate prices for all key items of army clothing. Manufacturers also agreed that at least two-thirds of their production capacity would be devoted to army uniforms. The Federation then took on two vast consecutive contracts running till the end of March and late June, which it distributed among its members after securing their acceptance of the terms.80 Similar deals were negotiated with the woollen and shoe trades by the end of 1914, although smaller contracts were still awarded to individual firms to mitigate unemployment in particular regions.81
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‘Army Cloth Manufacture’, Yorkshire Post, 17 November 1914, p. 3; ‘British Dyes’, Evening Despatch, 23 December 1914, p. 3. Official History, pp. 62–3, 67; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 19–21, 94–5. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 19, 27–8. Official History, p. 54; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, p. 96; ‘Northampton’, Boot and Shoe Trades Journal, 14 August 1914, p. 207; Letter from QMG to General Robertson, 23 December 1914, TNA, WO 107/13; Debenham Report, pp. 12–13. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 32–4; ‘Army Clothing: How Supplies Will Be Increased’, Liverpool Daily Post, 17 November 1914, p. 6. Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 96–7; ‘Army Clothing Contracts for Hull’, Yorkshire Post, 4 December 1914, p. 7.
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The Impact of New Policies on Uniform Supplies and Industrial Mobilisation The new procurement system resolved the clothing crisis within a year. This is revealed by comparing the dates of kitting out the New Armies with the dates, sizes and purchasing methods of clothing contracts.82 Most units of the first New Army were in khaki by late October 1914, while the second New Army received its kit between December and the end of March. The bulk of the third New Army was issued with service dress by April, and most fourth and fifth New Army units also wore khaki by late July.83 Sources about deliveries are sparse, but they indicate that modified patterns and vast, subdivided orders boosted and expedited supplies. The first batch of blue uniforms arrived from Leeds within ten days, while the Glanfield contract shipped 100,000 ‘simplified’ suits a week from early October.84 Deliveries of 2.4 million ‘simplified’ uniforms were arriving by February from the United States and Canada, while the flat-rate contracts produced 2.5 million suits by late March and another 2 million by the end of June.85 Decentralised purchasing also helped, as locally raised units were often clothed before centrally recruited formations.86 The phasing out of emergency measures signalled the passing of the crisis. Between April and late June, the WO discontinued subletting, local purchasing, flat-rate contracts and simplified patterns, and reinstated competitive tendering.87 This was enabled by a massive expansion in output, totalling 41 million yards of cloth and tartan, over 8 million khaki suits and 3.5 million khaki greatcoats.88 By July, recruiters could promise new volunteers that they would be clothed on enlistment. This was announced by Kitchener at a large recruiting rally, while a new poster referenced his speech, depicting items of the regulation kit with the caption: ‘your arms, uniform and accoutrements are ready waiting for you’.89 The expansion of uniform procurement mobilised a significant section of the relevant industries for war production. The number of suppliers is hard to establish, but at least 200 woollen mills, 250 clothing firms, 300 boot factories 82 83 84
85 86 87
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Debenham Report, pp. 12–13. Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, p. 267. Blue Serge Uniforms for Training’, Yorkshire Post, 11 September 1914, p. 6; Minutes of Directors’ meetings, 21 September 1914; Debenham Report, pp. 12–13; ‘Army Estimates’, Hansard, HC Deb, 22 April 1915, vol. 71, cc434–542, Mr. Baker, cc537–538. Debenham Report, pp. 7–8, 12–13. Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, pp. 262–5. ‘War Office Clothing Contracts’, Hansard, HC Deb, 14 April 1915, vol. 71, cc8–9; Debenham Report, pp. 13–14; ‘Plentiful Supply of Uniforms’, Birmingham Daily Post, 28 April 1915, p. 6; Pollendine, Campaign 1915, p. 8. Debenham Report, p. 13. ‘More Men’, The Times, 10 July 1915, pp. 7–8; National Army Museum, NAM.2012-08-11; ‘Leeds and Supply of Khaki Uniforms’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 15 July 1915, p. 3.
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and 130 shirt and hosiery companies were producing supplies for the WO.90 In addition, each of the 104 County Associations, eight regional commands and numerous local bodies, which were raising and equipping units for the WO, placed hundreds of uniform contracts. Thus, the number of producers ran to several thousands.91 Decentralised purchasing also distributed uniform production across Britain. Previously, except for two firms in Limerick and Glasgow, uniform production was concentrated in England, including companies in London, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Leicestershire, Nottingham, Northampton and Swindon.92 In contrast, many local recruiters used their newly gained purchasing power to support their own communities. Lt-Gen. Parsons, commander of the 16th (Irish) Division, sent samples of khaki cloth to woollen mills in Douglas, Blarney and Kilmeadan, and accepted their tenders. He urged other companies to prepare for growing army demands and put his depot in touch with regional trade associations to encourage offers from them.93 Likewise, the Corporation of Glasgow advertised tenders for its Highland Light Infantry units in local newspapers, while the 4th battalion of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers was clothed by factories in Galashiels, where the unit was raised.94 Recruiters in Wales also invited tenders from local firms to promote Welsh industries. This was successful in providing khaki suits for the Cardiff Commercial Battalion, but by November most factories were so busy on other uniform orders that they could not supply enough of the alternative ‘Welsh grey’ cloth for all locally raised units.95 The expansion of all three trades engaged in uniform production also indicated their mobilisation. After contracting for three months, the woollen, clothing and shoe industries were recovering and expanding from November, surpassing most other sectors. This started in the woollen trade which, due to 90
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94
95
‘Consolidated Fund (No. 1) Bill’, Hansard, HC Deb, 26 November 1914, vol. 68, cc1361–1457, Mr. Baker, cc1436–37; Debenham Report, pp. 9, 12; Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, p. 97; ‘Work of Women’s Employment Committee’, Oxfordshire Weekly News, 16 December 1914, p. 8. The Tyneside Scottish Brigade Committee alone issued 136 separate contracts for thirtyeight items of clothing and some equipment. See Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, p. 265. Contracts Report for 1913–14, pp. 50–3, 57–8, 60–2, 68–70; Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History, www.gracesguide.co.uk/Main_Page. ‘Army Contracts for Ireland’, Freeman’s Journal, 21 December 1914, p. 4; ‘Important Letter from Gen. Parsons’, Dublin Daily Express, 21 December 1914, p. 8; Theresa Moriarty, ‘Work, Warfare and Wages: Industrial Controls and Irish Trade Unionism in the First World War’ in Adrian Gregory and Senia Pašeta (eds.) Ireland and the Great War: ‘A War to Unite Us All?’ (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002), pp. 73–93, 77–8, 84–5. ‘Corporation of Glasgow’, Daily Record, 15 September 1914, pp. 1 and 21 September 1914, p. 2; ‘Ready-Made Clothing’, Southern Reporter, 24 September 1914, p. 7. See Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, pp. 265–6, 276; ‘Welsh Army Corps’, Western Mail, 3 November 1914, p. 7; ‘Welsh Flannel’, Western Mail, 20 August 1914, p. 3.
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the high pressure for khaki cloth, grew by 5.7 per cent by February 1915.96 Expansion in the clothing and shoe industries appeared less pronounced because of the continued depression of ‘luxury trades’ and the enlistment of male staff. However, increases in overtime and the number of new female workers signalled a similar intensification of production in these sectors. By February, 25 per cent of all workers in the shoe industry and 28 per cent in tailoring were on overtime, but in the latter this number was 36 per cent for women workers, of whom 7.2 per cent were new.97 The number of staff on overtime was even higher in woollen mills, including 39.5 per cent of male and 32.5 per cent of female workers.98 This was reflected by the nocturnal illumination of West Riding mills towns and by increased accident and illness rates across the industry, as staff worked double, weekend and night shifts.99 Wartime observers stressed the role of women workers in facilitating the massive increase in uniform production. Most of them were seamstresses and married women who, having lost either their jobs in other areas of the clothing trade or the male breadwinner to enlistment, relocated or returned to the booming sectors of woollen and wholesale clothing production.100 Employers relied on them to extend working hours and to reduce staff shortages and losses in profit margins due to flat-rate contracts.101 By spring 1915, as the worst of the crisis was over, the ‘feverish activity [had] abated into a steadily stimulated production’ in all three trades.102
Conclusions Exploring the production of army uniforms in 1914–15 modifies existing understandings of Britain’s economic mobilisation in the First World War. It reveals that almost a year before the Ministry of Munitions began coordinating the armaments industries, there was already a shift from civilian to war production in the textile, clothing and shoe trades which supplied uniforms for the army. This first stage of industrial mobilisation was less centralised than the one that followed from mid-1915. Coinciding with the initial ‘volunteer’ period of Britain’s war effort, manufacturers and representatives of women workers played a greater role in initiating and shaping the policies which 96
97 98 99 100 101
102
Report of the Board of Trade, Cd. 7703, p. 9; Report of the Board of Trade, Cd. 7755, pp. 5–6; Report of the Board of Trade on the State of Employment in the United Kingdom, in February, 1915, Cd. 7850, p. 17. Report of the Board of Trade, Cd. 7850, p. 17. Report of the Board of Trade, Cd. 7850, p. 17. Carter, ‘Clothing the Allies’ Armies’, pp. 102–3. Ibid., p. 99. ‘Journeymen’s Protest’, Tailor & Cutter, 26 November 1914, p. 921; ‘Wages in the Wholesale Clothing Trade’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 19 January 1915, p. 3. Carter, ‘Clothing the Allies’ Armies’, p. 102.
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defined the process. This phase of mobilisation was also more limited than the next one. Instead of legally binding contracts for the duration of the war, it involved voluntary agreements with manufacturers designed for a short-term war emergency. In many respects, however, this ‘softer’ mobilisation developed key principles which were later adopted by civil servants in the Ministry of Munitions and other war departments. These included negotiating with trade associations and union leaders, appointing businessmen to key posts in war ministries, suspending competitive tendering, introducing collective agreements with uniform prices covering entire industries, and relying on women to replace enlisting male workers, together with simplified work processes. Thus, overhauling uniform production marked the first step towards the wartime reorganisation of British industries under state control.103 The discussion of uniform production in 1914–15 also illuminates a key aspect of the process through which British society mobilised itself for war. It reveals that the organisation of war production was a negotiated process between government agencies and representatives of manufacturers and workers, shaped by the respective interests of all sides. These included the military needs of the army to expedite the mass production of uniforms, the political considerations of the government and civil servants to cement patriotic consensus by relieving distress while maintaining the integrity of the procurement system, and the socio-economic objectives of employers and union leaders to keep businesses going by obtaining national work. In the end, all sides compromised. Army administrators accepted modified uniform patterns and slower deliveries by placing most of their orders with smaller and non-specialist British firms rather than large American wholesale companies. Civil servants made concessions by suspending competitive tendering and the ban on subletting, and manufacturers and union leaders consented to lower profits and wages by accepting flat-rate contracts for the sake of guaranteed employment. This settlement smoothed Britain’s transition to war by mitigating the effects of the recession and strengthening national unity. It also resulted in modified uniform patterns and delays in supplies. However, considering the underlying reasons for these, the ‘khaki shortage’ and ‘Kitchener blue’ uniforms should be seen not as symbols of an embarrassing fiasco, but as emblems of a temporary alliance which balanced military requirements with civilian needs.
103
Lloyd, Experiments in State Control, pp. 33–4.
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20 Britain’s Private Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Industries Prior to the war, as a supply industry, shipbuilders were acutely aware of periodic booms and slumps in demand. Shipping capacity cannot easily be adjusted to changes in demand, and fluctuations in world trade (to which shipbuilding is highly vulnerable) are immediately reflected in the level of freight rates, and consequent laying up of ships when rates prove unremunerative. In the short term, war at least promised some consistency of demand and an expectation that demand would probably increase as the war was prosecuted. This, to an extent, compensated for the loss of export markets in this sector, but did not apply to the mercantile-only yards which were not as well equipped as the larger mixed naval and merchant establishments. The latter’s share of warship contracts after the Naval Defence Act of 1889 grew in the naval race with imperial Germany. In the period 1901–13 the private sector built around 60 per cent of warships, and from 1902 all main engines for the Royal Navy and for foreign account. The rest were constructed in governmentcontrolled and administered Royal Dockyards, two of which, Portsmouth and Plymouth, built battleships.1 The latter, however, did not have to bear contractions in demand, as the private shipbuilders did.2 The private shipbuilding industry, with special emphasis on the Clyde, and the largely neglected but vital private ship repair industry, not the Royal Dockyards, is the primary concern of this chapter. It assesses shipbuilding 1
2
The Royal Dockyards were one of the world’s largest and oldest industrial establishments. Comprising in 1914 five dockyards, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Chatham, Sheerness and Pembroke, they employed over 40,000 workers. In contrast to the private yards, it is generally accepted that the dockyards had problems with overmanning and low productivity and were overly bureaucratic. See, for example, J. Haas, ‘Low Labour Intensity and Overmanning in the Royal Dockyards, 1815–1914’, Mariner’s Mirror, 102:4 (2016), pp. 426–41. Another Royal Dockyard at Rosyth on the Firth of Forth only became operational in March 1916. H. Peebles, Warshipbuilding on the Clyde: Naval Orders and the Prosperity of the Clyde Shipbuilding Industry, 1889–1939 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1987), p. 69. In the three years 1906–7 to 1908–9, private yards, in terms of capital ships, were allocated two battleships, and five 4,800 ton protected cruisers. In contrast, the Royal Dockyards at Portsmouth and Devonport were allocated six battleships.
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output, ship repair, the state of industrial relations, social conditions, absenteeism, strikes and the impact of legislation, as well as the overall contribution of these industries to the war effort.
Scale and Scope of Britain’s Maritime Industries In the late nineteenth century, Great Britain and Ireland’s shipbuilding industry held 80 per cent of the world market for ships, and on the eve of the First World War 60 per cent of all tonnage launched.3 The private shipbuilding industry mainly built bespoke tonnage for British shipowners, whose ships comprised the world’s largest mercantile fleet (at 19.26 million gross registered tons, four times larger than Germany’s, and comprising 43 per cent of the world fleet), and whose cargo tramps and liners touched every corner of the globe.4 Ninety per cent of British tonnage was engaged in overseas trade, 60 per cent in tramp ships and the remainder in liner tonnage.5 In 1913, British ships carried some 50 per cent of world seaborne trade.6 However, the export market for ships was also important in both the private warship and mercantile sectors, comprising some 25–30 per cent of all tonnage built prior to 1914.7 Clearly, these markets would suffer in any prolonged conflict. In shipbuilding, 1913 proved to be the record year for British tonnage, with 1,932,153 gross tons launched, more than the output of all other nations combined. On one major river, the Clyde, 756,973 gross tons of shipping was launched in that year, which was more than the entire shipbuilding output of either Germany or the USA.8 Moreover, Britain had 540 building berths to Germany’s 140, and of these 185 were over 700 feet in length compared to 11 in Germany.9 At the outbreak of the Great War, the United Kingdom’s shipbuilding, ship repair and marine engine building industries were easily the largest in the world, had a distinct comparative advantage over the Central Powers, and 3
4
5
6
7
8
9
All percentages relative to gross registered tonnage are either taken from Lloyd’s Register of Shipping Annual Returns or from the British Shipbuilding Database (BSD), Department of Marine Transport, Armstrong Building, University of Newcastle. E. Lorenz, Economic Decline in Britain, the Shipbuilding Industry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 27, notes that Britain owned 90 per cent of the world’s tramp ships prior to the Great War. L. Jones, Shipbuilding in Britain: Mainly between the two World Wars (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1957), p. 47. Report of the Departmental Committee on the Shipping and Shipbuilding Industries after the War (Booth Committee) Cd. 9092 (1918), Third Report, p. 74. A. Slaven, British Shipbuilding: A History 1500–2010 (Lancaster: Crucible Books, 2013), p. 73. A. Slaven, The Development of the West of Scotland: 1750–1960 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 178–9. Jones, Shipbuilding in Britain, p. 123.
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could therefore, all things being equal, ride out a war of indeterminate duration. Nevertheless, the scale of its maritime industries and the numerical preponderance of its navy could give rise to complacency. Indeed, in the wider economy, there were no comprehensive government plans for procurement or for alleviating war’s effects on commerce and industry. Neither the length of the war nor interdiction at sea by German U-boats had been considered publicly by the political classes, with the latter coming to haunt the government with the two German unrestricted submarine warfare campaigns in 1915 and especially 1917. The Admiralty was quick to notify all shipyards building warships that they would be placed under Admiralty control and direction (but not day-to-day control) for the duration of the war. From September 1914, work on merchant ships was subject to suspension. By 1915, naval construction and repairs had absolute priority, and this continued throughout 1916. For those shipyards which built warships Admiralty control had distinct advantages, including priority for labour and materiel, and enhanced profitability over the course of the war.10 However, the concentration on warship building at the expense of merchant ship construction had a serious effect in that ships lost in the first two years of the war were not replaced. In shipbuilding, only in 1914, as Table 20.1 indicates, did new construction exceed shipping losses, and that is explained by the carry-over of work in hand from extant contracts from the record year of 1913 to August 1914. With the consequent emphasis on warship construction through 1915 and 1916, and given labour and material shortages, the shipbuilding industry could not build merchant ships in such numbers as before the war.
Shipbuilding and Tonnage lost 1914–16 After the declaration of war, tonnage losses for the remainder of 1914 were mainly due to cruisers, surface raiders and mines. During 1915 and 1916 however, the U-boat threat intensified, and the bulk of tonnage lost was to submarine warfare. In both years, new construction did not keep pace with tonnage losses, but this was far more pronounced in 1916. Despite these losses, the Admiralty continued to eschew the convoying of merchant ships with naval escorts. Nevertheless, a programme of building sloops, armed trawlers, minesweepers and other patrol vessels, in mercantile yards to mercantile standards, was authorised to counter the U-boat threat. Through the period February to September 1915 Germany waged unrestricted submarine warfare 10
In the five years to 30 June 1919, Fairfield at Govan on the Upper Clyde trading profits before depreciation amounted to £1,910,555, similarly, Beardmore’s trading profits before depreciation in the five years to 31 December 1919 amounted to £1,569,177. See Peebles, Warshipbuilding on the Clyde, pp. 91–2.
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Table 20.1. Great Britain mercantile, Allied and neutral gross tonnage lost, August 1914–November 1918, and tonnage completed to 1918
Year
British
1914
251,636 (114) 905,541 (508) 1,290,846 (609) 3,854,003 (1513) 1,758,800 (675) 8,060,826 (3419)
1915 1916 1917 1918 Total
Allied
Neutral
Total sunk
(Numbers lost and completed in parenthesis) 25,352 46,638 323,626 (14) (37) (165) 205,259 212,314 1,323,114 (98) (166) (772) 506,148 570,374 2,367,368 (404) (397) (1410) 1,289,960 1,206,481 6,350,414 (938) (816) (3267) 669,154 296,054 2,724,008 (390) (248) (1313) 2,695,873 2,331,861 13,088,530 (1844) (1664) (6927)
GB completions 1,679,178 (634) 866,918 (397) 582,789 (372) 1,291,790 (533) 1,535,318 (463) 5,955,993 (2399)
Sources: Lloyd’s War Losses: The First World War (London, 1990), and BSD for completions.
against all shipping, including the sinking without warning of RMS Lusitania by U-20 off the Irish coast on 7 May, with the loss of 1,198 lives, 128 of which were American citizens.11 The cumulative British losses of 1,117 ships of 2,196,347 tons in 1915 and 1916 were very serious but in no way fatal to Britain’s capacity to continue to wage war on Germany. However, as a precursor to a much more effective unrestricted U-boat campaign in 1917, it was a stark warning.
Implications for Ship Repair of War at Sea Time and tide are crucial factors in ship repair. It used the same trades and tools as in shipbuilding, but ship repair remained distinct in terms of product and process. Numerous shipbuilding firms had extensive separate ship repairing facilities on the rivers Clyde, Tyne, Tees, Wear and Mersey. This form of business organisation was used to counter fluctuations in shipbuilding
11
Beforehand U-boats had adhered to internationally recognised ‘Prize Rules’ when attacking merchant ships: they would surface, allow crew to escape, and then, usually by gunfire or the placing of explosive charges, sink the ship.
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demand by utilising overheads that would otherwise have been unused. Excluding the Royal Dockyards, which had a standing repair function for warships, the United Kingdom had a wide range of specialist ship repairers on the major rivers and ports, especially on Tyneside, whose operations differed widely in scale. These firms either owned dry docks (normally known as graving docks), repair berths, or operated from publicly owned docks and berths. Like shipbuilding, the private repair workforce was casualised and was expected to work at short notice. Specialist repairers undertook annual surveys on ships, voyage repairs, salvage work or conversions of ships. Ship repairing, although fragmented, was less volatile than shipbuilding, as demand for its services was largely conditioned by the size of the extant stock of shipping.12 Clearly, with the initial and subsequent emphasis on warship building, it was imperative that vessels damaged by mines, surface raiders or U-boats be repaired expeditiously, or that those partly sunk or beached be salvaged. The UK’s extant fleet did offer substantial leeway to shift productive resources to warships and temporarily rely on its ship repair sector in the event of interdiction and damage at sea.
The Labour Situation in Shipbuilding Prior to the war, labour relations in the shipyards can best be described as ‘adversarial’ and in many instances ‘hostile’. Shipbuilding was a labourintensive assembly industry undertaken in an inherently dangerous working environment involving numerous competing trades unions.13 Moreover, the largely bespoke nature of output, whilst not inimical, was not yet susceptible to widespread standardisation in what was an archetypal craft industry. Employment was directly related to demand, and periods of little or no work were commonplace in what was a casualised industry. In the hull trades the largely autonomous squad system of work organisation was prevalent, especially so in the principal method of metal joining, riveting, where many young boys were employed in the squads.14 Platers were at the apex of the hull trades, 12
13
14
Unlike the British shipbuilding industry, which is extensively documented, ship repair has received no monographic treatment and has been largely neglected by historians. This point has been made by I. Buxton, ‘The British Ship Repair Industry, 1900–1953: Four Case Studies’ and L. Johnman and H. Murphy, ‘The Development of the British Ship Repair Industry, 1945–1990: An Overview’, in D. J. Starkey and H. Murphy (eds.) Beyond Shipping and Shipbuilding: Britain’s Ancillary Maritime Interests in the Twentieth Century (Hull: Maritime Historical Studies Centre, 2007), pp. 65, 81. At the outbreak of war there were twenty-seven main unions in shipbuilding and repair, and an assortment of smaller unions. A riveting squad normally consisted of four workers, a rivet heater (boy), a holder up and a left and right-handed riveter. Riveters were widely admired for their metronomic skills. Payment was by results, that is, number of rivets deposited to pre-arranged contract
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and with riveters, holders-up, caulkers, and angle ironsmiths were members of the principal trade union in shipbuilding and repair, the Boilermakers Society.15 Shipyard trades were strictly demarcated,16 and the closed shop predominated.17 Before and during the war, numerous disputes arose over which trade had the exclusive right to undertake jobs or processes,18 and there was an excessive list of complex time, lieu and piece rates, allied with allowances and bonuses for particular jobs. All combined to nurture inter-trade union sectionalism, a situation which the employers both tolerated and exploited.19 The Boilermakers’ general secretary, John Hill, though his union would increase its membership accordingly, commented regarding the outbreak of war, that it was, ‘exceedingly difficult for working men to understand what the fight was all about’.20 In terms of technical progress, the solidarity of the Boilermakers’ Society had largely held off employers’ attempts to de-skill trades and reduce the manpower needed for certain processes. What new technology had been introduced had a limited impact: for example, in riveting, the use of bulky hydraulic riveting machines. Hand-held pneumatic riveting guns and caulking
15
16
17
18
19
20
prices. Right-handed riveters were the highest paid and rivet heaters, lowest. The school leaving age was twelve. With the more widespread adoption of pneumatic guns, the squad size changed. United Society of Boilermakers and Iron and Steel Shipbuilders. Like riveters, platers were also organised in squads of skilled (including angle ironsmiths) and unskilled (platers helpers) men, comprising eight to twenty members, and were the highest paid of the shipyard trades. For an overview, see H. Murphy, ‘Labour in the British Shipbuilding and Ship Repairing Industries in the Twentieth Century’, in M. van der Linden, H. Murphy and R. Varela (eds.) Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Workers around the World: Case Studies 1950–2010 (Amsterdam and Chicago: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), pp. 47–116. To illustrate the demarcation lines between two shipyard trades, shipwrights (hull trade) and joiners (outfit trade), the latter were only allowed to work on wood up to 1 ½ inches thick. What control trade unions had externally in shipbuilding and repair was in determining who had the right to enter these industries. Both industries ran on the principle of the pre- or post-entry ‘closed shop’, that is, a potential entrant already had to belong to a recognised trade union or had to join one post-entry. There were long-held grievances between shipwrights and boilermakers dating from the transition from wooden to iron and then steel shipbuilding. From the 1890s onwards, boilermakers displaced shipwrights in hull construction in private shipyards but not in the Royal Dockyards. L. Johnman and H. Murphy, British Shipbuilding and the State since 1918: A Political Economy of Decline (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002), p. 4. J. E. Mortimer, History of the Boilermakers Society, vol. 3: 1940–1989 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1994), pp. 2–3. Hill was born in Govan in 1863, left school for the shipyards at age twelve, and served an apprenticeship as a plater.
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hammers were more widely used, particularly the latter, in what was an individual trade.21 There were local employers’ associations on all the major river centres, and nationally, the Shipbuilding Employers’ Federation (SEF, est. 1899), had overall responsibility for labour matters.22 However, in individual shipyards higher managerial control was limited, and much of the production in the hull trades was organised by unionised squad leaders and a small cadre of foremen, promoted from the workforce. Downturns in demand led to cyclical flexibility in hiring and firing, which was somewhat alleviated by traditional movements of workers between firms in highly concentrated shipbuilding districts in Clydeside, Tyneside and Wearside. Moreover, in the hull trades, the Boilermakers’ Society maintained a five-year apprenticeship to the trade and sought to control the ratio of tradesmen to apprentices against management opposition.23 Demarcation disputes were dealt with by local courts of arbitration.24 Prior to the war, the employers’ last recourse against industrial action was the lockout, whereby the gates of the shipyard were closed until the men either accepted in full or in part the employers’ conditions, including wage cuts. There had been national lockouts in 1897–8, 1907 and 1908 (twice). In September 1910, during a period of contraction in demand, the SEF, at a day’s notice, locked out the entire membership of the most powerful trade union in the shipbuilding industry, the Boilermakers’ Society, in federated shipyards. It took two months before the employers agreed to negotiate and a further fifteen 21
22
23 24
Hydraulic riveting machines were too heavy to move around the building berth and too powerful in their closing action for safe work on lighter plates: ultimately, their use was restricted to no more than 2.5 per cent of total riveting in the industry. Pneumatic riveting machines introduced later, were too light in their closing action to ensure watertight hull plates: by 1920, they accounted for around 25 per cent of total riveting. See, A. J. Reid, ‘Employers, Strategies and Craft Production: The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870–1930’, in S. Tolliday and J. Zeitlin (eds.) The Power to Manage? Employers and Industrial Relations in Comparative-Historical Perspective (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 41, and A. J. Reid, The Tide of Democracy: Shipyard Workers and Social Relations in Britain, 1870–1950 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), pp. 66–77. In practice, local employers’ organisations, such as the Clyde Shipbuilders Association (est. 1888), were more powerful, although this slowly changed over time. Indeed, the SEF did not set a national plain time rate of pay for skilled and unskilled workers until 1930. See Jones, Shipbuilding in Britain, p. 177. The private ship repair firms also had their local associations, and one national association, the Dry Dock Owners and Repairers Central Council (est. 1910), which dealt with labour matters and policy. Reid, Tide of Democracy, pp. 136–9. Sidney Pollard and Paul Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 168, seven local boards were in operation. Located on the Tyne, Tees and Wear, Birkenhead and on Clydeside (lower and upper Clyde).
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weeks before resolution. This action not only poisoned future workplace relations, it also meant that the Society was unable to pay unemployment benefit to its members for three years.25 This, in part, explains the Boilermakers’ refusal to ratify a national demarcation agreement with employers and twenty-three other unions, including engineers, in 1912.26 The use of the lockout persisted after the war.27 In July 1914, with a standard working week of fifty-four hours (six ninehour days), some 180,000 employees were engaged in shipbuilding; of whom 1,000 were women, mostly in clerical or cleaning jobs, although a small cadre was employed as French polishers in yards that built passenger liners.28 This figure does not consider workers in shipbuilding firms who were in horizontally integrated concerns, and had marine engine building and marine engineering works inside or adjacent to shipyards, in tandem with ship repair facilities.
War and Labour On the advent of war, in the absence of any reserved occupation legislation or of conscription, many shipbuilding workers, the clear majority being single men, immediately enlisted. D & W Henderson at Meadowside, a small mercantile shipyard in Glasgow, saw 369 employees join up during the war, with 237 of that number belonging to the hull trades, and 16 in staff positions.29 At a much larger shipyard, Beardmore’s Naval Construction Works at Dalmuir, officially opened in 1906 with the launch of the battleship HMS Agamemnon, 500 men joined up on the declaration of war. Ultimately, 1,625 Beardmore men enlisted, and 181 of them were killed.30 On the lower Clyde at Scott’s of 25 26
27
28
29
30
Ibid., p. 162. Murphy, ‘Labour in British Shipbuilding’, p. 52. Jones, Shipbuilding in Britain, p. 163. The Edinburgh Agreement of 1908 was to last three years and could be terminated at six months’ notice. It was reviewed again in 1913 and renewed; but owing to the outbreak of war it was placed in abeyance until 1919. L. Johnman and H. Murphy, ‘An Overview of the Economic and Social Effects of the Interwar Depression on Clydeside Shipbuilding Communities’, International Journal of Maritime History, 18:1 (2006), p. 234. In April 1923, the Boilermakers Society was locked out for a period of seven months, which arose over its refusal to accept a nationally agreed overtime clause. Figure of 180,000 taken from Official History of the Ministry of Munitions, vol. IV (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1922), table B1, 145, and for women, p. 139. Roll of Honour D & W Henderson Shipbuilders and Marine Engineers, Meadowside, Glasgow. Names of Employees who during the Great European War, took up arms for the Flag. Date of War commencing 4 August 1914. Document in possession of William Martin, Espoo, Finland, to whom the author is grateful. I. Johnston, Beardmore Built: The Rise and Fall of a Clydeside Shipyard (Clydebank: Clydebank District Libraries and Museums Dept., 1993), p. 99.
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Greenock, of those who joined up, 31 lost their lives.31 On the Tyne, 1,867 men from Armstrong Whitworth had enlisted before September 1914, and before November over 400 more from the shipyard of Hawthorn Leslie. At Palmers of Jarrow, 1,543 men joined up, of whom 145 were killed.32 In Belfast, those workers from Harland and Wolff who joined up and found themselves less well off as a result had their wages made up by the company for the duration of the war.33 At the Dublin Dockyard, the firm lost men to the forces, but the remaining workforce, through a weekly levy, made financial contributions to the National Relief Fund set up by the Prince of Wales.34 Clearly, the numbers of mainly young and single men enlisting from the shipyards left those remaining in a stronger bargaining position with the employers than beforehand. It also gave trade unions the opportunity to urge the employment of their older unemployed brethren.35 Nonetheless, by July 1915 recruitment to the armed forces had denuded industry generally of a large proportion of essential workers. Nearly 20 per cent of male workers in engineering trades had enlisted, and as David Lloyd George later noted: In far too many cases it was the most energetic and skilled workers who rushed to the colours and the less efficient who were left behind.36
With warship building prioritised, mercantile-only yards suffered as materials were diverted to yards with warships under construction. Many yards had purchased cheaper German steel before the war, and steelworks which had imported ores from the continent now had to rely on home production.37 Steel prices accordingly spiralled until all steel production came under control of 31
32
33
34
35
36
37
Two Centuries of Shipbuilding by the Scott’s at Greenock, 2nd revised edition (London, 1920), Roll of Honour, 1914–1918, p. 174. J. Clarke, Building Ships on the North East Coast, Pt.2 c1914–c.1980: A Labour of Love, Risk and Pain (Whitley Bay: Bewick Press, 1997), p. 192. M. Moss and J. R. Hume, Shipbuilders to the World: 125 Years of Harland and Wolff Belfast, 1861–1986 (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1986), p. 175. Later King Edward VIII. For example, the weekly levy on platers was one shilling per man, riveters paid 6d per pound per squad, and caulkers, drillers and blacksmiths 3d per pound per man. See, J. Smellie, Shipbuilding and Repairing in Dublin: A Record of Work Carried out by the Dublin Dockyard Co, 1901–1923 (Glasgow: McCorquodale, 1924), pp. 139–40. Clarke, Building Ships on the North East Coast, p. 192, on the Tyne, in November 1914, there were 550 members of the Boilermakers Society (mainly riveters) unemployed. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (London: Odhams, 1938), p. 172 The Port Talbot steelworks in South Wales, for example, opened in 1901 and closed in 1903. It was re-opened in 1907 by Baldwins Ltd and the Gloucester Carriage Works. By using cheap continental ores and with a site close to the sea they intended to produce steel at cheaper prices than their British competitors. Two shipbuilding firms, Workman, Clark at Belfast and Russell and Company at Port Glasgow, took shares in the venture. See J. R. Hume and M. S. Moss, A Bed of Nails: The History of Peter MacCallum and Sons
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the newly formed Ministry of Munitions in June 1915. Ships plates accounted for up to 30 per cent of the national output of the British steel industry in 1914.38 In Scotland, in 1912 and 1913, over 60 per cent of indigenous steel producers’ output consisted of ship and marine boiler plates, and a high proportion of steel sections were destined for shipyards.39 Labour unions were naturally unwilling to give up what they considered to be hard-won terms and conditions of employment. However, in the short term, management and labour relations remained largely unchanged. What did alter was the direction and speed of production, especially with the larger mixed naval and mercantile yards now concentrating on warship construction under Admiralty direction and aiming to clear any merchant ship backlog in their yards. By October 1914, at one of the larger firms in the industry, John Brown at Clydebank, there appeared to be a lack of Admiralty oversight, as the management did as they had always done and paid off a large section of its workforce, nearly 2,000 shipbuilders, on the completion of the battlecruiser HMS Tiger. Those paid off would quickly be absorbed into other nearby shipyards, such as Beardmore, Fairfield, Stephen and Yarrow. As Johnston noted, this loss of men posed a serious problem for Brown’s as it was awarded another battlecruiser contract (HMS Repulse) in December.40 Clearly, there were lessons to be learned by the Admiralty as to the direction of labour. In the case of Repulse, some 250 men had to be re-allocated to Brown’s in April 1915, and similar numbers on two occasions in the following seven weeks. From January to May 1915, some 1,400 men were added to Brown’s payroll, which then stood at 10,688.41 With overtime and weekend working prevalent, and wages accordingly higher than pre-war, absenteeism became an issue. Lloyd George, representing the non-conformist and temperance bloc, laid much of the blame for absenteeism and falling productivity in shipbuilding and other sectors on excess alcohol consumption. In this he had the support of the SEF, which in March 1915 advocated a total ban on taxable alcohol and the closure of all pubs and clubs in shipbuilding areas.42 In April, Lloyd George authorised thirty-three plain-clothes Special Branch officers to investigate alcohol consumption in shipbuilding areas. They reported that the problem was ‘localised and specific’;
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Ltd of Greenock. 1781–1981 – A Study in Survival (Greenock: Lang and Fulton, 1981), p. 36. Reid, Tide of Democracy, p. 23. P. L. Payne, Colvilles and the Scottish Steel Industry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 117. I. Johnston, Ships for a Nation. John Brown and Company, Clydebank ([Dumbarton]: West Dunbartonshire Libraries and Museums, 2000), pp. 148–9. Ibid., p. 149. Of this total some 3,500 were employed in Brown’s engine works. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 194.
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however, on the Clyde, it was more prevalent, especially (with Sunday overtime working) on Mondays, with riveters as the principal offenders.43 The situation was not eased by a Clydeside tradition that riveting squads be paid by squad leaders in local public houses.44 Lloyd George gave an example of a battleship in need of immediate repair being delayed for a day by the absence of riveters through consumption of excess alcohol. However, he did water down (literally in the case of beer) calls for total prohibition of alcohol, which predictably met with strenuous political and commercial opposition.45
State Control of Labour: The Treasury Agreements and the Munitions of War Act 1915 In 1914 and for most of 1915, in many cases inflation outstripped pay – a major cause of an engineering workers’ strike in Glasgow in January 1915, in which, at its height, 10,000 engineers, many of whom worked in marine engineering works horizontally integrated with shipyards, downed tools in an unofficial dispute. The dispute began at G & J Weir’s works at Cathcart, Glasgow and quickly spread to other Clydeside factories. The workers at Weir’s demanded equal pay to offset rises in the cost of living and comparability in pay with workers brought over from America by the fiercely antiunion William Weir,46 who paid them six shillings more per week than their Scottish counterparts. The strike lasted three weeks and the demands were not met; but it is notable for the formation of the Labour Withholding Committee (LWC). The LWC was a rank-and-file response by workers, mostly shop stewards, in what amounted to a shop floor rebellion against the dictates of trade union leadership, in this case the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and their accommodation with employers. Despite Weir’s unpopularity with workers, by July Lloyd George had appointed him Director of Munitions (Scotland). By October the LWC had morphed into the Clyde Workers’ Committee (CWC), and its chair and treasurer positions were filled by two
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H. Strachan, Financing the War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 70. Although eventually replaced by electric arc welding as the shipbuilding industry’s principal method of metal joining, riveting continued into the 1960s, more so in ship repair. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 194, 203. Subsequently a bill was passed establishing a Central Control Board, which had a range of powers to close pubs and clubs, and to regulate hours of opening and the amount of alcohol which could be brought into specific areas or transported within them. Weir barely acknowledged trade unions in peacetime, but tolerated them; he wrote on 20 September 1915, ‘Trade unionism in war time and adherence to its principles is AntiNational’. Weir Papers, Glasgow University Business Archives, DC 96/17/58.
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engineering shop stewards, Willie Gallagher and David Kirkwood, respectively.47 With no immediate end to the war in sight, production difficulties, trade union hostility, strikes and concerns over profiteering, the issue of state centralization and control of production in the munitions industries (including warship building) came to the fore. The Treasury Agreements of 17–19 March 1915, signed on 25 March,48 were a bilateral voluntary compact between the state, through the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, and the President of the Board of Trade, Walter Runciman (a shipowner), as well as six national trade union leaders. It guaranteed restoration of pre-war practices, and it also applied to government work. However, for the duration of the war only, unions were to abandon the right to strike and restrictive practices, and to allow dilution of the workforce, including upgrading of semi-skilled and unskilled men and the introduction of female workers.49 On 25 May 1915, the Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, formed a coalition, with nine Conservative opposition members in cabinet and one Labour representative.50 Given the new political imperative and continued trade union concerns over profiteering, the Treasury Agreement became compulsory through the Munitions of War Act of June 1915, which was passed to allow the maximum output of munitions under centralised state control. The act ended the ‘business as usual’ approach to private industry, 47
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Both Gallagher and Kirkwood later became Members of Parliament, Gallagher as the Communist Party MP for West Fife in 1935 and in 1945, and Kirkwood as Independent Labour MP for Dumbarton Burghs in 1922, before joining the Labour Party in 1933, and remaining an MP until 1951, when he was awarded a baronetcy. Both published autobiographies. See W. Gallagher, Revolt on the Clyde (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1936) and D. Kirkwood, My Life of Revolt (London: Harrap, 1935). For an account of the CWC period, see, J. Hinton, ‘The Clyde Workers Committee and the Dilution Struggle’, in A. Briggs and J. Saville (eds.) Essays in Labour History, 1886–1923 (London: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 152–94. The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), TNA MUN 5/10/180/17 Conference between the government and the representatives of trade unions and federations, 17–25 March 1915. TNA MUN 5/10/180/26 Treasury Agreement, 19 March 1915, Memorandum and agreement made with the trade unions on acceleration of output on government work. Clause 6 of the Treasury Agreement provided for the relaxation of trade practices solely to work for war purposes during the war period. Operations on which skilled men are at present employed, but which by reason of their character, can be performed by semiskilled or female labour, may be done by such labour during the work period. For the shell crisis, see H. Strachan, The First World War, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 992–1105, and D. French, ‘The Military Background to the “Shell Crisis’ of May 1915’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 2:2 (1979), pp. 192–205. For the background and working of the Ministry, see, Official History of the Ministry of Munitions (8 vols, London: HMSO, 1919–22).
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prohibited employer lockouts and made strikes illegal.51 Nevertheless, strikes still occurred; but on an unofficial basis, particularly on Clydeside. The act also instituted controlled establishments engaged in war work, which made the traditional mobility of labour in shipbuilding districts far more difficult.52 Industrial disputes were to be compulsorily settled by special munitions tribunals; and, in a clause, which now gave the employers the upper hand, particularly on Clydeside, no worker could be employed without a leaving certificate from a previous employer, which would state that the employee was a ‘satisfactory’ (open to a myriad of interpretations) worker and was leaving with his employer’s permission.53 It was not long before Clydeside employers used the leaving certificate provision to retain excess skilled labour and for disciplinary reasons by threatening men with dismissal without certificates. The legislation quickly became known on Clydeside as the ‘Slavery Act’.54 This provision cut directly across the traditional trade autonomy of the squad system of work organisation and the mobility of labour between yards, and it was deeply unpopular. Moreover, dilution, particularly in engineering, threatened the extant division of labour. Unsurprisingly, the provisions of the Munitions of War Act proved highly controversial. As Melling has noted, ‘there is general agreement in the literature (historians of labour) that the resistance to the Munitions Act of 1915 originated in the Clyde shipyards’.55 Clydeside had the greatest concentration of shipbuilding firms in Great Britain with thirty-two firms belonging to the Clyde Shipbuilder’s Association. In the warship sector, four firms could construct capital ships, such as battleships and battlecruisers, in addition to cruisers, submarines and destroyers.56 The Clyde’s geographical location, situated on the west coast of Scotland, then safe from air raid and nominally from undersea and surface raiders, was important.57 London, the midlands, and the east coast towns and ports were far more vulnerable to Zeppelin and later aircraft attack, and on the Wear, in 1916 and 1917, shipbuilding employers objected to workers’ stoppages to attend funerals of victims.58
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Munitions of War Act, 1915, 5 & 6 Geo. 5, Ch. 54, Part 1, sections 1 and 2. Ibid., Part 2, sect. 4. Ibid., Part 3, sect. 15 and Part 2, sect. 7. Reid, Tide of Democracy, pp. 187–8. J. Melling, ‘Whatever Happened to Red Clydeside: Industrial Conflicts and the Politics of Skill in the First World War’, International Review of Social History 35:1 (1990), p. 11. These were, Beardmore at Dalmuir, John Brown at Clydebank and Fairfield at Govan, all on the Upper Clyde, and Scott’s at Greenock on the Lower Clyde. The inner Clyde estuary was protected by an anti-submarine boom and gun emplacements stretching from Cloch Point, near Gourock on the south side, to Dunoon on the north side. Clarke, Building Ships on the North East Coast, vol. II, p. 215. In March 1917 ten angleironsmiths and nine helpers were each fined 5 shillings at a Munitions Tribunal for attending a funeral.
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Problems on Clydeside During 1915, Clydeside had become the crucible of dissatisfaction and scepticism over the direction of the war economy, inextricably linked with wartime inflation and rising food prices, profiteering, and particularly the pressure of rising rents as the munitions industries’ workforces grew. Many private landlords took advantage of increasing demand and scarcity of supply by raising rents and evicting tenants. For the working classes, housing conditions in the west of Scotland ranged from poor to abysmal. Up to 1903, in the Bay area of Port Glasgow, a population of 2,000 upwards shared thirteen toilets in wholly insanitary living conditions, a position only alleviated by a gift of £10,000 by a local shipbuilder, William Todd Lithgow, to improve the area.59 By 1914, local authority housing was scarce. with only 3,844 families housed (none of them impoverished) out of a total of 346,387 households in the large towns of the west of Scotland.60 In Clydebank, before 1914 only twenty-eight local authority houses had been built,61 and in 1915, in the west of Scotland, 93 per cent of one room- and nearly two-thirds of two room-flats shared a toilet, frequently between four families.62 The prevalence of private rented properties against the paucity of local authority housing provided fertile ground for profiteering by landlords.
Glasgow Rent Strikes In May 1915, with workers’ housing stretched to the limit, the inability to pay increased rents, particularly for those families with servicemen on the western front and elsewhere, led to a wave of evictions, and prompted the Glasgow Rent Strike. With the backing of the Independent Labour Party, the rent strike was organised by the Glasgow Women’s Housing Association (GWHA).63 The strike began in the shipbuilding area of Govan, sparked by the eviction of a soldier’s family in April, which led to a violent confrontation with police. These confrontations and demonstrations against rising rents continued as the strike took hold and spread to other areas of Glasgow, and downriver as far as Greenock. By November some 20,000 tenants had joined the strike. Throughout, the strike had the support of shipbuilding workers who regularly turned out to support the GWHA against evictions and threatened strike 59
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Port Glasgow Improvement Scheme Inquiry, 31 March–4 April 1903, and obituary of W. T. Lithgow, Greenock Telegraph, 8 June 1908. Slaven, Development of the West of Scotland, p. 239. Third Statistical Account of Scotland (Glasgow: Collins, 1959), pp. 485–6. Slaven, Development of the West of Scotland, p. 241. The GWHA, under the leadership of Mary Barbour, Mary Laird and Helen Crawfurd, was formed in 1914 through the Independent Labour Party and the Women’s Labour League.
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action in support. Indeed, on 17 November, workers at six Upper Clyde shipyards went on a one-day strike against the summonsing to court of rent strikers, an issue not covered by the Munitions Act. After a mass demonstration throughout the day at the court, the summonses were withdrawn. The threat of continued strike action over rents, and concomitant industrial unrest on Clydeside generally and in shipbuilding particularly, over the provisions of the Munitions of War Act used by employers to retain and discipline labour, led to government action on rent control. On the recommendation of the Secretary for Scotland, Thomas McKinnon Wood, rents were to be returned to pre-war levels, and, on 23 December, The Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act was enacted.64
Dilution In an industry characterised by craft union organisation of production, and cyclical flexibility in hiring and firing by management, shipbuilding and engineering unions had hitherto been fundamentally opposed to dilution, and, although adopted in the Treasury Agreement, dilution had yet to be accepted by union members and enforced by government. Before the passing of the Munitions of War Act, trade union leaders had made it plain that they would only accept dilution if employers’ profits in munitions industries engaged in war work were limited. In the absence of an excess profits tax, profits of firms engaged in the wider economy remained unlimited, and, as Lloyd George noted, were ‘attaining unprecedented dimensions’.65 However, in the Munitions of War Act of June 1915, in what came to be known as ‘controlled establishments’ (which from an amendment act in March 1916 included all merchant shipbuilding and repair yards) profits were limited by a munitions levy to 20 per cent of the average profit of the preceding two pre-war years.66 Nonetheless, by September the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Reginald McKenna, who had already substantially increased the income tax base, proposed an excess profits tax applicable to all other businesses.67 Subsequently, agriculture and shipping were exempted. The act received royal assent on 23 December 1915, and excess profits duty (EPD) came into force.68
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For this period and antecedents, see J. Melling, Rent Strikes: People’s Struggles for Housing in West Scotland (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1983), and M. Castells, The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 181 Munitions of War Act, 1915 5 & 6 Geo V, Ch. 54, Part II, Clause 5. British Parliamentary Papers (BPP), House of Commons, Deb. 21 September 1915, vol. 74, cc. 356–9 Excess Profits Tax. Finance Act (No.2), 1915, 5 & 6 Geo V, Ch. 89, Part III, 38 (1).
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Like the munitions levy, EPD was retrospective, and during its operation it made an increasing contribution to financing the war, and curbed, to an extent, profiteering. Beginning in 1915 at 50 per cent, EPD had reached 80 per cent by 1917, accounting for 30 per cent of government tax revenue.69 EPD and the munitions levy did, however, favour those big companies which had invested heavily in plant and equipment well before the war, such as the warship firms, which could continue to make comparable gains during its course without showing any growth in profit.70 Conversely, medium-sized mercantile shipbuilders faced rather high EPD tax bills after the war’s cessation. Moreover, owing to protracted disputes with Inland Revenue over what constituted ‘standard profit’ and what allowances were made for depreciation, eventual settlements were delayed for years afterwards, and provisions for EPD in company accounts during and after the war were not always required in full.71 Moreover, accounting procedures in the Ministry of Munitions, the world’s largest industrial undertaking, left much to be desired.72 Throughout the process of encouraging and then legislating on dilution, opposition to it had been rising, particularly in Glasgow, where opposition was linked to a growing engineering shop stewards’ movement in the city and its environs. In shipbuilding, a shipwrights’ strike of August 1915 almost brought production on the Clyde to a standstill when a dispute between two shipwrights, accused of not attending to their work, and a foreman was badly managed and escalated to an eight-day strike of 426 shipwrights at the 69
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EPD was the country’s first comprehensive attempt to tax ‘excessive’ business profits and was widely imitated in other countries. EPD was a complex tax which had two objectives: to generate additional revenues to help fund dramatically increased wartime government expenditure and to curb excessive profiteering. For this period, see A. J. Arnold, ‘A Paradise for Profiteers: The Importance and Treatment of Profits during the First World War’, and M. Billings and L. Oates, ‘Innovation and Pragmatism in Tax design: Excess Profits Duty in the UK during the First World War’, Accounting History Review 24:2–3 (2014), pp. 61–81, and pp. 83–101, special issue, Accounting and the First World War, guest eds. W. Funnel and S. P. Walker. See also, M. Daunton, Just Taxes: The Politics of Taxation in Britain, 1914–1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), ch. 2. The latter point is made by H. Strachan, Financing the War, p. 72. Peebles, Warshipbuilding on the Clyde, p. 102, n. 22. Peebles says that the warship firm Fairfield at Govan paid £333,396 in 1928–9, in final settlement of EPD. Murphy notes that a medium sized mercantile builder and marine engineer Doxford owed £662,563 in EPD by 1927, which it could not pay. Instead, the Inland Revenue took a majority of the preference shares in the company and appointed a director to its board: H. Murphy, ‘An Anatomy of Speculative Failure: Wm. Doxford & Sons Ltd., Sunderland, and the Northumberland Shipbuilding Company of Howdon on Tyne, 1919–1945’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 104:1 (2018), p. 68. For this, see, S. Marriner, ‘The Ministry of Munitions, 1915–1919 and Government Accounting Procedures’, Accounting and Business Research, 10:1 (1980), pp. 130–42. The Ministry’s accountants had a dismal record of failure to 1918, and millions of pounds of taxpayers’ monies were written off.
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Fairfield shipyard in Govan. Under the Munitions of War Act, seventeen men were convicted and fined. Three men refused to pay their fines and were imprisoned. The shipwrights’ union threatened a strike of all Clyde shipwrights if the men were not released. The government then appointed a Committee of Enquiry into the dispute which made practical recommendations about solving future disputes of this kind. The union, satisfied by the report, paid the men’s fines, and the strike was called off.73 What the committee of enquiry had in fact found was that labour unrest against the provisions of the Munitions Act amongst the shipyard trades could in part be traced to the peremptory actions of foremen in firms enforcing its terms, such as at Beardmore and Fairfield.74 This was hardly surprising, as prior to the war the Clyde employers were well versed in applying the starvation method of discipline through lockouts, and their adversarial attitudes persisted throughout the war.75 Meanwhile, opposition to dilution in engineering was coalescing around the CWC, and by December Lloyd George was sufficiently concerned by CWC action at Wm Beardmore’s Parkhead Forge that he travelled with the Labour MP, Arthur Henderson, to Glasgow to address a meeting of 3,000 shop stewards and workers in St Andrew’s Hall on Christmas Day. Officially, full reporting of the meeting was censored under Defence of the Realm Act legislation, but a report appeared in Forward, the newspaper of the Independent Labour Party, on 1 January 1916, which pointed out the hostile reception afforded to Lloyd George and printed a near verbatim account of the meeting. During his peroration, Lloyd George, playing to the audience, claimed that the establishment of National Factories created great socialist establishments, ‘the whole owned by the State, created by the State, no profit made by any capitalist because they don’t belong to any capitalist’.76 Both Forward and, the CWC newspaper, The Worker, which reproduced the Forward article a week later, were suppressed under the Defence of the Realm Act.77 Emboldened, in January 1916 Lloyd George appointed dilution commissioners to the Clyde, and by the end of March, after strikes against dilution at Parkhead Forge, Weir’s and elsewhere, six CWC shop stewards, including a future Member of Parliament, David Kirkwood, were ‘deported’ to 73 74
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Official History of the Ministry of Munitions, vol. IV, pp. 51–9. Ministry of Munitions, Clyde Munition Workers. Report of Lord Balfour of Burleigh and Lynden Macassey (1915) Cmd. 8136, paragraph 2. Reid, Tide of Democracy, p. 181, notes, citing Christopher Addison’s diary, that a deputation of Clyde employers in June 1915 desired a form of martial law over their workforces, which the employers would administer. Forward, ‘The Dilution of Labour. Mr Lloyd George in Glasgow’, Saturday 1 January 1916. The Worker, no. 1, 8 January 1916. A full transcript of this meeting is contained in Official History of the Ministry of Munitions, vol. IV, pp. 176–80. Official History of Ministry of Munitions, vol. IV, pp. 111 and 123–4.
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Edinburgh, where they had to report to police three times per day. The power of the CWC was broken, and by the time the six were allowed to return to Glasgow in June 1917, dilution in engineering was firmly established.78 By August 1916, 7,436 skilled engineers had been transferred to new jobs because of dilution at a time when there were 17,500 members of skilled engineering unions on Clydeside.79 The resistance of the Clydeside shop stewards to the Munitions of War Act in 1915–16 was hardly revolutionary in intent. They did not trust local and national officials, whose accommodation with ministers led to shop floor scepticism. Particularly in engineering, they feared that trade boundaries and demarcations would be swept aside, and that skills and payment would be subject to wage stress as dilution took hold and as employers ‘de-skilled’ many jobs. Indeed, the political significance of the industrial strife on ‘Red Clydeside’ during the period 1915–22 may be less important than its economic implications.80 J. Foster has succinctly suggested that: a limited but significant radicalisation did occur, relative to the specific labour relations practices of employers in the west of Scotland and the structural weakness of Clydeside’s economy.81
On the Clyde, dilution in shipbuilding and ship repair was less contentious than in engineering, which involved more repetitive work, and so was more susceptible to de-skilling. Indeed, in shipbuilding, dilution occurred much more slowly than in engineering. By June 1916, military conscription was underway, and nationally the shipbuilding workforce had grown by 33,480 men and 3,032 women since 1914.82 By then, the Clyde Dilution Commission, in its discussions with union leaders, and the Clyde Shipbuilders Association had made some progress in negotiating local agreements with boilermakers, shipwrights and coppersmiths, which enabled an extensive system for
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Ibid., pp. 129–32, 1,000 men went on strike at the Parkhead Forge on 17 March. Hinton, ‘The Clyde Workers Committee and the Dilution Struggle’, p. 153. Specifically, by I. McLean, The Legend of Red Clydeside (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1983), and A. Reid, ‘Dilution, Trade Unionism and the State in Britain during the First World War’, in S. Tolliday and J. Zeitlin (eds.) Shop Floor Bargaining and the State: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1985), pp. 46–74. See also, Hinton, ‘The Clyde Workers Committee and the Dilution Struggle’, pp. 152–84, and G. R. Rubin, War, Law and Labour: The Munitions Acts, State Regulation and the Unions, 1915–1921 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), and J. Hinton, The First Shop Stewards Movement (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973). These authors’ arguments are convincingly analysed by Melling, ‘Whatever Happened to Red Clydeside’, pp. 3–32. J. Foster, ‘Strike Action and Working-Class Politics on Clydeside, 1914–1919’, International Review of Social History, 35:1 (1990), pp. 33–70. Official History of the Ministry of Munitions, vol. IV, table B1, 145, and for women, p. 139.
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upgrading semi-skilled workers and interchanging skilled men.83 Numbers of unskilled females entering shipbuilding during the war never reached over 3 per cent in terms of men employed. Moreover, thirteen Clyde shipbuilding firms refused to employ women at all.84 In marine engineering, an industry with more repetitive work, the comparable figure was 6 per cent. As a War Cabinet report later baldly noted, in strength, continuity of employment, training and technical knowledge, women could not equal skilled men, and they were, as a rule, useful only for repetition work.85 In shipbuilding, women were generally kept away from the berth, but some did work as rivet heaters. On the Clyde, opposition to the leaving certificate provisions of the Munitions of War Act and to dilution was greater than elsewhere, a position that was somewhat alleviated by the Amendment Act of March 1916, which standardised the forms to exclude employer’s comments and imposed fines rather than imprisonment. When industrial commissioners investigated dilution and industrial relations elsewhere employers on the Wear, for instance, did not offer any evidence, and on the Tyne reported that there was no serious labour unrest in the district.86
The Second Unrestricted German Submarine Campaign and the Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Industries Response After the battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916, Britain had control of the sea in terms of the economic blockade of Germany, but not of the U-boat.87 When Lloyd George became prime minister in December 1916, he appointed a Glasgow shipowner, Sir Joseph Maclay, as Shipping Controller and Minister of Shipping, and later formed a new Ministry of Shipping.88 It took over the general requisitioning and control of British shipping from the Admiralty, a step, which together with a programme to hasten construction of merchant ships on the government’s account, was designed to counter the growing Uboat threat. Ships of approved standard types were owned by the state and operated on its behalf by selected shipowners acting as managers.89 To boost
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Ibid., p. 135. See also, Clyde Shipbuilders Association Papers, TD 241/12/32 Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Dilution Agreements between Clyde Dilution Commissioners and District Committees of the United Society of Boilermakers, 10 June 1916. and Shipwrights and Ship constructors Association, 15 June 1916. Reid, ‘Dilution, Trade Unionism and the State’, p. 51. Report of War Cabinet on Women Employed in Industry Cmd. 135 (London, HMSO, 1919), p. 8. Clarke, Shipbuilding on the North East Coast, vol. II, p. 215. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, Vol., 1., 672. By the end of 1916 Britain had lost, mainly to the submarine, nearly one fifth of the total British tonnage extant at the outbreak of war. Sir Joseph Paton Maclay was Chairman of Maclay and Macintyre Shipowners, Glasgow. Hugh Murphy, ‘British Shipbuilding Industry during the Great War: Contextual Overview Incorporating Standardization and the National Shipyards, 1916–1920’,
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construction, Maclay placed orders for fifty-two steamships in five shipyards in Canada, Japan, Hong Kong and Shanghai.90 His programme assumed that the war would last throughout 1918.91 The new construction programme would therefore take time to mature. In the interim, the U-boat campaign, which was renewed in February 1917, was highly effective. In April alone, British, Allied and neutral shipping losses to U-boats amounted to 844,750 tons, and serious losses continued until October.92 The Admiralty’s continued opposition to convoying merchant ships had imperilled Britain’s capacity to win the war, so much so that the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, stated in April that ‘it is impossible for us to continue the war if these losses continue’.93 Maclay consistently rejected Jellicoe’s arguments that convoys presented too large a target to U-boats and that merchant shipmasters lacked the discipline to ‘keep station’ in a convoy. Eventually, Lloyd George concurred, and the Admiralty gave way.94 Maclay’s responsibility for shipbuilding barely lasted six months. In May 1917, control reverted to the Admiralty with the appointment of a new civilian Naval Controller, Eric Geddes, who was responsible for both merchant and naval construction and the purchase of ships.95 A new department of Auxiliary Shipbuilding was formed under a Deputy Controller, Major-General A. S. Collard, staffed by experienced private shipbuilders, with the Port Glasgow shipbuilder, James Lithgow, as Director of Merchant Shipbuilding.96 By July, Geddes had succeeded Sir Edward Carson as First Lord of the Admiralty.97 In
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96
97
International Journal of Maritime History, 24:2 (2012), pp. 19–68; here p. 49; standard ships, inter alia, comprised eight types of dry cargo tramp steamers, three types of coasters and three types of tankers. N. Firth and H. Murphy, ‘Chepstow’s Standard Shipbuilding Yards’, Ships in Focus Record 62 (London: Ships in Focus Publications, November 2015), p. 99. For useful technical detail on standard ships, see, W. H. Mitchell and L. A. Sawyer, Wartime Standard Ships vol., 3, British Standard Ships of World War 1 (Liverpool: Sea Breezes, 1968). TNA CAB 23/2 War Cabinet Meeting 85, 2 March 1917, minutes. Murphy, ‘British Shipbuilding Industry during the Great War’, p. 35. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. I, p. 690. Jellicoe conversation with Admiral Sims, USN. For this period, see, Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. I, pp. 678–711. See also, Henry Newbolt, Naval Operations, vol. V (London: Longman, Green & Co., 1931), pp. 1–32. There had already been an element of convoy in the French coal trade, and later in the Scandinavian trade. K. Grieves, Sir Eric Geddes: Business and Government in War and Peace (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989). Collard was previously Director of Inland Waterways and Docks in the Department of the Director-General of Movements and Railways. Lithgow had commanded an artillery battery on the western front: J. M. Reid, James Lithgow: Master of Work (London: Hutchinson, 1964), pp. 45–69. Geddes was replaced as Shipping Controller by Sir Alan Garrett Anderson of Anderson, Green & Co. Ltd., managers of the Orient Line.
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addition to building standard ships in private yards, it was also decided to build standard ships in National Shipyards on the rivers Wye and Severn against the wishes of the private shipbuilders, who refused to divert workers to them.98 Allied to the standard shipbuilding effort, the government also funded many yard extensions, and by March 1918, of 138 extensions of shipyards projected, 107 were already in hand.99 By the armistice, thirty-two new shipbuilding berths had been constructed and eleven extensions of extant berths, and another eighty-seven berths for the construction (owing to shortages of steel) of concrete ships [see Fig. 20.1]. In addition, two new private shipyards were built in 1918 at Burntisland in Fife and at Haverton Hill on Teeside, neither of which produced ships before the armistice.100 These projects were linked to the highly ambitious target of launching 3m gross tons of shipping in 1918, a total never achieved before or subsequently. With the acceleration of standard shipbuilding in private yards, the National Shipyards remained severely under-utilised, and just five days after the signing of the armistice, only one standard ship to government design, War Forest, had been completed: hardly value for money at a total government investment of £6.4 million.101 Of the target of 3 million gross registered tons, only 1.35 million were launched. The standard shipbuilding programme in private yards instituted by Maclay continued into 1918, with average building times of 5.5 months from keel to completion. In March, Harland and Wolff’s Lord Pirrie was appointed Controller General of Merchant Shipbuilding, effectively protecting the interests of the private shipbuilders and of his own yards in Belfast, Glasgow and Greenock. More than half the standard ships completed up to March 1918 came from Pirrie’s yards.102 At the armistice, 289 standard ships of various designs were either on the berths or fitting out [see Fig. 20.2]. The concentration on standard ships brought productivity benefits, not least by building ships in series.103 The success depended on good industrial relations. On 14 January 1918, 14,000 boilermakers on the Clyde withdrew their labour for a week when the Ministry of Labour (now in overall control of industrial
98
99 100 101 102
103
For the National Shipyards, see, Murphy, ‘British Shipbuilding during the Great War’, pp. 44–7, pp. 49–53, and Firth and Murphy, ‘Chepstow’s Standard Shipbuilding Yards’, pp. 97–113. BPP, House of Commons Deb, vol. 104, cc. 1078, 21 March 1918. Murphy, ‘British Shipbuilding Industry during the Great War’, p. 56. Firth and Murphy, ‘Chepstow’s Standard Shipbuilding Yards’, pp. 104 and 101. BPP. House of Commons, Deb. vol., 104, cc. 1035–85, Lord Pirrie’s appointment, 20 March 1918. Glasgow University Business Archives, DC35/71 Lithgow papers, ‘Merchant shipbuilding under Government control from May 1917 to cessation of hostilities’. Output rose by 14 per cent in the six months to September 1918.
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Figure 20.1 A ship yard, lithograph by Muirhead Bone, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 31, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917. National Museum of Wales.
relations) refused to sanction a wage award to pieceworkers (paid by results, not by time worked), despite it being agreed by the Ministry of Munitions and the Admiralty.104
Organisation of Ship Repair Just as the emphasis on warship – to the detriment of mercantile – construction could be questioned in the first years of war, so too could the lack of coordination of ship repair. When Geddes was appointed Controller, George S.F. Edwards of Smith’s Dock (Tyne) and H. M. Grayson of H & C Grayson (Mersey) were chosen to be co-Directors of Ship Repairs, with the former responsible for the ports on the east coast of Scotland and the east and south coasts of England, and the latter for the west coasts of England and Scotland 104
Reid, Tide of Democracy, pp. 198–204.
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Figure 20.2 Men at work on an almost completed Standard ship. Ministry of Information official photograph. Imperial War Museum Q 18351.
and the Irish ports (Belfast, Dublin, Londonderry and Queenstown). District superintendents were appointed beneath them, as were teams of experienced surveyors to report back to the Admiralty. During the first six months of operation, the Directorate struggled to cope with a vast arrears, with some sixty vessels beached on various coasts awaiting salvage and/or repair. However, as coordination increased, over the period 6 June 1917–31 December 1918 more than 12,000 vessels (separate and different repair cases), aggregating over 35 million gross registered tons of shipping, were docked, repaired and returned to service.105 The contribution of ship repair was crucial; as in 1917, the net British loss (sinkings over completions) was 980 ships. Indeed, British, Allied and neutral shipping losses for the year – 6,350,414 tons – easily exceeded total losses for the first three years of the war [see Table 20.1].
Other Factors Influencing British Shipbuilding Output Warship building (standard displacement tons), including submarines, cannot be compared to mercantile tonnage output (gross registered tons) due to differing methods of tonnage measurement.106 Moreover, naval tonnage had 105
106
These figures do not include warships, neutral tonnage, Allied ships, nor the large numbers of vessels under 500 gross registered tons that were dealt with. Warships are exclusively measured in standard displacement tons – the weight of water displaced by a vessel fully manned and equipped but excluding fuel and reserve feed
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a much higher work value per ton than most merchant ships. The construction of naval auxiliary vessels such as oilers, store ships or dockyard craft and commercial vessels, especially trawlers (many of them as auxiliary minesweepers), gave work to the smaller merchant yards working to mercantile standards. From 1914 to 1918 inclusive, British private shipyards launched 2,076,273 standard displacement tons of warships, of which submarines accounted for 131,658 and destroyers 363,695. By the armistice, twenty-nine armed merchant cruisers of 297,968 gross registered tons were in service, and 1,520 trawlers of 350,000.107 The concentration on anti-submarine construction and arming merchant vessels was, of itself, insufficient to combat the U-boat menace. Hence the evident need for a programme of standard shipbuilding by 1917. The hope that neutral American shipbuilding yards would supply forty-five merchant ships ordered by Britain to mitigate the effects of the unrestricted U-boat campaign was effectively dashed when the United States entered the war.108 All ships being built there and all ships in port were immediately requisitioned by the Americans.109 Lloyd George later put this decision down to influences that were antagonistic to British commercial shipping.110 US-American shipping capacity was immediately boosted when ninety-seven German and Austrian ships interned in US ports since August 1914 were seized, including the world’s second-largest passenger liner, Vaterland. Pedraja has noted: ‘Distrust of British imperial or commercial designs never left the (US) Shipping Board or the Wilson administration’.111 Six days after the United States entry into the war and with Britain sustaining huge losses to the U-boat campaign, Lloyd George told an American audience in London that: the road to victory, the guarantee of victory, the absolute assurance of victory is to be found in one word – ships: and a second word – ships; and a third word – ships.112
107
108
109 110 111
112
water. Gross tonnage is a measure of the enclosed volume of a ship expressed in units of 100 cubic feet. Murphy, ‘British Shipbuilding Industry during the Great War’, p. 57, table 7, p. 58, table 9. Figure of forty-five ships taken from TNA CAB 23/2 War Cabinet meeting minutes, 2 March 1917. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. I, pp. 1006–13. Ibid., p. 1013. R. de la Pedraja, The Rise and Decline of US Merchant Shipping in the Twentieth Century (New York: Twayne, 1992), pp. 56–7. Vaterland was later converted to a troopship and renamed Leviathan. www.firstworldwar.com/source/usawar_lloydgeorge.htm (accessed 20/9/2018). Full text of Lloyd George speech at the American Club, London, 12 April 1917.
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More important, however, in the short term were: the ability to repair or salve damaged tonnage; the transportation of American troops to France mostly in British ships; and the protection by convoy of the ships Britain already had at her disposal. To this end, the extension of convoy protection from June 1917 and the concentration of shipping on North Atlantic routes proved successful.113 By August 1917, Britain’s first standard ship, War Shamrock, built at Harland and Wolff’s Belfast yard, had been delivered, and by the end of the year thirteen more had been completed in other yards. Only in 1918 did the programme expand rapidly.114 The use of American destroyers on North Atlantic convoy protection and of Japanese destroyers in the Mediterranean eased the pressure on naval construction in British shipyards.115 Another attempt to purchase British ships (in effect for the White Star and Leyland Lines) in the US-based, Anglo-American, International Mercantile Marine Combine in January 1918 was rejected by the federal government on the grounds that it was inimical to the American national interest.116 These ships could have been used to transport more US troops to France. In the event, British ships transported some 60 per cent of the first million American troops to cross the North Atlantic,117 effectively cutting its capacity to import. And, from May 1917 onwards, when the first American troops arrived, it became necessary to dock and repair American ships – mercantile and warships – placing a further strain on tight resources.
The End in Sight Up to 1918 the U-boat proved to be a formidable weapon. However, countermeasures proved increasingly effective. Although the rate of sinkings never hit the rate of 1917, the U-boat menace remained substantial. In 1918, to 11 November, total losses to U-boats amounted to 2,650,089 gross registered tons (1204 ships), of which 1,731,809 (624 ships) were British.118 On the labour front, after a series of nationwide engineering strikes in May 1918 over pay, the hated leaving certificate scheme was put in abeyance. 113 114 115
116
117 118
Murphy, ‘British Shipbuilding during the Great War’, p. 41. Ibid., p. 49. C. Tsuzuki, The Pursuit of Power in Modern Japan, 1825–1995 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 188. A Japanese naval force of two light cruisers, one seaplane carrier and twelve destroyers arrived at Malta in June 1917. They did so on assurances from the Allies that they would support Japanese claims to former German interests in East Asia and Pacific at a future peace conference. For the IMM offer, see, W. J. Oldham, ‘The Ismay Line’, Journal of Commerce (1961), pp. 237–8. Smith’s Dock Monthly, December 1919. Murphy, ‘British Shipbuilding Industry during the Great War’, p. 41.
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Overall, from 1915 onwards, the unions held their own against the shipbuilding and engineering employers. In November 1918, hourly wages in the shipbuilding, ship repairing, and marine engineering industries were around double what they were in 1914, but they had barely kept pace with the general rise in prices. Over the course of the war, British shipowners lost nearly 9 million gross registered tons of shipping to enemy action, more than the losses of the next eleven major shipbuilding countries combined.119 The net loss (ships lost over ships built) was around 3 million tons. The deficit was soon made up. A short-lived post-war replacement boom resulted in record launches of 2 million tons in 1920. However, overcapacity in shipping supply relative to demand soon caused a collapse in freight rates. Unemployment again blighted the industry, and by January 1923 money wages in shipbuilding had reverted almost to their 1914 level.120 The British shipbuilding and ship repairing industries’ contribution to the war effort was adequate, and more so in ship repair in the private yards and in the Royal Dockyards. The early concentration on warship building clearly held back mercantile output, as did shortages of materials and manpower lost to the armed services. By 1915, state control of manpower and of shipbuilding and repair yards was essential in what hitherto had been an atomised industry. Industrial relations on Clydeside remained adversarial throughout the war, and after it. Standard shipbuilding in the private yards was undertaken too late to make any real difference as was the standard ship programme in the National Shipyards. Extensions to shipyards increased capacity, but again too late to make a real difference. Throughout the war Britain not only bore the brunt of financing the war effort until American entry eased its burden, it also remained the world’s major carrier and shipbuilder. Victory was, however, gained at a very high price, given what later transpired during the almost barren interwar years.
119
120
Ibid., p. 64, table 10. In order of tonnage lost, Norway, Italy, France, the United States, Greece, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. Jones, Shipbuilding in Britain, p. 190.
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21 Railways
Introduction On the morning of 9 August 1915, the 216th Fortress Company, Royal Engineers, marched from the Nuneaton drill hall to Trent Valley railway station. The troops were accompanied by the mayor and other local dignitaries, ‘cheering crowds, and the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” played by the Borough band’.1 The men boarded a train provided by the London and North-Western Railway and, like the majority of their colleagues in the multitude of units despatched across the globe in service of the British armed forces during the First World War, commenced their war experience at the end of a railway journey. Throughout the conflict, railway stations across Britain provided the locations for the transition between civil and military life. These ‘gates of goodbye’ acquired a tone of sobriety as the war progressed. They bore witness to the separations of families as the railways conveyed soldiers from the comforts of home leave to the horrors of the front; provided many of those on the home front with their first glimpse of the wounded, or of displaced Belgians who had found their way across the English Channel – frequently upon steamers owned and operated by British railway companies; and delivered the troops into the post-war world upon demobilisation.2 Almost four years after they had left for their training camp at Cosham near Portsmouth, and without the bombast and enthusiasm that had attended their departure, the final remnants of the 216th Company returned to Nuneaton on the railways.3 Yet the railways of Britain did far more than convey soldiers and refugees to and from the theatres of conflict between 1914 and 1918. Throughout the war, 1
2
3
J. Sambrook, With the Rank and Pay of a Sapper: The 216th (Nuneaton) Army Troops Company, Royal Engineers, in the Great War (Nuneaton: Paddy Griffith Associates, 1998), pp. 15–16. A. Gregory, ‘Railway Stations: Gateways and Termini’ in J. Winter and J. L. Robert (eds.) Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997–2007), vol. II, pp. 23–56; J. A. B. Hamilton, Britain’s Railways in World War I (London: Allen & Unwin, 1947), pp. 187–9. Sambrook, With the Rank and Pay of a Sapper, pp. 216–18.
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what Wolfgang Schivelbusch described as the architecture of a mobile modernity infringed upon the processes of war-making at a more pronounced level than in previous conflicts.4 The mobility offered to all belligerents by the existence of dense, elaborate railway networks created the circumstances by which armies of millions could be transported to and moved around the battlefield – and their voracious appetites for food, fodder, munitions, and the impedimenta of a modern force sated.5 Beyond the fighting, Britain’s railways maintained their position at the heart of a national response to the war. Britain’s railways provided commuters in a changed British economy with transport to and from new places of work – including those with a direct relevance to the expansion and continuation of the war; they delivered goods on behalf of the armed forces and in response to the needs of the civilian population; and they provided a myriad of human and material resources for the state to redeploy. The railways’ many contributions had profound implications for the character and conduct of the British war effort. This chapter focuses upon both the impact of the British railways on the First World War and the effects of its wartime exertions upon the railways themselves. It begins by outlining the prominent role played by the railways in Britain’s social and economic experience of the war. It then emphasises the breadth of the railways’ contributions to the war, and finally illustrates the inter-relationship between developments on the fighting fronts and the railways on the home front. The First World War presented Britain’s railways with unprecedented organisational and operational challenges. Through the centralisation of control, the employment of women, the reduction, removal, and remodelling of services, the raising of prices and – above all – the cooperation of the many competing private companies within its scope, the British railway industry coped with the demands placed upon it in a way that ensured the British home front was not confronted with the privations that afflicted the citizens of her European neighbours.
The Railways in Britain’s Social and Economic Experience of War In the eighty years that followed the 1830 opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the people of Britain accepted the new medium with ‘astonishingly little difficulty’.6 By August 1914 the British railway network had grown from a patchwork of tiny, disconnected lines serving the industrial
4
5
6
W. Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1986). M. van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 109–12. M. Robbins, The Railway Age, 3rd ed. (Manchester: Mandolin, 1998), p. 45.
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north of England to a dense, national system – and, with the conclusion of agreements with railways abroad, international system – comprising over 20,000 route miles of track. Britain entered the First World War with an unnecessarily large and inefficient railway network. Excess density existed in the provision of main lines, the laying of connections between industrial centres, mining areas and ports, and even in the establishment of services to lightly populated rural areas. As Mark Casson has demonstrated, similar economic performance and social benefits to those accrued by Britain’s prewar railways could have been extracted from a network that contained only 13,000 route miles.7 However, the overprovision of railway services in Britain before 1914 was advantageous to the British war effort in two particularly important ways. First, it ensured that Britain – unlike Germany, which operated arguably the most efficient railway network in the world – possessed spare capacity that could be redirected into warlike duties without significantly disrupting the extant passenger and freight services upon which the economy relied. The effect of this redirection is discussed in full below. Second, the size of the railway industry made it a large and prominent feature of the British economy. Individual companies held great influence over towns they had helped create, such as Swindon and Crewe, where the Great Western and London and North-Western railways respectively provided housing, amenities, educational opportunities, and places of worship as small settlements grew into industrial towns. Sons followed fathers into the gigantic workshops in places like Doncaster and Derby, and the bonds between employer and employee developed into familial loyalties.8 The bonds established between colleagues, and within the wider community of railway servants, were illustrated throughout the war within the letters’ sections of the companies’ staff magazines. Both to document their wartime experiences and to maintain contact with friends and colleagues dispersed around the world, individuals penned frequent notes to their railways for publication. In January 1917 alone the Great Central Railway Journal carried letters from sergeants in France and Egypt, a lieutenant who wrote from ‘midocean’, and a private whose winter had been spent in an English hospital
7
8
M. Casson, The World’s First Railway Syste Enterprise, Competition, and Regulation on the Railway Network in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). J. Kirk and C. Wall, Work and Identity: Historical and Cultural Contexts (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 153; D. K. Drummond, Crewe: Railway Town, Company, and People, 1840–1914 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995). Alfred Williams, the ‘poetic blacksmith’ and author of a classic account of conditions in the Great Western’s works at Swindon, followed two elder brothers into the railway’s service. See A. Williams, Life in a Railway Factory (Stroud: Sutton, 2007).
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recovering from a wound received on the Somme.9 The letters from colleagues on wartime service, alongside the magazines’ usual collection of railway news, provided the soldiers with a connection to the normality of pre-war life – described by one Royal Engineers’ sergeant as a ‘breath of “Blighty” [that kept] fresh many memories of the Great Eastern Railway’ during the turbulent early days of the German spring offensive in 1918.10 Alongside breaths of ‘Blighty’, the company magazines and trade press included frequent demonstrations of the railway stations’ ongoing role as a site of wartime experiences. Railway stations provided the locations at which important government notices and recruitment posters were displayed, where the wounded were exposed to the pitying gaze of civilians,11 and where charitable work to support the ongoing war effort was undertaken. Ambulance trains toured stations across the country, providing an eager public with a highly sanitised image of an injured serviceman’s evacuation from the front, and free refreshment rooms were laid on around the clock for soldiers and sailors at several stations. The Mayoress of Preston, Anna Cartmell, coordinated a team of 400 women at the town’s refreshment room from August 1915 onwards, whilst ‘heroic lady volunteers’ met the Naval Special from Euston on its arrival in Perth at 5:12 a.m. each day from 15 February 1917.12 As the London and North-Western Gazette reported in August 1915, each of its stations in Manchester provided collection points where commuters could donate flowers to be distributed by the railway to hospital wards occupied by wounded soldiers around Lancashire.13 The British railways were called upon to carry far more than flowers during the war. Britain’s railway network became an integral part of the crossChannel logistics chain that permitted the colossal expenditure of munitions which characterised the conflict, and a key component of the global supply system that maintained standards of living on the home front. As the Committee of Imperial Defence acknowledged in 1910, the flows of traffic around the network – particularly from the ports on the North Sea coast into major population centres in the east – were susceptible to interference in the event of war.14 A sub-committee, established to examine the British transport 9
10
11 12 13 14
The National Archives (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO) ZPER 18/12 Letters from Sergeant F. L. Sabatini, Sergeant J. Justice, Lieutenant D. R. Lamb and Private C. W. A. Drew, Great Central Railway Journal, January 1917, pp. 135–6. TNA: PRO ZPER 16/8 Letter from ‘C.C. Commander, Staff Sergeant, R. E.’, Great Eastern Railway Magazine, August 1918, p. 159. Sir F. Treves, ‘In Sick Bay’, The Times, 25 January 1915. Hamilton, Britain’s Railways, pp. 176–7. TNA: PRO ZPER 13/2 London and North-Western Gazette, August 1915, p. 240. Nuffield College Library (NCL): Mottistone papers, Mottistone 11/6 Sub-committee to consider the desirability of an enquiry into the question of the local transportation and distribution of food supplies in times of war, 22 March 1910.
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infrastructure’s ability to cope should all the ports between Hull and Portsmouth be closed to traffic, concluded that ‘if no effective arrangements were made for the speedy and regular provisioning of London, famine prices would soon be reached’.15 The ‘effective arrangements’ called for by the general managers of the railway companies who participated in the subcommittee’s investigation included the establishment of a central body – able to coordinate the railway requirements of the War Office, the Admiralty, and other government departments – to ensure the efficient operation of the railways during an emergency. The railway companies’ appeals for closer liaison between the armed forces, the government, and the transport professionals led to the establishment of the Railway Executive Committee (REC) in November 1912. At the outbreak of war less than two years later, the railways of England, Scotland, and Wales – but not Ireland in the first instance – were taken under the nominal control of the Board of Trade. However, it was the committee of nine (later twelve) leading railway managers that issued the directives and instructions followed by the employees of every significant line, and many less significant lines, in Britain during the war. In total, 130 companies were taken under government control in August 1914, ranging from the vast national concerns of the London and North-Western, the Midland, and the Great Western through a patchwork of regional lines – such as the Isle of Wight Central line, the Rhondda and Swansea Bay, the Knott End, and the Leek and Manifold railways – from the south coast of England all the way up to the Highland Railway at the northern tip of Scotland.16 The REC’s establishment emphasised a fundamental acknowledgement in pre-war Britain; that the railways could not be effectively operated under peacetime conditions. Starting with the mobilisation of the armed forces and the British Expeditionary Force’s (BEF) despatch to France, described by the REC’s nominal chairman as a ‘magnificent and unprecedented’ feat of railway organisation,17 the REC rapidly became a core component of wartime social and economic life. Questions on topics as diverse as the unloading of imported bacon at Bristol, the availability of travel facilities for the flat racing season, and the price of household coal were raised in the House of Commons and referred to the REC for consideration. In addition, myriad sub-committees of the REC – comprised of the expert managerial, administrative, and 15
16 17
NCL: Mottistone papers, Mottistone 11/175 Report from the general managers of the Great Central, Great Northern, Great Western, London and North-Western, London and South-Western and Midland Railway Companies to the Right Hon. Lieutenant-Colonel J. Seely, on the provisioning of London in the event of war, 1 August 1911, p. 2. Hamilton, Britain’s Railways, pp. 26–9. TNA: PRO ZPER 9/19 ‘Railway Administration in War’, Railway Gazette, 20 November 1914, p. 530.
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engineering talents possessed by the various companies – were charged with tasks such as the design of ambulance trains for service at home and overseas, the production of schemes for the defence of London, and the management of Belgian railway personnel as they arrived on British soil.18 These extra duties took place, as demonstrated further below, alongside the operation of a railway network forced to cope with unprecedented volumes of freight traffic, unpredicted changes in passenger flows, and – as the war progressed – an increasingly inexperienced workforce. Prior to the First World War, 13,046 women were employed by the British railway companies, approximately two per cent of the overall labour force within the industry. Women were predominantly employed in clerical roles or performed menial tasks such as sewing upholstery or washing laundry in railway hotels. The vast majority of public-facing duties performed by the servants of the Edwardian railways, including all train-operating roles, were only open to men. However, as the demand for men of military age to serve with the armed forces grew, and the protectionism of the trade unions was gradually eroded, a multitude of temporary opportunities arose for women seeking an escape from traditional female occupations. Railways were among the first large-scale employers to ‘resort to the expedient of engaging women and girls as substitutes for men’.19 Women on the railways went from unseen to ubiquitous. By September 1918 almost 69,000 women were at work on the British railways – some 36,000 in hitherto ‘male only’ occupations. The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway was proud to note, following the appointment of a female station mistress in April 1917, that Irlams O’ Th Height station near Salford was entirely staffed by women [see Fig. 21.1].20 The trade press documented the invasion of women workers in an avalanche of photographs, carefully presented to show off the uniformed, organised, inclusive nature of the wartime railways.21 The images were components of a sophisticated recruitment campaign, designed to entice new employees into the industry. The July 1916 edition of the Great Central Railway Journal carried a photograph of female engine cleaners at Gorton on its cover, and featured interviews with female employees keen to stress the benefits of railway work. One widow with two children told the journal that her job ‘kept her from thinking’ about the loss of her husband, whilst another widow – this time with five children to care for – explained that her job cleaning locomotives was ‘far more congenial and profitable, as well as healthier’ than her previous work going out washing. Two former tailoresses and a laundress from a large hotel also
18
19 20 21
E. A. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War; Organisation, Efforts, Difficulties and Achievements, 2 vols. (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1921), vol. I, pp. 83–6, 202–4, 239–42. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, vol. I, p. 475. TNA: PRO ZPER 9/24 The Railway Gazette, 13 April 1917, p. 449. See, for example, TNA: PRO ZPER 7/103 Records of Railway Interests in the War, Part IV: Women for Railway Work; TNA: PRO ZPER 9/24 ‘Women Workers and Locomotive Building’, The Railway Gazette, 1 June 1917, pp. 632–6.
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Figure 21.1 On the railways: engine and carriage cleaners, lithograph by Archibald Standish Hartrick, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 56, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917. National Museum of Wales.
confirmed to the journal ‘their favouring the fresh air of their railway jobs’ as goods porters to their previously held roles [see Fig. 21.2].22 However, behind the smiling faces and positive comments of the Great Central’s employees a less enthusiastic image of women’s railway work emerged. Women’s wages were set at the minimum level for the grade of work in which they were employed, and their war bonuses were lower than their male colleagues’.23 Female employees were seen as reluctant to take responsibility in jobs like signalling, criticised for lacking the adaptability of the men they had replaced, and considered unambitious (a trait acknowledged by the railway historian Edwin Pratt to be the corollary of the explicit understanding that their positions would be surrendered once the men returned). Female staff turnover was also a consistent issue during the war. 22 23
TNA: PRO ZPER 18/12 Great Central Railway Journal, July 1916, pp. 18–19. Hamilton, Britain’s Railways, p. 106.
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Figure 21.2 A signal woman signalling to railway shunters. Photograph by Horace Nicholls. Imperial War Museum Q 31021.
Of 1,433 women employed at one London station, 633 had resigned their positions within one month, 126 more within two months, and a further 124 within three months. More than half of the 1,022 women to resign from their employment at a goods department operated by the same company did so within a month of their starting. Despite the mass of photographic evidence and puff-pieces that focused on the women employed as cleaners, porters, manufacturers, and loaders, retention was far higher among women employed in clerical roles – where women’s comparative physical weakness was less of an obstruction to the fulfilment of their duties. According to Pratt, ‘in such matters as typing and simple accounts, the work of women and girls compared . . . with that of younger men and boys’. Consequently, by January 1918, 50 per cent of the clerical staff employed on the principal railways was female.24 24
Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, vol. I, pp. 479, 481–2.
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The Railways’ Contribution to the War There was a clear need for the influx of female labour into the railway industry during the war. From a pre-war workforce of approximately 600,000 men, a total of 184,475 railwaymen joined the armed forces between 1914 and 1918.25 Railways large and small contributed to the total; the vast Midland Railway lost 21,813 men to the services during the war (29.38 per cent of its pre-war workforce), but the twenty-three employees of the Kent and East Sussex Railway to enlist left a larger proportional gap in the workforce as they represented 45 per cent of its staff.26 The outflow began immediately. By 15 August 1914 the railways had lost 27,600 men to the armed forces, a combination of reservists and territorials called up and volunteers who had enlisted in the army and navy. By the end of 1914 the total had reached over 58,000. The War Office swiftly responded to concerns from the companies about the short-term effects of such heavy losses on their operations, and instructed recruiting agents not to enlist railway servants who did not possess the written permission of their head of department.27 However, mixed messages were disseminated. On the one hand, the railway companies all circulated communications from the REC that outlined how ‘the railwayman who was really wanted for the railway service was . . . serving his country just as thoroughly by remaining in that service as by joining the Forces’.28 On the other hand – despite the fact that it had lost more than 14 per cent of its prewar workforce by May 1915 – the London and North-Western Railway Gazette carried a two-page, illustrated recruitment advertisement for the Royal Naval Division. ‘You behind the desk or on the firing plate’, it exclaimed under the heading ‘The Life Adventurous’, ‘you do not want to be out of the fun . . . [I]n these days when history is running red hot out of the moulds, the Navy men are taking a big hand in shaping it’.29 The same publication demonstrates the prevalence of railwaymen across the armed forces from the outset of the war. In January 1915, a year before conscription was adopted across mainland Britain, the gazette received letters from men in the Hertfordshire Yeomanry, the London Scots, the Royal Warwicks, the Buffs, the Grenadier Guards, the Scots Guards, the 6th Welsh Battalion, the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, the Royal Army Medical 25
26 27
28 29
TNA: PRO ZLIB 10/26 ‘British Railways and the War’, The Railway Gazette and Railway News: Special War Transportation Number, 21 September 1920, p. 7. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, vol. I, p. 371. P. Simkins, Kitchener’s Army: The Raising of Britain’s New Armies, 1914–1916 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 111; TNA: PRO ZPER 7/103 Records of railway interests, pp. 23, 27. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, vol. I, p. 349. TNA: PRO ZPER 13/2 ‘The Life Adventurous’, London and North-Western Railway Gazette, May 1915, pp. 169–70.
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Corps, the Royal Engineers, the Army Veterinary Corps, and from aboard HMS New Zealand.30 As the French army initially agreed to provide for all of the transport requirements of the BEF on the western front, the railways’ contribution did not initially consist of skilled personnel in specialist units.31 An offer from the North-Eastern Railway to raise such a unit in August 1914 was rejected out of hand by the War Office, although the unit was formed as the 17th (Service) Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers (NER Pioneers) and served with distinction on the western front.32 The unanticipated and rapid expansion of the British war effort, with its concomitant increase in demand for railway facilities in all theatres of operations, led to the establishment of dedicated units comprised of men with railway operating and construction skills. The deployment of the first railway construction companies raised in Britain, drawn from employees of the London and North-Western and Great Western railways, highlights the widening lens of Britain’s wartime focus beyond the western front. The 115th and 116th railway construction companies arrived in Egypt between December 1915 and March 1916, and were initially employed on railway building projects alongside local labourers and employees of the Egyptian State Railways.33 Responsibility for the recruitment of railway personnel for service overseas in dedicated railway units was devolved upon the REC by the War Office, an acknowledgement of the former’s possession of the specialist knowledge required to identify and select suitable men for wartime duties. A recruitment sub-committee was formed by the REC in October 1914 to establish units for: construction, headed by Sir William Forbes, general manager of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway; operation, led by Francis Dent, general manager of the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway; and the railway transport establishment in France, under Arthur Watson, assistant general manager of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.34 British railway companies provided approximately half the personnel for the fortyfive railway construction companies formed during the war – the remainder 30
31
32
33
34
TNA: PRO ZPER 13/2 London and North-Western Railway Gazette, January 1915, pp. 14–15. A. M. Henniker, History of the Great War: Transportation on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1937), p. 13. See Eric Geddes’ introduction in J. Shakespear, A Record of the 17th and 32nd Service Battalions Northumberland Fusiliers, N.E.R. Pioneers, 1914–1919, ed. by H. Shenton Cole (Newcastle upon Tyne: Northumberland Press, 1926) for a discussion of his unsuccessful attempts to create a specialist ‘Pals’ battalion of railway workers in 1914. TNA: PRO WO 95/4410 General headquarters troops; TNA: PRO WO 95/4718 Lines of communication troops; S. Gittins, The Great Western Railway in the First World War (Stroud: History Press, 2010), pp. 115–19. Institute of Civil Engineers: Original communications, O.C/4277 H.A. Ryott, The provision of personnel for military railways in the war of 1914–18, 1920, p. 1.
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consisting of men drawn from the Dominions and foreign railways, where the demand for new railway construction before the war provided opportunities not available upon the largely complete British network. The Railway Operating Division (ROD) was formed in April 1915 and was responsible for both mechanical and operating duties. Prior to the great battles of 1916 the ROD’s operations were restricted to shunting duties at the depots and ports allocated to the British by their French hosts, and the provision of services on the Hazebrouck–Ypres line behind the BEF. However, the ‘crisis of transportation’ over the winter of 1916–17 provided the ROD with further opportunities to contribute to the traffic operated on the French main lines. By the end of 1918 the division was responsible for over 1,300 kilometres of track in France and Flanders and comprised over 20,000 men.35 The railway companies did not merely provide skilled men whose efforts were directed by the armed forces. As large, complex organisations employing thousands of people engaged in inter-related occupations dispersed across wide geographical areas, Britain’s railways possessed a cadre of managerial figures capable of transferring their skills to the large, complex organisation that was the British war effort. Sir Eric Geddes, the most prominent example of David Lloyd George’s appointment of businessmen to government positions during the war, was one of over 2,000 railway officers ‘loaned’ to the state by their companies between 1914 and 1918.36 Geddes began the war as deputy general manager of the North-Eastern Railway and initially took responsibility for raising the NER Pioneers before he was one of several railwaymen appointed to a role in the Ministry of Munitions in June 1915.37 As a deputy director of munitions supply he helped raise production figures for rifles and machine-guns before he became responsible for the national network of filling factories in December that year. Following Lloyd George’s move to the War Office, Geddes was despatched to France to report on the transport situation behind the BEF, which resulted in his appointments as Director-General of Transportation on Sir Douglas Haig’s staff and the Director-General of Military Railways at the War Office. When Lloyd 35
36
37
TNA: PRO ZLIB 10/26 ‘Railways and Roads on the Western Front’, The Railway Gazette and Railway News: Special War Transportation Number, 21 September 1920, pp. 21–5; W. A. T. Aves, The Railway Operating Division on the Western Front: The Royal Engineers in France and Belgium, 1915–1919 (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2009). Hamilton, Britain’s Railways, pp. 112–14; Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, vol. I, pp. ix–xiii contain brief details of the positions occupied by a small fraction of these men. The ‘List of some of the Principal Officers employed in the Ministry of Munitions during the War’ illustrates the scale and breadth of the railway industry’s contribution to the ministry’s activities. See History of the Ministry of Munitions: General Organisation for Munitions Supply, 12 vols. (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1919–22), vol. II, pp. 260–75.
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George – by this time the prime minister – became dissatisfied with the organisation of the Admiralty, it was to Geddes’ coordinating talents that he turned.38 Geddes’ wartime ascendancy from deputy general manager of a large British railway to the position of First Lord of the Admiralty emphasises the importance attached to proven organisers throughout the British war effort. Yet railwaymen did not need to leave their pre-war employers to play a vital role in the prosecution of the war. The workshop facilities possessed by Britain’s railways were recognised as a potential source of productive capacity for war necessities as early as September 1914, when the War Office presented the REC with a request for 12,500 ambulance stretchers – urgently required in response to the BEF’s heavier-than-expected casualties in the war’s opening weeks. This order was swiftly followed by a veritable shopping list of requirements, which included lethal items such as shells, bombs, steel forgings for guns, and 6-pounder Hotchkiss guns, alongside more mundane but moraleboosting equipment including travelling kitchens, kettles, and drinking cups. Further exploitation of the railway workshops followed as the war progressed, with the North-Eastern Railway’s workshop at Darlington alone responsible for the production of over 1 million 18-pounder shrapnel shells.39
The War’s effects on Britain’s Railways The implications of the railway companies’ workshops’ redirection into warrelated manufactures were revealed following the reorganisation of the Allied transport relationship on the Western Front in 1916–17. The colossal battles of 1916 eroded the French transport network’s capacity to service the vast – and still expanding – demands of the BEF in addition to supplying the French forces, and led to the replacement of periodic requests for British technical and material support from the French authorities with a demand that the British provide all the transport required to supply the BEF.40 The production of railway equipment had a long lead time, which made dependence on orders placed with British, Canadian and American manufacturers impossible as a solution to the deficiencies on the western front: the first of 5,300 wagons 38
39 40
K. Grieves, Sir Eric Geddes: Business and Government in War and Peace (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989); K. Grieves, ‘Improvising the British War Effort: Eric Geddes and Lloyd George, 1915–18’, War & Society, 7:2 (1989), pp. 40–55; K. Grieves, ‘The Transportation Mission to GHQ, 1916’, in B. Bond et al. (eds.) ‘Look to Your Front!’ Studies in the First World War by the British Commission for Military History (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 1999), pp. 63–78; C. Phillips, ‘The Changing Nature of Supply: Transportation in the BEF during the Battle of the Somme’, in S. Jones (ed.) At All Costs: The British Army on the Western Front 1916 (Warwick: Helion, 2018), pp. 117–38. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, vol. II, pp. 583–610. Henniker, Transportation on the Western Front, pp. 247–51.
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ordered from North American sources in March 1915 took thirteen months to arrive in France.41 Geddes recognised that the transport infrastructure in France could only be supported by the immediate provision of locomotives, rolling stock, and track from the British railways, which possessed substantially more locomotives and twice the number of carriages per mile than the German network in 1914 [see Table 21.1].42 However, even Britain’s comparatively abundant stocks of railway equipment could not be brought to bear on the fighting without affecting the provision of services on the home front. By 1 December 1916 the goods managers and superintendents of the line of Britain’s major railways had identified potential areas in which services could be reduced in order to release materials for France, and Geddes was able to report to Sir Douglas Haig that the companies had agreed to despatch 350 locomotives, 20,000 wagons, and 320,000 sleepers to the BEF.43 Piecemeal actions to reduce pressure on the domestic railway network that had been taken during the first half of the war – such as the withdrawals of dining cars, the slowing down of express services, and the suspension of services to suburban stations well served by buses and trams – gave way to a more concerted and nationwide effort to economise railway transport from January 1917 onwards. Approximately 400 stations were closed, Sunday services were reduced, and in some areas now unused track was lifted for use overseas. The largest four companies in Britain supplied 155 miles of the 206 miles despatched abroad after 1 January 1917, but the tiny Bideford, Westward Ho! and Appledore Railway made the supreme sacrifice. The Devon line ‘vanished from the railway map’ on 28 March 1917. The entire seven miles of track were pulled up, and two of the company’s three locomotives were requisitioned for service overseas. They were promptly torpedoed at the entrance to the Bristol Channel and lost until rediscovery in 2001.44 The station closures and service reductions, which were not dictated by the REC but decided upon by the individual companies in line with their traffic priorities, had an immediate effect. As a result of the restrictions introduced to the operations of the Caledonian Railway, its chairman, Sir Charles Renshaw, proudly advised the company’s shareholders that ninety-two engines had been withdrawn from passenger traffic for duties in goods and munitions
41
42 43
44
History of the Corps of Royal Engineers, ed. H. L. Pritchard, 11 vols. (Chatham Institute of Royal Engineers, 1952), vol. V, p. 598. Gregory, ‘Railway Stations’, p. 27. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, vol. II, pp. 643–6; National Library of Scotland (NLS): Papers of Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Acc.3155/109 diary entry, 1 December 1916. Hamilton, Britain’s Railways, pp. 145–7; ‘Steam Engines from Yorkshire Found 150ft down on Sea Bed’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 22 October 2001.
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Locomotives
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Table 21.1. Railway equipment possessed by the European powers, 1914.
United Kingdom Belgium Germany France Russia Austria-Hungary
Carriages
Wagons
Route miles
Number
Number per 100 route miles
Number
Number per 100 route miles
Number
23,718 5,370 38,950 31,200 45,350 28,400
22,998 4,300 28,000 14,500 17,200 10,000
97 80 72 47 38 35
72,888 10,000 60,000 33,500 20,000 21,000
308 186 154 107 44 74
780,520* 90,000 600,000 364,000 370,000 245,000
Source: J. A. B. Hamilton, Britain’s Railways in World War I (London: Allen & Unwin, 1947), p. 29. Note * = figure excludes over 600,000 privately owned wagons.
transportation. Elsewhere, the Taff Vale Railway recorded a near-10 per cent decrease in train mileage in the first two months of 1917, whilst the consumption of coal on the British railways dropped by 11 per cent compared to the figures for 1916.45 Such reductions permitted the despatch of equipment to theatres of operations overseas without jeopardising the domestic traffic that was crucial to the sustenance of both the war effort and the domestic economy. As Haig recorded in his diary following lunch with a REC delegation in December 1916, the British railways were keen to do all ‘they could to help us and might do more for us than we asked . . . [T]he only thing required was an order from the government authorizing the railway companies to provide the material.’46 Following the REC’s visit to France the export of British materials to the fighting fronts rapidly increased. Sixty-two locomotives from British stocks were in traffic in France by the end of 1916, and 450 locomotives lifted directly from the British railways were in operation behind the western front by the end of 1917. By the armistice, the ROD possessed locomotives from almost every prominent railway in Britain, each contributing to the 601 British locomotives sent overseas in support of the various British war efforts.47 Given that the British railways possessed a pre-war stock of roughly 23,000 locomotives, such a contribution appears to be a relatively small proportion. However, during peacetime operations around 600 locomotives on the British railways reached what was considered to be the end of their working lives. During the war, with the railways’ manpower and materials redirected into the fulfilment of the armed forces’ various requirements, worn-out engines were not replaced at the rate required to maintain British stocks. Between 1914 and 1918 the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway built just two locomotives and reconstructed one engine, whilst across the British railway network as a whole just 803 new engines were put into traffic between August 1914 and April 1917.48 ‘Owing to want of men and material’, the REC explained in a memorandum to the War Cabinet, the British railway companies were ‘short of no less than 1,600 locomotives’ in May 1917.49 Furthermore, the locomotives that remained in service were asked to undertake unprecedented volumes of work, whilst the war considerably 45
46 47
48
49
TNA: PRO ZPER 9/24 ‘The Effect of the Traffic Restrictions’, Railway Gazette, 2 March 1917, p. 250. NLS: Haig papers, Acc.3155/109 diary entry, 12 December 1916. A further 326 engines, dubbed the Ministry of Munitions locomotives and built to a standard specification by multiple manufacturers, were delivered to France for the use of the ROD during the war. See Hamilton, Britain’s Railways, pp. 167, 171. D. Gould, The South-Eastern and Chatham Railway in the 1914–18 War (Trowbridge: Oakwood, 1981), p. 36. TNA: PRO CAB 24/14/83 Memorandum by the REC. Shortage of materials for repairs and renewal of permanent way, locomotives, carriages and wagons, 24 May 1917, pp. 3–4.
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dislocated the established patterns of peacetime traffic across Britain’s railway network in numerous ways. The closure to traffic of ports on the east coast, the risks to shipping of enemy action, and the commandeering of merchant ships for military use ‘combined to divert to the railways a great amount of traffic that had previously gone by coasting steamers’.50 Not all of Britain’s railways were well equipped to deal with the changed composition of traffic on their lines. Prior to 1914 the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway’s principal concerns had been the provision of commuter trains for those working in London and passages to and from the coast for holidaymakers and tourists. However, within the first year of the war, passenger traffic (excluding troop movements) had been eclipsed by a heavy goods traffic that the company’s lines were ill-suited to handle. In July 1915 the South-Eastern and Chatham’s London district dealt with 56 per cent more goods wagons than it had the previous July. As the British war effort expanded so too did the South-Eastern and Chatham’s freight traffic. In the six months from January to June 1918 the staff at Blackheath station handled a goods tonnage 2,452 percent higher than had arrived at the station in the corresponding six months of 1913.51 The Highland Railway, at the opposite end of the country, faced a similar challenge. Prior to 1914 the Highland’s annual pattern of traffic was largely predictable; heavy in the summer and light in the winter, which allowed plenty of time for locomotives and rolling stock to be repaired before the next summer’s traffic commenced.52 The war replaced the seasonal peaks and troughs on the Highland with a heavy and constant demand for railway facilities. The transfer of coal for northern Scotland from coastal shipping onto the railways took place at the same time as the company had to deal with a vast increase in traffic for the Royal Navy. ‘Nothing whatsoever’ had been done to improve the Highland’s capacity to service the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow before August 1914,53 and the company lacked both sufficient sidings and employees to discharge the extra burden placed upon it by the wartime traffic. As early as August 1915 the company reported that almost one-third of its locomotives had been withdrawn from service, whilst another one-third were in urgent need of repairs. Following an appeal to the REC, twenty locomotives were despatched north, but a year later the Highland was still forty-two locomotives below their requirements and faced an ever-increasing shortage of wagons as the demands on the railway continued to grow. In 1918 the timber traffic carried south on the Highland exceeded 400,000 tons, a tonnage ten times greater than that loaded in peacetime and the equivalent of 50 51 52
53
TNA: PRO ZLIB 10/26 ‘British Railways and the War’, p. 9. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, vol. II, pp. 1077–8. H. A. Vallance, The Highland Railway: The History of the Railways of the Scottish Highlands, 5 vols. (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1969), vol. II, p. 106. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, vol. II, p. 959.
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80,712 wagonloads.54 Some 2,000 wagons were sent north by a combination of English and Scottish railways before the end of the war in a largely unsuccessful attempt to ease the Highland’s difficulties. Goods traffic was not alone in presenting challenges for the railways on the British home front. Passenger traffic flows were also greatly affected by both the evolution of Britain’s war effort after August 1914 and the threat of enemy action. A succession of air raids over London in autumn 1917 motivated a number of Londoners to leave the capital in pursuit of safer accommodation in Brighton, Maidenhead and other southeastern towns. However, those same individuals continued to work in London, and the relatively inexpensive cost of season tickets failed to deter would-be fugitives. In response to the vocal annoyance of established residents about the overcrowding of commuter trains, the Defence of the Realm Act was invoked to give railway companies the power to issue or withdraw season tickets on their own terms. The prices of season tickets were increased and the offer of refunds for unexpired portions removed, but by the time the new conditions came into effect on 21 May 1918 the German aerial menace had almost entirely disappeared.55 Further north, the government’s decision to establish the gigantic Moorside factory at Gretna, near the Caledonian’s route between Carlisle and Glasgow, generated significant demands for both goods and passenger traffic in the second half of the war. The factory’s construction and output increased the volume of freight transported over the line by in excess of 100 per cent, but the rise in passenger journeys to and from the hitherto insignificant Gretna station was of an even greater magnitude. By 1917 the factory employed over 17,500 workers and, despite the provision of government-sponsored new towns at Gretna and nearby Eastriggs to accommodate the workforce, the Caledonian carried almost 3 million passengers to and from Gretna during that year. In contrast, just 8,653 passengers had used the station in 1914 (see Table 21.2). These traffic flows were directly linked to the demands of multifaceted, industrialised warfare, and emphasised Britain’s ongoing commitment to the material conflict. To fulfil them – alongside meeting the army’s demands for locomotives, wagons, and track to be despatched overseas – required the REC to dissuade the British public from engaging in ‘unnecessary’ travel over the second half of the war. As J. A. B. Hamilton noted in his history of Britain’s railways in the First World War, ‘whether for good or not-so-good reasons, the British public refused to stay put’.56 To target so-called joy riders a blanket increase in fares of 50 per cent was introduced from 1 January 1917 – only season tickets, workmen’s tickets, and traders’ tickets escaped the rise. Lloyd George made a personal appeal to the ‘travelling public’ to ‘cut 54 55 56
Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, vol. II, p. 952. Hamilton, Britain’s Railways, pp. 155–7. Ibid., p. 152.
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Table 21.2. Passenger journeys carried by the Caledonian Railway to and from Gretna station, 1913–18. Year
Number of passengers carried
1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918
10,747 8,653 365,436 1,842,822 2,932,814 1,348,637
Source: E. A. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War; Organisation, Efforts, Difficulties and Achievements, 2 vols. (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1921), vol. II, p. 851.
down unnecessary travelling’ the following month, exclaiming that the steel that was conserved as a result would be directed into shipbuilding to counter the submarine menace.57 Although the Great North of Scotland and the Taff Vale were among the railways to report a substantial decrease in passenger numbers in the first quarter of 1917,58 travel over the Easter holidays was still subjected to unprecedented restrictions. Advanced tickets were withdrawn from sale between Wednesday 4 and Monday 9 April, an action that forced would-be passengers to purchase tickets – the number of which was limited to the carrying capacity of the trains – on the day of travel alone. ‘Fewer people than usual ventured out’ over the holiday, Hamilton recalled – as ‘one of those who sinfully went joy riding’ – a result the author put down more to the poor weather than the entreaties of railway officials.59 The concern to restrict excursion traffic hastened the extension of government control of the railways across the Irish Sea. In August 1914 the Irish railway companies had been excluded from the arrangements that saw the vast majority of Britain’s railways taken under government control – a surrender of autonomy that was assuaged by the promise of compensation from the state. ‘No control meant no financial guarantees’, and by 1916 the Irish railways’ exposure to the adverse operating conditions brought about by the war had become intolerable. The companies lacked government assistance to help offset their higher costs, particularly with regards to the purchase of
57
58 59
TNA: PRO ZPER 9/24 ‘Premier’s Appeal to the Travelling Public’, Railway Gazette, 9 February 1917, p. 174. TNA: PRO ZPER 9/24 ‘The Effect of the Traffic Restrictions’, p. 250. TNA: PRO ZPER 9/24 ‘Railway Travel at Easter’, Railway Gazette, 6 April 1917, p. 423; Hamilton, Britain’s Railways, pp. 154–5.
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coal and the provision of wage increases and bonuses to their employees. Appeals for parity in state aid between the Irish railways and those of England, Scotland and Wales were considered in autumn 1916 by the government, ‘but no definite course’ was adopted until the threat of industrial action tipped the balance.60 Gaelic football provided the catalyst. The introduction of martial law in the aftermath of the failed Easter Rising was augmented in November 1916 by an intimation from the Chief Secretary of Ireland that unnecessary traffic should be suspended for the remainder of the war. Such an action principally targeted the provision of hugely popular – and highly profitable – trains run for the attendees of matches arranged by the Gaelic Athletic Association, including many of the 27,000 who had witnessed Wexford’s victory over Kerry at Croke Park in November 1915.61 ‘To stop the whole traffic’, the Irish companies argued, ‘would involve the railways in a loss of £250,000 a year, and render them still less able to pay additional wages’.62 The ominous warning was taken up swiftly by the drivers and firemen of the Great Southern and Western Railway, the largest of Ireland’s ‘big four’ railways. On 14 December 1916, the workers issued an ultimatum unless their wages were increased by six shillings, or they received a war bonus of ten shillings per week, they would cease work. The government’s response was swift. Just three days later it announced both a general wage rise of seven shillings per week – which brought Ireland’s railway workers in line with their colleagues elsewhere in the United Kingdom – and the establishment of an executive committee to operate the Irish railways on the same terms as those which had existed in England, Scotland and Wales since August 1914. The Irish REC, comprised of the general managers of the four largest railway companies in Ireland, commenced its work on 1 January 1917 and mirrored the British REC in its concerns for economy and efficiency for the remainder of the war.63 For the British railway companies the period from January 1917 until the armistice and beyond – after 11 November 1918 the railways became immersed in the provision of facilities for the demobilisation of troops, the repatriation of prisoners of war, the return of Belgian refugees and German prisoners of war to the continent, and the handling of equipment and materials shipped back across the English Channel – was dominated by the need to manage the network’s infrastructure so as to ensure its long-term reliability.
60 61
62 63
Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, vol. I, pp. 79–80. The Chief Secretary of Ireland finally decided to allow special match-day trains to run to Dublin for the 1916 final just three days before it was played. Consequently, only 3,000 spectators were present for Wexford’s victory over Mayo. Hamilton, Britain’s Railways, p. 124. TNA: PRO ZPER 7/98 ‘State Control of Irish Railways’, Railway News, 6 January 1917, p. 1.
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Through the REC’s careful coordination and the cooperative energies of the companies taken into government control, the First World War concluded with the British railways being ‘very far from falling to bits’.64 By November 1918 many of Britain’s railways were bruised, some battered, but none were broken. They had escaped all but the most superficial damage from enemy action and had never had to deal with lines being overrun or severed by the shifting position of the fighting front. At opposite ends of the country the strain of service was most evident: the North British and Highland railways – which had been most closely associated with the maintenance of the Royal Navy – and the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway, whose network took in the ports of Folkestone and Dover, the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich and the Chatham dockyard, were in particularly depleted conditions. Elsewhere, prewar Britain’s over-resourced, duplicated, and inefficient railways had provided the national war effort with sufficient excess to meet the challenge. Approximately 20 per cent of the nation’s locomotives needed to be overhauled, but only 3 per cent of the country’s rolling stock had been despatched overseas for use on the lines of communications behind the armed forces. This equipment was repatriated and repaired, and by the summer of 1919 many of the wartime restrictions on services and amenities had been removed.65 In the years that followed the First World War the privations of the railways’ wartime service were principally remembered in stone and bronze. More than 20,000 employees of the British railway companies died on active service during the conflict.66 Their sacrifice was honoured both in a special memorial service at St Paul’s Cathedral on 14 May 1919 and by the erection of some of Britain’s most prominent and evocative memorials during the 1920s.67 Sir Edwin Lutyens was commissioned by two of Britain’s largest railway companies – the Midland and the North-Eastern – to design the memorials that stood outside their head offices in Derby and York respectively, whilst Charles Sargeant Jagger’s bronze soldier on platform one at Paddington Station was one of numerous monuments created to honour the fallen of the Great Western Railway in both national and local settings.68 Between them, the four largest railway companies in Britain lost more than 11,000 employees between 1914 and 1918 – approximately 10–13 per cent of their pre-war workforces, a death rate higher than that experienced by the
64 65 66
67
68
Hamilton, Britain’s Railways, p. 190. Ibid., pp. 190–2. J. Higgins, Great War Railwaymen: Britain’s Railway Company Workers at War 1914– 1918 (London: Uniform Press, 2014), p. 295 gives a total of 20,792 but acknowledges that this figure cannot be confirmed. TNA: PRO ZLIB 10/22 Memorial services for fallen railwaymen 14 May 1919 – with roll of honour. Gittins, Great Western Railway, pp. 166–72.
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nation as a whole.69 The Kent and East Sussex Railway’s losses may have been substantially lower – Private Henry Osborne of the Royal Sussex Regiment was the railway’s only employee to be killed in action when he fell at the Battle of Loos in 1915 – but the memorial tablet erected in his honour at Salehurst Church emphasises that the First World War affected companies both large and small in the deepest way.
Conclusion The REC was a manifestation of a working relationship between the army, government and British railways that pre-dated the First World War. There existed in Britain a recognition – stretching back into the nineteenth century – that the railways had the potential to greatly influence the conduct of warfare, and an appreciation that the efficient operation of the railway network in the national interest was of paramount importance to a national war effort. In the case of the railway network the principle of centralised control, so often associated with the premiership of David Lloyd George in the second half of the conflict, was in place and ready to be implemented at the very start of the war. For Britain’s railways, ‘business as usual’ was an aspiration rather than a policy for the duration of the conflict. The size and scale of the larger railway companies permitted them to make a wide range of contributions to the war effort. One third of the pre-war male workforce served with the armed forces between 1914 and 1918, and the transferable skills possessed by the companies’ managerial and administrative staff found profitable application across the military and the nation’s economic life. These contributions, celebrated within the trade press both during and after the war, demonstrate how the railways acknowledged the abnormality of the circumstances; so too did the companies’ widespread employment of female labour, the deployment overseas of locomotives and rolling stock, the closure of stations and reduction of services, and the blanket increases in fares that characterised the period from 1917 onwards. Yet the trade press also highlighted the industry’s attempts to maintain the regular rhythms of peacetime life. Works football teams continued to play matches, lending libraries continued to lend books, and the engineers of various companies continued to discuss new projects at institutional meetings right up to the end of the war. Whilst the companies operating in the extreme north and the southeast of Britain felt the pinch, the overall conclusion must be that further sacrifices from the railways on the home front were possible – had the war demanded them. 69
Higgins, Great War Railwaymen, pp. 294–5.
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22 Seaborne Trade and Merchant Shipping .
The dominant images of the First World War are of a land war fought in the trenches of north-western Europe. Yet the war was ‘as much a war of competing blockades . . . as of competing armies’.1 These blockades aimed at interdicting enemy powers’ seaborne trade and the shipping that carried it, which the ‘first wave of globalization’ had placed at the heart of the economies of Europe and North America.2 No belligerent power was more dependent on trade and shipping than Great Britain, and it would therefore be difficult to overstate their importance to the British and Allied war effort. Moreover, shipping, ‘the world’s key industry’, as one recent study has termed it, was the one major British industry situated on the front line, directly and constantly exposed to enemy action.3 This chapter seeks to underline the importance of trade and shipping to the Allied war effort, and the effects of the war upon them. Attention is initially afforded to British maritime trade, with an appraisal of its importance to the British economy, and thus to the country’s ability to wage ‘total war’, followed by a survey of the ramifications that the conflict had for the volume and viability of foreign and coastal trade. There is then a discussion of how the shipping industry fared in wartime, and the immediate and long-term impacts that fighting on the sea front had upon Britain’s shipping interests.
Seaborne Trade The First World War brought to a close a long period of international economic integration. This had been driven partly by general economic expansion and partly by reductions in tariffs and other barriers to free trade, but also to a large extent by the falling cost of international transport, which 1 2
3
J. A. Salter, Allied Shipping Control (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921), p. 1. See K. H. O’Rourke and J. G. Williamson, Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-century Atlantic Economy (Cambridge MA and London: MIT Press, 1999). J. Valdaliso, G. Harlaftis and S. Tenold (eds.), The World’s Key Industry: History and Economics of International Shipping (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); C. E. Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry (London: H. Milford, 1927), p. xii.
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was itself the product of developments in shipping.4 In particular, the development of the large iron, and later steel, sailing ship, and then the compoundengined steamship, had delivered a large reduction in the cost of trans-oceanic, intercontinental transport. Freight rates on average fell by as much as 70 per cent between 1840 and 1910.5 Whereas low-bulk, high-value goods had previously dominated international trade, from the second quarter of the nineteenth century shipments of bulky low-value commodities expanded strongly and persistently. The sustained fall in international transport costs had a profound influence on the British economy. First, it was both a product of, and facilitated, industrialisation.6 For example, the woollen industry had been reliant upon home production for centuries, but by 1914 three-quarters of the wool processed in British factories was imported. Conversely, British metallurgical industries had long depended on imported raw materials and continued to do so: around half of British pig-iron production was based on imported ores.7 At the other end of the process, cheaper transport also facilitated the export of countless manufactured goods, ranging from small items such as the products of the textile mills, to bulky capital goods like industrial plant and railway locomotives. Britain accounted for just under a third of world trade in manufactured goods in 1913.8 Secondly, food imports were central to the shift towards an urban, industrial economy. Britain had long been an importer of some foodstuffs, not least sugar, but it became increasingly import-dependent as the nineteenth century wore on, until by 1914 it also imported four-fifths of its grain, two-thirds of its butter and around 40 per cent of its meat. In total, nearly two thirds of the calorific intake of Britain’s population came from abroad.9 Fundamentally, during the nineteenth century, the British economy, and to a lesser extent the rest of the developed world, came to depend upon imports of food and raw materials, and exports of their manufactured goods. In the British case, too, coal exports provided a major source of income, and a boost
4
5
6
7
8
9
D. S. Jacks, C. M. Meissner and D. Novy, ‘Trade costs in the first wave of globalization,’ Explorations in Economic History, 47 (2010), pp. 127–41. C. K. Harley, ‘Ocean Freight Rates and Productivity, 1740–1913: The Primacy of Mechanical Invention Reaffirmed,’ Journal of Economic History, 48 (1988), pp. 851–76. D. J. Starkey, ‘The Industrial Background to the Development of the Steamship,’ in Basil Greenhill (ed.), The Advent of Steam: the Merchant Steamship before 1900 (London, Conway Maritime Press, 1993), pp. 127–35. C. E. Fayle, History of the Great War: Seaborne Trade, volume 1: The Cruiser Period (London: John Murray, 1920), pp. 3–16. C. K. Harley, ‘Trade, 1870–1939: From Globalisation to Fragmentation,’ in R. Floud and P. Johnson (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, volume II: Economic Maturity, 1860–1913 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 170. Fayle, Seaborne Trade, volume 1, p. 3.
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for British shipping by providing a ready-made cargo for outward voyages that would otherwise have had to be made in ballast. The avoidance of an empty and thus unprofitable outbound passage meant that a lower rate could be charged for the return voyage, enabling British shipping firms to undercut their competitors.10 Shipping was integral to the British economy in two other senses. First, it was by far the largest contributor to British invisible earnings throughout the nineteenth century, helping to finance the country’s deficit on foreign trade.11 Secondly, coastal shipping was a vital, if often underrated, part of the country’s domestic transport provision. It not only carried coals from north-east England and south Wales to London, but also connected remote coastal areas in the west country, East Anglia, west Wales and east Scotland with the UK’s principal centres of production and consumption, as well as disseminating overseas imports from major to minor ports, and feeding the major ports with goods bound for shipment to empire and foreign countries. In terms of work undertaken, as measured by the tonnage of cargo carried by the miles it was conveyed, coastal vessels accounted for an estimated 59 per cent of the UK’s internal goods traffic in 1910, as against 39 per cent carried by the railways, and 2 per cent moved by canal.12
War and Seaborne Trade The First World War brought the free-trading economic order of the nineteenth century to an abrupt halt.13 There was no wholesale collapse in international trade, but rather a reorganisation of trading networks that affected belligerent and neutral powers alike, and whose impacts were farreaching and, in some cases, permanent. Trade between the warring powers obviously ceased from the outset, and both sought to damage one another’s economies through blockade. This was nothing new, but it was qualitatively different from what had gone before, reflecting the ideological shifts of the nineteenth century. Whereas in the ‘long eighteenth century’, the major maritime powers had pursued a mercantilist strategy of denying their rivals 10
11
12
13
S. R. Palmer, ‘The British Shipping Industry 1850–1914,’ in L. R. Fischer (ed.), Change and Adaptation in Maritime History: The North Atlantic Fleets in the 19th Century (St John’s: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1985), p. 107. P. Deane and W. A. Cole, British Economic Growth 1688–1939: Trends and Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 236; A. H. Imlah, Economic Elements in the Pax Britannica (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 70–5. J. Armstrong, ‘The Role of Coastal Shipping in UK Transport: An Estimate of Comparative Traffic Movements in 1910,’ Journal of Transport History, VIII (1987), pp. 164–78. R. Findlay and K. H. O’Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 429.
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Table 22.1. British imports, 1910–20 (£m at 1913 prices)
1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920
Foodstuffs and livestock
Raw materials
Manufactures
Total
264.8 272.2 273.8 285 275 285.9 268.7 218.9 232.2 270.3 258.6
292.9 296.3 332.2 328.3 292.3 341.3 269.4 225.2 216.9 301.5 298
129.3 135.8 150.6 155.4 124.4 122.6 101.3 90.6 102.1 97.3 115
687 704.2 756.6 768.7 691.7 749.8 639.4 534.7 551.2 669.1 671.6
Source: Calculated from B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 521–2.
the ability to earn foreign exchange through exports, during the First World War they aimed instead to prevent one another importing the supplies needed to sustain the war effort.14 Table 22.1 shows the extent to which the war influenced British imports. As Table 22.1 shows, there was no collapse of imports, but rather a sharp drop, a rebound in 1915, and then a renewed contraction as the German blockade began to bite and as the demands of war led to restrictions on nonessential imports.15 Raw material imports destined for civilian industries were especially hard hit. Timber imports, for example, fell from 11.6 million tons in 1913 to just 2.5 million tons by the end of the war, and manufactured metal goods from 2.2 million to 337,000 tons. Conversely, imports of raw materials and food were less severely affected, which reflected the overwhelming need to keep both forces and civilian population fed, and the fact that imports of warrelated manufactures offset decline in civilian ones. In particular, the war created a boom in petroleum and chemical imports.16 War conditions also forced changes in the origins of imports. Britain had imported two-thirds of its sugar from the Central Powers before the war, and 14 15 16
Findlay and O’Rourke, Power and Plenty, pp. 431–3. Ibid., pp. 430–1. C. E. Fayle, History of the Great War: Seaborne Trade, volume 3: The Period of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare (New York: Longmans Green, 1924), p. 478.
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Figure 22.1 Maintaining food supplies: the arrival of the grain ship. She has been mined and is awash but reaches port, lithograph by Charles Pears, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 61, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917.
was forced to find new sources, notably in North America, Cuba, Mauritius and Java. This was why supplies of sugar were brought under government control from the outset of the war. Subsequently, a ‘pattern of ever-increasing controls and inter-Allied coordination marked procurement of key commodities’ such as grain and meat, the latter of which the Board of Trade purchased the majority of Argentine exports and everything from Australia and New Zealand [see Fig. 22.1].17 At the same time, attempts were made to increase domestic production of grain, ores and other goods, although these were largely ineffective.18
17
18
M. B. Miller, ‘Sea Transport and Supply,’ in 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2016-08-24. DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.10950 (accessed 16/9/2018). S. Broadberry and P. Howlett, ‘The United Kingdom during World War I: Business as usual?’ in S. Broadberry and M. Harrison (eds.), The Economics of World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 210–3.
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Table 22.2. British exports, 1910–20 (£m at 1913 prices)
1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920
Foodstuffs Raw and livestock materials
Manufactures
Total
Re-exports
28.9 30.4 32.8 32 25.5 21.9 19 9.8 4.4 15.6 19.1
352.8 364.1 383.8 396.7 330.2 274.9 292.9 251 170.8 209.3 294.1
469 483.2 508 525.2 435 356.4 369.9 309.2 212.9 273.9 362.2
104.1 104.6 111.3 109.6 102.5 105.6 85.9 53 20 88.7 97.1
87.3 88.8 91.3 96.6 79.3 59.6 58.1 48.5 37.6 49 49.1
Source: Calculated from B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 521–2.
Although the blockades were primarily targeted at imports, belligerent powers’ exports dropped off much more sharply. Britain was no exception, as Table 22.2 shows. The export of a string of war-related goods, including petroleum, aeroplane and lorry components and various items that could be used in making munitions, was prohibited from the day Britain declared war.19 This was partly why exports of manufactures fell so sharply, but more pertinent was the fact that swathes of British industry were repurposed from civilian production to the production of war materials. The textile industries, for instance, were partially compensated for lost export markets by contracts to supply the military, although production nevertheless declined overall.20 Similarly, much of the fledgling motor vehicle industry was turned over to the production of military vehicles.21 Food exports, never a large component of British trade, also contracted as more was retained for domestic consumption. As for raw materials, the drop was relatively small, because the largest single export was coal, which continued to be shipped around
19 20
21
London Gazette, 4 August 1914. J. Singleton, ‘The Cotton Industry and the British War Effort, 1914–1918,’ Economic History Review, 47 (1994), pp. 601–18. R. A. Church, The Rise and Decline of the British Motor Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 9–12.
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the world to supply both naval and civilian coaling stations, and which Britain shipped to its European allies throughout the conflict.22 The war permanently changed Britain’s trading position by promoting the rise of new exporting powers, especially the United States and Japan, who were able to step into the breach left by the withdrawal of Britain and other European powers from markets they had previously dominated. The United States’ share of world exports increased from 13 to 21 per cent between 1913 and 1929, whereas the British share declined from 30 to 23 per cent. The industrial and agricultural overcapacity created by the war fuelled demands for protection in its aftermath. Moreover, the war destroyed the system of international monetary equilibrium under the gold standard that had underpinned the globalisation of the nineteenth century, and wartime inflation depressed the value of the pound, which meant that the price of returning to the gold standard after the war would be a period of depression, falling particularly hard on export industries.23 In essence, the benign economic conditions of the late nineteenth century gave way to the protectionism of the interwar period.
Shipping on the Front Line On the eve of the First World War, British shipping was pre-eminent in the global tonnage market. Britain’s merchant fleet totalled approximately 19,000,000 gross tons, almost half of the world’s seagoing tonnage, and was the most modern and efficient in the world.24 The industry can be divided into two main parts. The first was the liner sector, consisting of ships that operated according to a published timetable. Firms engaging in this business varied greatly in terms of scale and scope. At one end of the spectrum there were very large, high-profile companies operating primarily intercontinental services, such as P&O and Cunard, whose fleets included the largest and most prestigious vessels afloat. At the other end, much smaller firms engaged in a limited number of coastal or short-sea routes, such as those whose vessels plied across the English Channel and North Sea. The liner sector, which encompassed most of the passenger-carrying fleet and also specialist cargo ships such as tankers and refrigerated vessels, accounted for about 40 per cent of tonnage.25
22 23
24
25
Miller, ‘Sea Transport and Supply.’ Harley, ‘Trade, 1870–1939,’ pp. 176–80; P. M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Allen Lane, 1976), pp. 260–3; J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of Mr Churchill (London: Hogarth Press, 1925). British Parliamentary Papers {hereafter BPP} 1918 XIII, Report of the Departmental Committee on Shipping and Shipbuilding, p. 527. For the sake of comparability, gross tonnage figures are used throughout this chapter. BPP 1918 XIII, Report of the Departmental Committee on Shipping and Shipbuilding, p. 527.
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The remaining 60 per cent of the industry comprised tramps; that is, vessels that did not sail to a schedule and carried cargo to and from ports where it was available or in demand. Tramp ships were therefore less specialised and usually less technologically advanced than the liners. Firms in this sector tended to be relatively small, including numerous single-ship companies, although some, such as Ropner’s of Hartlepool, with its fleet of 57 ships in 1914, operated on a significant scale.26 At the lower end of the business were countless firms operating a handful of small ships on coastal and short-sea routes. The bulk of the tramp shipping sector was steam-powered by 1914, although it did also include the remaining sailing vessels on the British registry, most of which were small coasters. The British shipping industry prior to 1914 carried around half of total world trade, including over 90 per cent of trade between Britain and the empire, and twothirds of trade between British possessions and foreign countries. A still more telling indicator of its strength is the fact that it carried almost a third of seaborne cargoes between foreign countries.27 The pre-eminence of British shipping slipped slightly in the years immediately before the war as competitors gained market share. Most prominent among these was Germany, whose fleet in 1913 was the second largest in the world; only a third of the size of the British, but modern, efficient and aggressively managed. Japanese shipping, too, was growing quickly, with strong state support.28 Nevertheless, on the eve of the war British shipping occupied a position of dominance unequalled either before or since. Despite the contribution of neutral and Allied shipping, which together accounted for another 38 per cent of world tonnage, it was never in doubt that the Allied war effort depended on the ability of the British fleet to operate.29 Equally clearly, it was going to be a prime target for attack. Unlike any other major industry, merchant shipping and its workforce were on the front line of the war, directly exposed to enemy action. Nearly 8,000,000 tons, or 38 per cent, of Britain’s merchant fleet of June 1914 were destroyed, with around 14,500 merchant seamen losing their lives, and a further 3,500 interned or taken prisoner.30 As far as shipowners were concerned, the first consequence of the declaration of war was a precipitate rise in insurance premiums during August 1914, 26 27
28
29
30
I. Dear, The Ropner Story (London: Hutchinson Benham, 1986), p. 34. BPP 1918 XIII, Report of the Departmental Committee on Shipping and Shipbuilding, p. 546. BPP 1918 XIII, Report of the Departmental Committee on Shipping and Shipbuilding, pp. 525–8, 562–77; P. N. Davies, ‘The Rise of Japan’s Modern Shipping Industry,’ The Great Circle 7 (1985), pp. 45–56. BPP 1918 XIII, Report of the Departmental Committee on Shipping and Shipbuilding, p. 526. The estimates given are that British shipping accounted for 48 per cent of world tonnage at the outbreak of war, Allies 17 per cent, the United States 7 per cent and other neutrals 14 per cent. Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry, p. 322.
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which immobilised British vessels operating in potentially dangerous areas, and also affected some neutral fleets, especially that of Norway. However, this threat was ameliorated by a state insurance scheme which had been planned out in detail during 1913 and early 1914, and introduced within days of the outbreak of war. By the end of August most vessels had returned to sea.31 Outside European waters the main threat to shipping came from German warships acting as commerce-raiders. They were few in number and the most successful of them, SMS Karlsruhe, sank only 73,000 tons.32 However, they caused disruption disproportionate to their numbers and destructive potential, and, as German naval planners intended, they were in large measure responsible for the crippling rise in insurance premiums. However, within six months, Germany’s commerce-raiders had all been destroyed by Allied naval action, interned, or rendered impotent by lack of coal and bases from which to operate.33 The much greater and more insidious threat was in waters closer to home, in the form of mines and, later, submarines. The latter were primitive and short-ranged, and in 1915 Germany had only thirty-seven. By the end of January 1915, submarines had destroyed only ten ships, as opposed to fortyseven taken or sunk by cruisers.34 Moreover, they initially complied with rules of engagement written for surface craft, which mandated that they issue a warning and give crews time to evacuate before attacking, which negated their inherent advantages. The first period of ‘unrestricted’ submarine warfare from February to August 1915, under which submarines attacked on sight and without warning, was abandoned after the torpedoing of the passenger liner Lusitania in May, which cost 1,200 lives and threatened a diplomatic rupture with the United States.35 Its impact was thus limited, as Table 22.3 shows, and for more than a year thereafter submarines reverted to agreed rules of engagement. The sheer size of the British merchant marine enabled it to absorb some damage without jeopardising its ability to function, and losses to enemy action were tolerable for the first two years of the war. However, by late 1915 the U-boats had precipitated a shortage of tonnage that worsened steadily over the 31
32 33
34 35
K. Petersen, The Saga of Norwegian Shipping: An Outline of the History, Growth, and Development of a Modern Merchant Marine (Oslo: Dreyer, 1955), p. 57; A. Hurd, History of the Great War based on Official Documents, by direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence: The Merchant Navy, vol. I (London: Longmans Green, 1921), pp. 228–39; Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry, pp. 57–63. Fayle, Seaborne Trade, volume 1, p. 412. J. Corbett, History of the Great War: Naval Operations, vol. 2 (London: Longmans Green, 1921), chapter XIV. Fayle, Seaborne Trade, volume 1, p. 412. J. D. Doenecke, Nothing Less Than War: A New History of America’s Entry into World War I (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2011), pp. 70–87.
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Table 22.3. Allied shipping losses, 1914–18
Source: Calculated from C. E. Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry (London, 1927), p. 417.
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course of the ensuing year. This was exacerbated by four other factors. First, the necessity for ships to make longer voyages in sourcing goods from further afield, of which sugar was the prime example, increased the time spent on passage and diminished the number of voyages individual vessels could make. Second, the British shipbuilding industry devoted its efforts to naval vessels and to repairs rather than new merchant-ship construction, meaning that lost vessels could not be replaced. Moreover, the number of damaged vessels awaiting repair overwhelmed the yards’ capacity and resulted in ships remaining out of service for long periods.36 Third, the demands of the military, shortages of dockers and increased checking of ships and cargoes slowed down port turnaround times and led to severe congestion. As early as April 1915 one prominent shipowner estimated that 1,500,000 tons of shipping were awaiting berths in British and Allied ports, with delays stretching to two or three weeks.37 In that month, seventy ships awaited berths at Liverpool alone.38 Subsequent attempts to streamline port operations by drafting in additional labour and moving goods into and off the docks more quickly did serve to improve the situation, but congestion remained a problem well into 1919.39 Finally, a large and growing proportion of the erstwhile merchant fleet had been taken up for war work and to maintain essential supplies. For all these reasons the tonnage shortage began to assume crisis proportions during 1916, and the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917, by now with a larger number of much more capable submarines, drove losses to unprecedented heights. During the worst month, April 1917, 545,000 tons of Allied shipping were sent to the seabed, and by that autumn around a fifth of the world’s pre-war tonnage had been destroyed, including many of the largest and most modern vessels.40 Such losses were unsustainable, and threatened the viability of the entire Allied war effort. The solution lay in convoys, which had not been used in wartime since 1815. The Admiralty had firmly resisted the introduction of such a measure, arguing that patrols would be effective enough to keep losses to an acceptable level, that convoys would cause too much disruption to normal patterns of trade, and that merchant vessels would not be able or willing to keep station, making convoys unmanageable.41 However, under pressure from the 36
37 38
39
40
41
BPP 1918 XIII, Report of the Departmental Committee on Shipping and Shipbuilding, p. 531. Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry, pp. 99–100, 115. P. N. Davies, The Trade Makers: Elder Dempster in West Africa, 1852–1972 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973), p. 152. J. Russell Smith, Influence of the Great War upon Shipping (New York: Oxford University Press, 1919), pp. 33–4. BPP 1918 XIII, Report of the Departmental Committee on Shipping and Shipbuilding, p. 535. Hurd, The Merchant Navy, vol. 1, pp. 215, 242–3; R. Woodman, More Days, More Dollars: The Universal Bucket Chain: 1885–1920 (Stroud: History Press, 2010), pp. 201–3.
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politicians and the navy itself, and informed by the results of some experimental convoys, the Admiralty relented and general convoys were introduced in spring 1917.42 The results were, in the assessment of the erstwhile Director of Ship Requisitioning, ‘amazingly successful’. There were organisational difficulties; for instance, the assembly and arrival of convoys strained port facilities, while the obligation to sail in scheduled convoys did impair efficiency. But losses quickly fell to sustainable levels, and the survival rate amongst crews of ships sunk improved markedly.43
Merchant Ships at War Any British-registered merchant ship was legally liable to be taken up for war work, and the government announced on the day the war broke out that the Admiralty was authorised to exercise its powers of requisitioning upon any such ship in British or adjacent waters.44 In practice, the impact was uneven in time and across different parts of the British shipping industry, and it later spread to neutrals, as Dutch and other ships were force-chartered under the law of Angary, by which a state at war, in circumstances of need, had the right to seize or destroy property belonging to a neutral state.45 The most obvious duties for merchant ships were service as troopships and hospital ships [see Fig. 22.2]. This affected primarily the passenger liner sector. During August 1914 alone, the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company lost the use of ten of its twenty-eight large steamers, and by the end of 1915 forty-two of P&O’s pre-war fleet of sixty vessels had seen government service, with thirty-one still under requisition as 1916 dawned.46 The other area of requisitioning to fall primarily on the liner sector was the conversion of merchant vessels into armed merchant cruisers (AMCs). Many of the early liner firms’ mail contracts had included clauses mandating that vessels be built with this in mind, and although these were deleted from later contracts the idea never disappeared altogether. Successive generations of Cunard’s top liners were built to specifications laid down by the Admiralty.47 In practice, however, the heavy fuel consumption and poor manoeuvrability of such ships, coupled with the large target they presented, made them unsuitable warships. Despite having been built with facilities for gun emplacements, conversion of Cunard’s 42
43 44 45 46 47
J. Goldrick, ‘The Battleship Fleet: The Test of War, 1895–1919,’ in J. R. Hill (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 311. Salter, Allied Shipping Control, pp. 5, 126–7. London Gazette, 4 August 1914. Miller, ‘Sea Transport and Supply.’ Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry, pp. 45, 98. BPP 1860 XIV, First Report from the Select Committee on Packet and Telegraphic Contracts; J. Maxtone-Graham, The Only Way to Cross (New York: Macmillan, 1972), p. 11.
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Figure 22.2 Maintaining forces overseas: transport loading at night, lithograph by Charles Pears, from The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals, no. 65, published by the Fine Art Society for the Department of Information, 1917.
Mauretania to an AMC was aborted and instead she served as a troopship, whilst her sister Lusitania remained in civilian service until her sinking in May 1915. Instead, the burden fell primarily on second-rank liners.48 Five of Cunard’s ships saw AMC service, including the Carmania, which sank the German AMC Cap Trafalgar near Trindade, in the South Atlantic, in September 1914.49 However, converted merchant vessels were of limited use against actual warships, and for much of the war were confined to convoy escort duties, and to patrolling areas where they were unlikely to see action. The other areas in which merchant ships contributed directly to the war effort fell on less prestigious parts of the industry. A large proportion of tramp steamers were taken up for periods of time to serve as colliers in support of naval operations, and to carry military supplies. In late 1915, approximately a quarter of tramp tonnage was under requisition, which rose to 30 per cent
48 49
Woodman, More Days, More Dollars, p. 221. F. E. Hyde, Cunard and the North Atlantic 1840–1973 (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1975), p. 160.
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early the following year.50 Meanwhile, the shallow-drafted and manoeuvrable paddle steamers used as short-distance ferries and excursion boats were well suited to minesweeping and tender duties. Several firms had most of their vessels requisitioned for such duties, among them one of the largest operators, Cosens & Co of Weymouth, whose entire fleet was under requisition by 1918.51 Like other industries, the merchant shipping industry lost a proportion of its men to the armed forces. Most went into the Royal Navy via the medium of the Royal Naval Reserve, which had been established in 1859 to replace the centuries-old practice of impressment, and which was called up on the first day of the war.52 Of 163 navigating officers employed by Cunard in 1914, 139 were members of the RNR, and 131 had enlisted by the year’s end.53 However, a large but unknown number of men enlisted in the army during the autumn of 1914. Their skills were thereby lost to a fleet that sorely needed them, and retrieving them was a protracted and often unsuccessful process.54
Shipping Control During the First World War, the British state intervened across a wide range of industries. Only in late 1914, however, did the realisation set in that the government needed to plan for a protracted war, and in most cases its interventions before 1917 were limited and reactive, responding to problems as they arose rather than creating comprehensive systems of control. These were only established in the last two years of the war.55 Shipping was no exception to this pattern. From the outbreak of war, requisitioning of shipping tonnage extended well beyond the state’s direct requirements as it sought to maintain supplies of food and other essential commodities. Initially, this took the form of acquiring hold space rather than entire ships, and it was carried out by the Board of Trade rather than by the Transport Department. On the outbreak of war all refrigerated hold space was taken over for supplies of meat, with the surplus space used for other perishable goods such as dairy produce and fruit. Once more, this impacted primarily on the liner sector, which accounted for almost all refrigerated hold space. Less specialised cargoes, such as sugar and grain, could
50 51
52 53 54
55
Salter, Allied Shipping Control, p. 48. R. Clammer, Cosens of Weymouth 1848–1918 (Witney: Black Dwarf Publications, 2005), ch. 13. London Gazette, 4 August 1914. A. Hurd, A Merchant Fleet at War (London: Cassell, 1920), pp. 12–13. C. P. Hopkins, ‘National Service’ of British Seamen 1914–1919 (London: Routledge, 1920), p. 54. Broadberry and Howlett, ‘The United Kingdom during World War I,’ pp. 222–3.
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be conveyed in any cargo ship, and the burden of carrying them thus fell more heavily on the tramp sector.56 Requisitioned tonnage was hired at fixed rates, the so-called Blue Book rates that were fixed by a committee of shipowners during 1914, and which lasted, with only minor modifications, until 1918. The rates varied by the type of ship, its speed or size, and the service for which it was needed. Fast liners on troop-ship service, for example, were paid at 17s 6d per ton per month, whereas vessels capable of less than 12 knots received only 13s 6d. Cargo liner rates also varied by speed, whereas tramp rates were set according to size, and ranged from 9s 6d for a ship of 7,000 tons and over, up to 12s for a ship of between 1,300 and 1,800 tons. Rates for most ships were reduced slightly after two or three months, and in some categories small supplements were attached to the rates if ships had particular features, such as double cargo-handling derricks.57 When they were introduced, the Blue Book rates were above prevailing market rates, not least because the first half of 1914 had not been lucrative for the industry. Moreover, the decade prior to the war had included several years of ‘acute depression’, in contrast to which the Blue Book rates gave an attractive rate of return.58 However, within months the growing tonnage shortage and consequent rise in freight rates left owners of requisitioned tonnage at a major disadvantage compared to those still able to operate in the open market. Worse still, the war engendered a sharp rise in operating costs, in some cases of up to 100 per cent, leading some firms to claim they were operating their ships at a loss.59 The rates were finally revised early in 1918, by which time requisitioning had in any case been extended to most of the fleet.60 In the meantime, some tramp ship operators tried to keep their vessels employed away from British ports, and therefore beyond the reach of the state.61 For the first two years of the war, however, the bulk of the fleet was not subject to requisition and was free to trade at market rates, which the worsening tonnage shortage drove to unprecedented heights. As Lord Sydenham put it in March 1916: The shortage of shipping at the present moment is giving rise to many and grave difficulties, and it is tending, and may perhaps tend still further, to increase the cost of many commodities of first-class importance to the country.62 56 57 58
59 60
61 62
Russell Smith, Influence of the Great War upon Shipping, ch. VI. Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry, pp. 450–4. Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry, pp. 75–83; D. H. Aldcroft, ‘The Depression in British Shipping, 1901–1911,’ Journal of Transport History, 7 (1965), pp. 14–23. Russell Smith, Influence of the Great War upon Shipping, p. 156. Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry, pp. 118–21; S. G. Sturmey, British Shipping and World Competition (London: Athlone Press, 1962), p. 49. Sturmey, British Shipping and World Competition, p. 46. Hansard, HL Deb 08 March 1916, vol. 21, cc313–6.
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Prominent among those vital commodities was wheat, the conveyance of which from the River Plate was costing £7 10s per ton in early 1916, as opposed to just 12s before the war.63 Wheat, though, was just the canary in the coalmine: across the industry, time charter rates in the open market rose to 40–50s per ton during 1916, as opposed to 13–18s during the previous year.64 It was the rise in freight rates, coupled with some popular disquiet over the excessive profits being made by some shipowners, which provoked demands for the extension of control over shipping. Complete state direction was an impossibility at this stage, since no organisation existed with the capacity to manage it, or indeed the knowledge, for no comprehensive analysis of the fleet’s deployment had ever been carried out.65 Control was therefore incremental, extended on an almost ad hoc basis as successive measures proved inadequate. The process began in November 1915 with the establishment of what J. A. Salter termed ‘control by committee’.66 Two committees were established. The first was the Ship Licensing Committee. This consisted primarily of prominent shipowners, marking the point at which industry figures were brought into the framework of state direction, paralleling developments in other key industries.67 Its first task was to free up shipping capacity by denying licences to ships carrying non-essential cargoes, which were allegedly numerous.68 Initially this applied only to ships trading outside the British Empire, but was later extended to all vessels. In fact, the committee found relatively few ships engaged in work so obviously unimportant it could simply be discontinued, and it had neither the authority nor the ability to make higher-level policy decisions as to what constituted essential work. Its licensing powers, however, enabled it to act as an enforcer of decisions made elsewhere, and it evolved during 1916 into an executive body that put into effect decisions relating to the non-requisitioned portion of the fleet. When the Board of Trade introduced fixed freight rates for ships supplying coal to France, the committee ensured compliance through the simple expedient of refusing to license charters at higher rates and denying licenses to ships attempting to leave the business for more lucrative employment elsewhere.69 The second body, the Requisitioning (Carriage of Foodstuffs) Committee, was tasked with requisitioning or directing the employment of British ships to import 63
64 65
66 67 68 69
The Times, 7 January 1916. See also C. E. Fayle, History of the Great War: Seaborne Trade, volume 2: From the Opening of the Submarine Campaign to the Appointment of the Shipping Controller (London: Longmans Green, 1920), p. 235. Salter, Allied Shipping Control, p. 69. Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry, p. 133; BPP 1918 XIII, Report of the Departmental Committee on Shipping and Shipbuilding, p. 544. Salter, Allied Shipping Control, ch. II. Broadberry and Howlett, ‘The United Kingdom during World War I,’ pp. 222–6. See Hansard, HL Deb 08 March 1916 vol 21 cc313–6. Salter, Allied Shipping Control, pp. 48–50.
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foodstuffs. In the event, the committee confined its activities primarily to the grain trade, and although it did succeed in directing sufficient tonnage to bring down grain freight rates, Salter argues that this simply served to create shortages and consequently higher freights elsewhere.70 During 1916, the inadequacy of these partial control measures became increasingly obvious as the shortage of tonnage worsened, and freight rates continued to rise. Behind the scenes, however, mechanisms were being developed that would in time enable complete control. Early in the war, two branches of the Admiralty’s Transport Department, one naval and one military, had selected the most suitable ships for their needs from whatever was available. However, the Requisitioning Branch was formed in late 1915 to select ships for service, and it built up a vast card index covering virtually the entire fleet. Thus, within a year, sufficient knowledge and bureaucratic acumen had been assembled to support a dramatic extension of control, which came in the form of the Ministry of Shipping, founded in December 1916 at the behest of the incoming coalition government led by David Lloyd George. This ministry had full departmental powers and representation at cabinet level. It was headed by Joseph Maclay, chief partner in Maclay and McIntyre, whose fleet of fifty vessels had made it the largest tramp-shipping firm on the Clyde in 1914.71 General requisitioning of the merchant fleet was by then widely anticipated, and duly happened in the spring of 1917. Tonnage was taken up at Blue Book rates, although owners remained free to utilise space not required by government at market prices. There were also some exemptions for vessels unlikely to be useful to the war effort or whose requisitioning would be disproportionately difficult, such as small coasters. Instead, their freight rates were capped to deter profiteering.72 General requisitioning, coupled with the entry of the United States into the war, led to an even greater concentration of the British fleet on the north Atlantic, with still more preference afforded to businesses deemed essential to the prosecution of the war. From the second half of the nineteenth century, after the repeal of the protectionist Navigation Laws in 1850, the shipping industry had tended to proclaim its commitment to the free market loudly and clearly. State control did not sit easily with many shipowners, especially early in the war, when the control mechanisms were partial and those operating them inexperienced. Complaints were legion about ships being unnecessarily delayed, being assigned to routes and duties for which they were unsuitable or ports they 70 71
72
Ibid., p. 53. K. Grieves, ‘Maclay, Joseph Paton, first Baron Maclay (1857–1951), shipowner and shipping controller.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. www.oxforddnb.com/ view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-34779 (accessed 31/8/2018). The Times, 3 May 1917; Russell Smith, Influence of the Great War upon Shipping, p. 171.
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were too big to enter, and about general bureaucratic inertia and infighting. J. H. Welsford, a Liverpool shipowner, suggested in the pages of industry journal Fairplay that efficiency had thus been reduced by as much as 50 per cent.73 The president of the Liverpool Steamship Owners’ Association spoke for many when he stated: The British shipowners should be allowed to build their ships and to carry on and develop their trade free from all unnecessary restrictions; the government should deal with abuses in regard to the management of individual ships as they arise without forcing the whole shipping industry to comply with harassing and unnecessary rules and regulations.74
The Board of Trade committee appointed in 1917 to consider the reconstruction of the industry echoed such sentiments when it described control as ‘alien to the British genius’ and bewailed its tendency to ‘paralyse individual effort’.75 This aligned with the shipowners’ calls for the speedy dismantling of controls.
An Industry Victorious, but Damaged The war had profound impacts on the shipping industry. In the short run, it caused disruption and losses but it also created opportunities, and thus it distorted the economics of shipping as to reshape the industry and accelerate the processes of concentration and consolidation that had been under way since the late nineteenth century. In the longer term, it accelerated the relative decline of British shipping, and influenced shipping firms’ attitudes for decades after it ended. For the first three years of the war, high freight rates on the open market generated large profits for those whose ships were not under requisition, affording some companies much-needed relief after the generally depressed conditions of the previous decade. As Andrew Bonar Law, then Chancellor of the Exchequer and a shareholder in several tramp-shipping firms, stated rather tactlessly to Parliament in July 1917: The sum of money I had invested in shipping, spread over these fifteen different shipping companies, was £8,100. Five per cent, interest on that, which in ordinary times, I should have been glad to get, would be £405. For the year 1915, instead of £405, I received £3,624, and for the year 1916 I received £3,847.76
73
74 75
76
Fairplay, 8 March 1917, quoted in Russell Smith, Influence of the Great War upon Shipping, p. 160. Fairplay, 4 October 1917. BPP 1918 XIII, Report of the Departmental Committee on Shipping and Shipbuilding, p. 535. Hansard, HC Deb 03 July 1917 vol. 95 cc941–1019.
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Bonar Law claimed to be ‘ashamed’ of this and argued that it was ‘utterly disgraceful’ that investors in shipping should be making such profits, even after shipping had been brought within the scope of the Excess Profits Duty introduced in the 1915 budget. This was calculated on the average profits of the three years preceding the war and therefore worked in favour of shipping, which ‘had enjoyed during those years a period of exceptional prosperity’.77 Bonar Law was far from alone in attacking the industry, for allegations of profiteering were widespread at the time, with particular outrage surfacing in June 1916 when one Cardiff shipping firm reported a return of 185 per cent on its capital.78 Even the President of the United States weighed in to attack shipping profiteers and argue for price controls.79 Some did seek to defend the industry by pointing out that dividends were not very much higher than before the war, that higher profits were needed to allow firms to rebuild their fleets, and that some other groups were doing even better, but such voices were very much in a minority.80 The unpopularity of many in the industry bolstered support for general requisitioning which, coupled with extensions of Excess Profits Duty, left the liabilities of shipowners ‘more onerous than those of any other trade’, and eventually brought earnings down.81 By then, however, profound change was under way. As the tonnage shortage worsened, the value of ships rocketed, and even apparently obsolete sailing vessels changed hands for several times their pre-war prices. This, coupled with the fact that Excess Profits Duty did not apply to earnings from sales of ships and thereby created an incentive for firms to sell up, drove a wave of mergers and acquisitions across the industry. For example, P&O acquired the New Zealand Shipping Company in 1916, and during the following year took over the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand, Hain Steamship Company and James Nourse Ltd.82 Similarly, Cunard swallowed up Canadian Northern Steamships, the Donaldson Line and the Commonwealth Dominion Line, paying £4,961,013 in shares for capital valued at £1,991,544.83 The corollary of this, of course, was the disappearance of many well established firms, at least as independent entities. Among these was Thos Wilson Sons & Co Ltd of Hull, whose fleet of eighty-two vessels made it the largest privately-owned shipping firm in the world in 1912. Nevertheless, after heavy war losses and discord between the principals in
77 78
79 80 81 82 83
Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry, pp. 148–9. A. J. Arnold, ‘Privacy or Concealment?’ The Accounting Practices of Line Shipping Companies, 1914–1924,’ International Journal of Maritime History VIII (1996), p. 48. Daily Mail, 13 July 1917. The Times, 2 March and 12 July 1917. Quoted in Sturmey, British Shipping and World Competition, p. 51. D. & S. Howarth, The Story of P&O (London, 1986), pp. 123–4. Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry, p. 188.
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Table 22.4. Number of tramp firms and tramp vessels owned on the Clyde, 1914 and 1918
Number of firms Number of vessels Gross tonnage
1914
1918
61 422 1,327,609
23 145 424,151
Source: A. G. Course, The Deep Sea Tramp (London, 1960), p. 104.
what remained a quintessential family firm, the fabled Wilson Line was sold to John Reeves Ellerman for £4.3 million in 1916.84 Ultimately, the effect of the war was to drive through a diminution in the number of firms in most areas of the industry, as the example of Clyde tramp-shipping firms detailed in Table 22.4 illustrates. The figures for the beginning and end of the war are somewhat misleading, however, for the boom conditions of 1915–16 drew a wave of investors into the industry. In 1915, ninety-four new shipping firms were formed, most of them small operations using second-hand vessels, and many of them financed and managed by people with little knowledge of shipping. This helped to drive up ship values and accelerate the process of sales and mergers, and thereby to ‘increase the speculative at the expense of the more stable elements in the industry’.85 Within a few years this was to cost it dear. The end of the war was followed by a brief boom as pent-up demand was satisfied, and the continuing tonnage shortage was accentuated by congested ports and a 50 per cent reduction in Excess Profits Duty from May 1919.86 Briefly, the conditions of 1915 and 1916 returned, along with the same inward rush of inexperienced investors. Yet as wartime building programmes bore fruit and new tonnage came onto the market, supplemented by enemy ships seized as war reparations, and as the economic dislocation caused by the war abated, freight rates plummeted. The slump began in the spring of 1920 and lasted well into 1923. Firms that had invested in tonnage at wartime prices found themselves dangerously overcapitalised, and many of the more speculative ones collapsed. This drove a further wave of amalgamations, which left much of the liner sector in the hands of a small number of large combines, 84
85 86
D. J. Starkey, ‘Ownership Structures in the British Shipping Industry: The Case of Hull, 1820–1916,’ International Journal of Maritime History VIII (1996), pp. 71–95; B. Dyson, ‘The End of the Line: Oswald Sanderson, Sir John Ellerman and the Wilsons of Hull,’ in D. J. Starkey and A. G. Jamieson (eds.), Exploiting the Sea: Aspects of Britain’s Maritime Economy since 1870 (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1998), pp. 59–78. Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry, p. 177. Ibid., pp. 371–81.
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among them P&O, Cunard, the Royal Mail Group and Ellerman Lines. The tramp sector, too, became increasingly concentrated. The 120 small tramp firms at Cardiff in 1914 had been reduced to around twenty by 1939.87 Thus, the particular circumstances of the First World War served to reshape the industry into a structure that persisted largely unchanged until the great contraction of British shipping in the 1970s. Concentration was not necessarily a negative outcome, but the war and its aftermath had other, more clearly damaging effects. First, the post-war boom and slump cast a long shadow. British shipowners were left with a legacy of expensive and sometimes sub-optimal ships. This served to deter investment in shipping between the wars. The White Star Line, among the most prominent firms on the Atlantic before 1914, partially rebuilt its fleet with secondhand American tonnage and former German liners and did not build a new ship of its own until 1927, only a year before it was taken over by the Royal Mail Group. On a smaller scale, the Hull-based Wilsons and North Eastern Railway Shipping Company, which had a fleet of nine vessels before the war and made windfall profits between 1915 and 1920, never made good its war losses and purchased only two ships between the war’s end and its final closure in 1935.88 Moreover, the memory of the 1919–20 slump resurfaced after the Second World War, causing shipowners to hold back on investment in the late 1940s, in expectation of a similar crisis. The seriousness of this is difficult to quantify, but it can be stated with confidence that the boom and slump engendered by the First World War seriously impaired the long-term development of the industry.89 A second and equally negative consequence of the war was the fillip it gave to competitors, especially neutral powers whose fleets were free to take advantage of high wartime freight rates. Their profits were frequently reinvested in new, highly modern tonnage. Fleets such as that of Norway, which prior to 1914 had been based primarily on sailing ships, were rapidly modernised and emerged after the war as serious competitors to the embattled British industry.90 Moreover, British withdrawal from many parts of the globe created 87
88
89 90
R. Woodman, The History of the Ship: The Comprehensive Story of Seafaring from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (London, 2005 edition), p. 353. David J. Starkey & Richard Gorski, ‘“Our Little Company”: The Wilson’s & North East Railway Shipping Company, 1906–1935’ in Lewis R Fischer & Adrian Jarvis (eds.) Harbours and Havens: Essays in Port History in Honour of Gordon Jackson (St John’s: International Maritime Economic History Association, 1999), pp. 63–88; Woodman, History of the Ship, 348–51. Sturmey, British Shipping and World Competition, pp. 156–7. E. Merok, ‘After the Boom: the Political Economy of Shipping in Norway in the Interwar Period,’ in L. R. Fischer and E. Lange (eds), New Directions in Norwegian Maritime History (St John’s: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2011), pp. 125–50; Petersen, Saga of Norwegian Shipping, pp. 70–3.
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new opportunities for fleets based in the region. The biggest beneficiary of this was the Japanese fleet, which since the 1880s had been expanding rapidly, aided by generous subsidies and aggressive management.91 Japanese ships took over many routes around Asia and Australasia, and one British firm estimated in 1918 that they would have to reduce sailings in that area by 60 per cent.92 Competition also intensified on the Atlantic. In the long run, the boost given to competitors, especially the Japanese, Norwegian and Dutch fleets, proved to be a significant handicap to British shipping. The most visibly damaged sector, however, was coastal shipping. Traffic diverted to the railways during the war was not regained, and the boost the war gave to the development of the motor lorry depressed its position still further. Even the best years in the 1920s saw coastal shipping activity at little more than two thirds of its pre-1914 level, which it did not exceed again until the early 1950s.93
1914–18: Forty Years of Change? At the war’s end, King George V spoke of ‘my Merchant Navy’, coining the term to acknowledge the contribution that merchant shipping had made to eventual victory.94 It had done this both by keeping the British isles adequately supplied, and by providing effective logistical support to the armed forces in every theatre of the war.95 Victory, however, had been won at a high price, and had forced adjustments to British shipping that have been characterised as ‘forty years of change compressed into four years’.96 The war had exacerbated trends that had already become apparent, in the sense that it had impaired British shipping and boosted its competitors, and thereby accelerated the process of relative decline. Britain owned approximately half of the world’s ocean-going tonnage in 1914, but little more than a quarter by 1939.97 More broadly, the war had eroded the role of the United Kingdom as a commercial 91 92
93
94 95
96
97
Davies, ‘The Rise of Japan’s Modern Shipping Industry,’ pp. 45–56. M. Tatsuki, ‘Cooperation and Reorganization on the North-South Routes from Japan in the Interwar Period,’ in D. J. Starkey and G. Harlaftis (eds.), Global Markets: The Internationalization of the Sea Transport Industries since 1850 (St John’s: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1998), pp. 163–94; BPP 1918 XIII, Report of the Departmental Committee on Shipping and Shipbuilding, p. 532. J. Armstrong, ‘Climax and Climacteric: British Coastal Trade, 1870–1930,’ in Starkey and Jamieson (eds.), Exploiting the Sea, pp. 37–58. Hurd, The Merchant Navy, vol. 1, p. 2. K. Neilson, ‘Reinforcement and Supplies from Overseas: British Strategic Sealift in the First World War,’ in G. Kennedy (ed.), The Merchant Marine in International Affairs, 1850–1950 (London and Portland OR: Frank Cass, 2000), pp. 31–58. G. Jackson, The History and Archaeology of Ports (Tadworth: World’s Work, 1983), p. 140. Sturmey, British Shipping and World Competition, pp. 386–7.
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hub, especially its function as an entrepôt, and wounded some of the industries – most notably coal – that provided cargoes for British shipping. It also weakened British commercial dominance over its empire, allowing competitors to break into what had previously been de facto protected markets for British shipping firms. All of this meant that after 1918 the shipping industry had to adjust to an increasingly competitive world market. It is perhaps ironic that the king’s highly positive appraisal of the wartime service rendered by merchant shipping came at the end of a conflict whose long-term impact upon it was wide-ranging and overwhelmingly negative.
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23 Food
Societies need food to function and to help their citizens reach their potential. People who are satiated are, in general, not only healthier than people who are hungry, but also happier. Healthier and happier people experience increased well-being, which benefits not only themselves and those around them, but also the societies in which they live1. In wartime, the food of a society or nation is no less important than it is in peacetime, for similar reasons of health and happiness. Without sufficient food, soldiers will not have enough energy to engage in battles and may develop distrust in their leaders. Civilians on the home front, like civilians in peacetime, require adequate food in quantity and quality to engage in critical work to support the economic production of their nations, which in turn is vital for any war effort. Adequate food is thus necessary for civilians to maintain a modicum of belief in their leaders. When governments break the unspoken contract of ensuring, whether through private or public means, that a significant proportion of their populations have enough to eat, not only are individual people more hungry and less happy, societies at large suffer, and the legitimacies of states are weakened. This legitimacy weakens as the duration and intensity of food insecurity increases. During the First World War food security was a vital priority for all belligerent governments,2 and a concern for militaries and civilians alike. It is no wonder, then, that food supplies in the First World War have been studied and written about since the war itself. Governments and individuals had to contend with the effects of changing food supplies in the war as changes in trade and production heavily influenced the availability of food. One common way governments and policy makers used to analyse food supplies during the War itself was to estimate the total available calories in a given country, and then divide that number by the total population. In the 1
2
J. Allister McGregor and Nicky Pouw, ‘Towards an Economics of Well-Being’ Cambridge Journal of Economics, 41:4 (July 2017), pp. 1123–42. M. van Creveld, ‘World War I and the Revolution in Logistics’, in R. Chickering and S. Förster (eds.), Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 57–72.
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United Kingdom, the sum of all the estimated food imports and home production, minus exports, suggested that on the whole British people had available approximately 51 trillion, 24 billion calories per annum between 1909–13. Of these, 21 trillion, 293 billion calories were produced locally, and 29 trillion, 731 billion calories were imported from abroad, an import level roughly equivalent to 58 per cent of all food consumed in the United Kingdom.3 With an estimated average population of 45,200,000 people,4 this corresponded to a total of 3,091 calories per person per day.5 So on any given day, if calories had been divided perfectly evenly, each person in Britain would have consumed 1,290 calories that were produced in Britain, and 1,801 calories that were produced in foreign nations. Using the ‘average man’, a calculation made at the time to include women and children (calculated at roughly 0.77 of an adult male’s requirements),6 the number of calories consumed per person in Britain in the pre-war years 1909–13 averaged to roughly 1,678 per person per day produced locally, and 2,336 imported from abroad, or about 4,009 calories per person per day.7 Whether one takes the raw number of calories per person – 3,091 – or the more modified version that included the idea that women and children need and consume less, the large percentage of imported foodstuffs that made up the British diet is notable. The conclusion facing British decision makers was inescapable: the majority of
3
4
5
6
7
Numbers taken from Appendix Ia, pp. 6–7. The Food Supply of the United Kingdom. A Report Drawn Up by a Committee of the Royal Society at the Request of the President of the Board of Trade (London, His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1917). Ibid, p. 3. This population number was averaged population data for the United Kingdom from 1909 to1913 by the Royal Society that was then used in the aforementioned report to calculate consumption by person per day. The exact figure is 3,092.74 calories per day: average calories per annum divided by the total population divided by 365 days of the year. However, 3,091 calories per day was what the government presented. Because the government may have had access to more exact figures, and because the difference is less than two calories per person per day, we use their figure. This concept of computing the total calories needed by a country while taking into account the different ages and sexes of a population continued during and after the war. The early figure of 0.77 was used by Atwater, which was used by the British government. Starling (1919) of the Royal Society showed statistics using the 0.77 estimate, as well as a higher estimate, 0.835 given by Lusk. (Lusk was an American on the Inter-Allied Food Committee). The number changed slightly over time depending on the ratio of children and adolescents to adults in the population for a given year. The difference in computation between the two numbers also depended on how many age brackets were included, the ages of cutoff for adults: fourteen and fifteen, sixteen, or fourteen and above. Atwater originally used age brackets for fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, and then sixteen-year-olds and above. A higher ‘average man’ number changes the calculations of total calories accounting for age and gender needed or consumed by a national population considerably. The closer to 1, the greater number of calories needed. The Food Supply of the United Kingdom. His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1917, p. 7.
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calories consumed in Britain at the outbreak of the First World War were of foreign origin. Modern assessments more or less match these earlier calculations of the amount of food that Britain imported immediately prior to the First World War. In 1977 Hardach, suggested that 65 per cent of all calories in Britain were imported8. In 1985 Barnett stated that over 60 per cent9 of foodstuffs had been imported, and in 2010 Balderston pushed the estimate up to 75 per cent.10 Regardless of whether one takes the smaller 1917 estimate of the government, that 58 per cent of all calories consumed in Britain prior to the war were imported, or the more recent 2010 estimate that 75 per cent of calories consumed in Britain were imported, it is clear that the security of the British food supply was remarkably vulnerable at the outbreak of the First World War simply because so much of it was not produced at home. Britain relied on imported food to sustain its population. It was therefore essential during the War that food imports continue as regularly as possible, or that substitutions for imports be made through increased agricultural productivity at home. Foreign grain provided ‘four out of every five slices of bread’11 in Britain before the war. Bread held such material importance that it is no wonder it featured prominently in posters encouraging women and children to preserve it (see Fig. 23.1). In addition to total calories, the types of foods that are consumed matter to the health of individuals and populations. There was no clear demarcation such that Britain imported 60 per cent of her apples, 60 per cent of her wheat, and 60 per cent of her meat. Rather, some foodstuffs were sourced almost entirely from Britain, while others were heavily imported. We can break down the proportion of principal foodstuffs that were imported compared to those grown at home in 1914–18 even more specifically by using the still relevant study The British Food Supply (1928), by Sir William Beveridge.12 Table 23.1 shows the percentage of principal foodstuffs that were imported into Britain before and during the First World War. The percentage of home-produced goods are not shown in Table 23.1, but can be inferred. Remarkably, the changes in the percentages of foodstuffs that were imported throughout the war were not as dramatic as one might expect for an island nation vulnerable to wartime interdiction of shipping. According to Beveridge,
8
9
10
11 12
Gerd Hardach, The First World War, 1914–1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977). Margaret Barnett, British Food Policy during the First World War (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1985), p. xiv. Theo Balderston ‘Industrial Mobilization and War Economies’ in John Horne (ed.). A Companion to World War I (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), p. 227. Hardach, The First World War, p. 109. William H. Beveridge, British Food Control (London: Oxford University Press, 1928).
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Figure 23.1 Don’t waste bread! Save two slices every day and defeat the ‘U’ boat, poster issued by the Ministry of Food and printed by Clarke and Sherwill Ltd., 1917 Getty Images.
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Table 23.1. Percentage of total supplies of principal foodstuffs in Britain that were imported before and during the First World Wara Percentage of Principal Foodstuffs Which Were Imported in 1909–13 and in each Year 1914–1918 COMMODITY
1909–13
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
Wheat and Flour (as equivalent grain) Barley Oats Peas and Beans Total cereals and Pulses
78.7
77.2
71.6
78.1
76.2
64.9
43.4 23.4 35.5 56.2
34.2 19.4 30.7 53.6
35.6 19.9 35.3 50.5
40.1 17.4 37.9 54.7
26.3 14.8 56.7 50.1
15.3 11.2 43.9 39.9
Beef and Veal Mutton Other Meat Total Meat
33.6 44.5 29 35.7
36 47.9 38 39.3
35.4 45.4 36.6 38
31.5 37.4 34 33.5
27 28.7 41.9 30
40.9 32.3 59.5 42.2
Bacon and Hams Lard
68.7 78.5
71.2 80.4
75.5 83.6
76.8 83.5
78.2 84.8
89.4 94.6
Fish
11.7
16.5
29
31.5
30.3
27.1
Milk (condensed) Butter Cheese Margarine
54.4 62.3 74.7 49.2
56 61.2 75.3 49.4
60.8 60.5 77.3 47.2
60.3 46.6 76.9 51.7
56.6 44.1 79 33.1
70.5 43.4 74.2 5.9
3.7
2.2
1.4
1.6
0.9
0.6
Potatoes
Source: Beveridge, British Food Control, p. 359. Table produced from data presented in Table XVIII in Beveridge, British Food Control, p. 359. a
56.2 per cent of cereals and pulses were imported before the war. The percentage of cereals and pulses imports compared to home produced reached a low of 39.9 per cent in 1918, a change of 16.3 per cent. The total percentage of meat imports actually increased from 35.7 per cent before the war to 42.2 per cent in 1918. It must be emphasised that Table 23.1 does not show overall consumption of principal foodstuffs. Rather, Table 23.1 shows the percentage of consumed food stuffs that were imported compared to those that were home produced and demonstrates the shifts between imports and homeproduction. To illustrate the difference of these two measurements, pre-war,
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33.6 per cent of beef and veal consumed in Britain was imported, and 2.04 lbs of butcher’s meat was consumed weekly per head in the population. By 1918, meat imports had increased to 40.9 per cent, yet the weekly consumption of butcher’s meat was down to 1.27 lbs per week.13 These figures demonstrate the variability in food imports compared to home production. In general, the percentage of specific foods that were imported compared to home production did not systemically increase or decrease throughout the war. The ratio of potato imports to home-produced may have continually decreased, but the percentage of meat imports to homeproduced actually increased in 1915, decreased in 1916 and 1917, and increased again in 1918. Despite variability of the overall ratios of imports to home-produced agricultural production in Britain, the statistics in Table 23.1 hide changes in the sources of food imports into Britain, which was key to the continued availability of foodstuffs, or the substitution of one foodstuff for another, from other sources. Prior to the war, Britain imported most of its wheat from Russia.14 However, the continuation of grain imports from Russia soon became impossible after the war began. Britain was instead able to substantially increase wheat imports from North and South America. Thanks to good weather, the wheat yields in the Americas improved markedly in 1915 and 1916,15 making the viability of exporting these excess grains into Britain possible. This crucial piece of luck contributed to an increase in overall wheat imports into Britain in 1915, despite Russia, the main exporter of grains into Britain before the war, being substantially cut off. To take another example, at the outbreak of war, Britain imported all of its sugar, and per person consumed more sugar than any other nation on earth.16 About 36 per cent of sugar imports came from Germany, and 11 per cent from Austria-Hungary.17 That the government prepared to secure sugar with the advent of hostilities, including the lost 47 per cent of British imports of raw sugar from the enemy, is not surprising, nor is the fact that sugar became the first major foodstuff to be controlled by the government during the war.18 13 14
15 16 17
18
Beveridge, British Food Control, p. 311. Thomas Hudson Middleton, Food Production in War (London: Oxford University Press, 1923), p. 4. Ibid., p. 5. Barnett, British Food Policy, p. 29. C. J. Robertson, ‘Cane-Sugar Production in the British Empire’ Economic Geography, 6:2 (April 1930), p. 135. Barnett, British Food Policy, p. 29. As Barnett explains, there were financial incentives to support sugar because Britain had a large international sugar market. Furthermore, sugar was an important preservative, had a high caloric value, and it was ‘believed by the working classes that children would die unless they ate a pound of sugar a week’.
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Many countries in Europe imported foodstuffs before the war, thanks to the increased globalization and resultant trade that occurred through the nineteenth century.19 Yet even in the pre-1914 world of increasing global interdependence and trade, Britain was unique in the amount of food it imported compared to the rest of the Europe. Table 23.1 is useful because it shows raw import percentages of major food types yearly throughout the war in Britain. But data on agricultural imports to continental Europe, as shown in Table 23.2, helps bring British imports into context, and illustrates further the unique vulnerability of the pre-war food supply of Britain. As a whole, continental Europe (excluding Russia) imported 15.72 per cent of all grain consumed before the war. When only western Europe is considered (with borders defining ‘western’ being drawn from the eastern borders of Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and Italy),20 the percentage of all grain imported before the war jumps to 20 per cent. These figures, when compared to the 78.7 per cent of consumed wheat and flour and 56.2 per cent of total cereals and pulses imported by Britain before the war as shown in Table 23.1, suggest a staggering obstacle for Britain to overcome during a war of indeterminate duration. Within continental Europe, agricultural production on the whole was worse in western Europe than it was in eastern Europe. Taking the European continent as a whole, excluding Russia, grain production (wheat, rye and maize) by 1917 had shrunk to 68 per cent of the pre-war standard. The combined production of cereals and potatoes on the continent were reduced to 30 per cent of the pre-war standard.21 Grain production in Britain, on the other hand, increased from a pre-war average of 60.9 million metric quintiles to 67.9 million metric quintiles in 1917, though imports were reduced from 99.6 million metric quintiles pre-war to 80.6 million metric quintiles by 1917 [Table 23.3]. What we find through this example is an increase in the production of grains in Britain at the same moment that the continent was struggling. As imports to Britain in 1917 were reduced by 20 per cent, this extra production was sorely needed, and was accomplished in part through the increased area under cereal production in the British Isles by some 30 per cent.22 The ability of the British agricultural sector to increase production, at the same time that grain imports were reduced – though the reduction was not to the
19
20
21 22
Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 429. Economic, Financial and Transit Department League of Nations, Agricultural Production in Continental Europe during the 1914–1918 War and the Reconstruction Period. (Geneva: League of Nations, 1943), p. 8, n. 3. Agricultural Production, p. 11. Ibid., p. 16.
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Table 23.2. Production, net imports (+), net exports ( ) and supply of cereals and potatoes in continental Europe, 1914–18. Production, net imports (+), net exports ( ) and supply of cereals and potatoes in continental Europe, 1914–18 (Metric Quintiles in Millions) Commodities
1909/13
1914
1915
1916
1917
Wheat
Production Trade Supply
(348.1) 332.3 +62 394.3
274.5 +58.5 333.0
284.7
269.9
221.6
Rye
Production Trade Supply
(248.7) 203.6 +6.6 210.2
178.9 +5.4 184.3
157.0
151.7
125.3
Barley
Production Trade Supply
(136.6) 117.2 +33.3 150.5
106.4 +18.6 125.0
95.7
102.7
Oats
Production Trade Supply
(250.9) 227.2 +10.7 237.9
215.4 +5.9 221.3
170.2
188.6
Maize
Production Trade Supply
(145.40) 137.0 +24.5 161.5
137.1 +11.5 148.6
129.6
113.6
Total Cereals
Production Trade Supply
(1129.8) 1017.3 +137.1 1154.4
912.3 +99.9 1012.2
837.2
826.5
Potatoes
Production Trade Supply
(266.5) 229.5 0.2 229.3
212.8 1.0 211.8
232.3
148.5
Total Cereals & Potatoes
Production Trade Supply
(1396.3) 1246.8 +136.9 1383.7
1125.1 +98.9 1224.0
1069.5
975.0
1918
114.9
Source: League of Nations, p. 59.a a League of Nations, Agricultural Production. Table taken from Table 1 in Appendix 1 on p. 59. The data were not included for 1918 as it is unavailable.
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Table 23.3. Production, net imports (+), net exports ( ) and supply of cereals and potatoes in the British Isles (United Kingdom and Ireland), 1914–18. Production, net imports (+), net exports ( ) and supply of cereals and potatoes in the British Isles (United Kingdom and Ireland), 1914–18 (Metric Quintiles in Millions) Commodities
1909/13
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
Wheat
Production Trade Supply
16.2 +58.5 74.7
17.0 +57.8 74.8
20.1 +50.7 74.8
16.3 +56.7 73.0
17.5 +55.6 73.1
25.4 +47.0 72.4
Rye
Production Trade Supply
0.5 +0.5 1.0
0.5 +0.5 1.0
0.4 +0.4 0.8
0.5 +0.5 1.0
0.5 +1.3 1.8
0.8 +1.3 2.1
Barley
Production Trade Supply
14.2 +10.8 25.0
14.6 +7.9 22.5
10.6 +6.1 16.7
12.0 +8 20.0
13.0 +4.6 17.6
14.1 +2.5 16.6
Oats
Production Trade Supply
30.0 +9.0 39.0
29.2 +7.0 36.2
31.6 +7.8 39.4
30.2 +6.1 36.3
36.8 +6.4 43.2
44.1 +5.6 49.7
Maize
Production Trade Supply
+28.8 28.8
+19.1 19.1
23.3 23.3
+17.2 17.2
+12.7 12.7
+7.4 7.4
Total Cereals Production Trade Supply
60.9 +99.6 169.5
61.3 +92.3 153.6
62.7 +88.3 151.0
59.0 +88.5 147.5
67.9 +80.6 148.4
84.4 +63.8 148.2
Production Trade Supply
17.3 +0.3 17.6
19.0 +0.3 19.3
19.2 +0.2 19.4
13.9 +0.1 14.0
21.9 +0.2 22.1
23.4 0.8 23.4
Total Cereals Production & Potatoes Trade Supply
78.2 +99.9 178.1
80.3 +92.6 172.9
81.9 +88.5 170.4
72.9 +88.6 161.5
89.7 +80.8 170.5
107.8 63.8 171.6
Potatoes
Source: League of Nations, p. 63.a a Ibid., table taken from Table 3 in Appendix 1 on p. 63.
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same extent as the rest of Europe – was remarkable, especially as ‘Britain, more than any other country, was dependent on imports for her food supplies’.23 British borders were surrounded by the seas, meaning Britain could not acquire goods from neighbouring countries unless their sea lanes remained open. What is striking when Britain is compared to Europe is how well Britain managed to increase agricultural production of goods and maintain so much of its agricultural imports compared to the continent. Both were essential. With 45.2 million people to feed, even brief disruptions could easily have led to the malnourishment or even deaths of tens of thousands of people. And yet this did not happen. So how did Britain do it? Evidence suggests that it was Britain’s combination of a superior navy, an engaged public who complained vocally when food became too expensive, intervention by the government (secretly buying up food supplies on the advent of war, for example), increased employment and rising wages, the creation of Food (War) Office, food rationing later in the conflict, and a government that used its nation’s leading scientific institutions to study food supply and the requirements for civilians on the home front. All of these factors allowed the UK to provide a degree of food security to its peoples during the war. While the evidence suggests that Britain did not adequately prepare for a food problem before the war, it also suggests that the nation rose admirably to the occasion once the war commenced. A major strategic asset unique to Britain was the Royal Navy. Germany unleashed unrestricted U-boat warfare on 1 February 1917, with the aim of destroying British food imports and thus ending the war. From February until the end of July, shipping totalling 3,856,998 tons en route to the United Kingdom was lost through enemy action.24 If this rate of loss to imports had continued without response or without additional sources of calories, it is likely that many people in Britain would have gone hungry. And yet the Royal Navy responded to German submarine attacks with alacrity, creating a system of convoys to protect food shipments. This slowed the losses but could not stop them completely. At the same time, the incoming government led by Lloyd George was more proactive in direct food control than its predecessor. Under Lloyd George, 90 per cent of all food imports into the country were controlled by the government. Furthermore, import relationships were
23
24
Hardach, The First World War, pp. 108–9. Hardach references H. J. Hurwitz, State Intervention in Great Britain: A Study in Economic Control and Social Response, 1914–1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949). Mancur Olson, The Economics of the Wartime Shortage, A History of British Food Supplies in the Napoleonic War and in World Wars I and II (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1963), p. 83.
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tightened with the United States as well as other allies, which improved food security.25 When compared to other warring countries in Europe, state-wide rationing in the United Kingdom started much later, beginning in July 1918.26 Still, this late date should not be taken to suggest that the British government did not try to intervene earlier, particularly since these actions were more discreet. The government started secretly purchasing grain on the private market in December 1914. Such purchases were kept secret by using selected private buyers who served as a front. It was feared that, if the real purchaser were known, the government might be charged top rate, while other buyers and merchants might be frustrated to know they were competing for goods with the government. Public disclosure of this system might even have produced fear in the population, spiking prices for all. Technically these secret food purchases were also illegal because purchases made by the government needed prior approval by parliament. But parliamentary action could have compromised the secrecy of the purchases.27 After being caught out, the government claimed it would stop, but resumed the purchases until caught once again a few months later. Needless to say, many merchants and consumers were annoyed. They need not have been. Stocking up extra piles of wheat, a grain that can be stored for a long time, added to British food security during the war, and allowed the government some discretion as to when to release its stores. Although rationing did not begin until later, food prices rose considerably throughout 1914–18. This can be seen in Table 23.4. July 1914 is taken as a baseline of comparison for the other prices. Ernest Starling, a Fellow of the Royal Society who eventually instigated nationwide rationing across the UK, was well aware of the negative effects that rising prices might have on a population replete with economic inequality: While the supply of food has, up to the present [1916], been adequate for the support of the population, the rise in prices has accentuated the inequalities of distribution, which reduce the daily ration of many below the level of efficiency. Any curtailment of supplies, even to a limited extent, would result in the poorer classes obtaining less than is needful for safety should distribution remain unorganised.28
In actuality, the poorer classes had been expressing dissatisfaction with the increased costs of living, including food, well before 1916. Often these took the form of meetings and even organised protests. For example, on 13 February
25 26 27 28
Ibid., pp. 85–7. Richard J. Hammond, Food Volume I: The Growth of Policy (London: HMSO, 1984), p. 3. Barnett, British Food Policy, p. 28. Ernest H. Starling, The Oliver-Sharpey Lectures on the Feeding of Nations: A Study in Applied Physiology (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1919), p. 10.
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Table 23.4. Retail food prices at the beginning of each month from July 1914 to December 1918 as percentages of prices at July 1914 Retail food prices at the beginning of each month from July 1914 to December 1918 as Percentages of Prices at July 1914 1914 January February March April May June July August September October November December
100 115 110 112 113 116
1915 118 122 124 124 126 132 132.5 134 135 140 141 144
1916 145 147 148 149 155 159 161 160 165 168 178 184
1917 187 189 192 194 198 202 204 202 206 197 206 205
1918 206 208 207 206 207 208 210 218 216 229 233 229
Source: Beveridge, British Food Control, p. 322.a Table made from data in Table XIV in Beveridge, British Food Control, p. 322.
a
1915, some six months after the war began, 318 delegates representing some 216 organizations29 and 260,000 members met at a conference held by the Trade Union and Labour organisations in South Wales called ‘High Prices for Food and Fuel’ to discuss concerns over rising prices. Colourful bills and cards for the event still exist.30 We can read with sympathy the words of a Mr. James Henson, who stated at the conference that ‘the shipowners were making 400 per cent profit out of the war, and, as the cost of living had gone up by 20 per cent, the seamen had demanded an increase of 20 per cent in their wages’.31 For many working people, rising prices were a problem early in the war. These and similar public complaints kept pressure on leaders to give more
29
30
31
Labour History Archive and Study Centre, People’s Museum, Folder WNC4/5/1-27, Item WNC 4/15/14. Platform Card for Participation in ‘High Prices of Food and Fuel’ Conference held in Cardiff, February 13th, 1915. Labour History Archive and Study Centre, People’s Museum, Folder WNC4/5/1-27. Item WNC 4/5/22. ‘High Cost of Living. Cardiff Protests. STRONG ACTION URGED’ Evening Express 14 February 1915. Labour History Archive and Study Centre, People’s Museum, Folder WNC4/5/1-27, Item WNC 4/5/11.
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thought to ensuring food remained attainable for all parts of society. The statistics we now have on prices suggest that Mr. Henson was not exaggerating, at least about the increase in living costs. Table 23.4 shows that food prices in February 1915, when Henson spoke, were 22 per cent greater than they had been in July 1914. When people live from pay day to pay day in order to feed themselves and their families, an increase of 20 per cent in living costs could wreak havoc on the nutritional status of families and individuals. Given that a large number of recruits were unfit for military service because of inadequate health and living standards, totalling perhaps a million or more men who otherwise would have been in the prime of their lives,32 we can only wonder at what the situation was like for their sisters, wives, and daughters. While at present there are not enough data to make claims on the changing living standards of families during the war before the summer of 1918, studies of mid-Victorian London, 1858–78,33 and late-Victorian Britain, 1889–9034 demonstrate that intrahousehold allocation of foodstuffs was not equal in times of want. In such times men often consumed the most calories in a family, even after accounting for their greater dietary needs. Women consumed the least, accounting for their dietary needs. If sufficient data become available, we could perhaps determine the extent to which women and children in poorer households on the home front in the United Kingdom consumed less than men of military age enlisting for the war. A study on the nutritional status of civilians in Germany during the First World War found that women in Leipzig aged twenty to forty suffered a disproportionate amount of nutritional deprivation compared to the rest of their families.35 It would add to our understanding of hunger in war and peace if similar data could be found for the First World War in the UK. Still, the issue of how working-class civilians on the home front in Britain fared during the conflict was of interest during and immediately following the war. A study was done in the summer of 1918, with a report published in October of 1918 by His Majesty’s Stationery Office, Report of the Committee
32
33
34
35
Jay M. Winter, ‘Military Fitness and Civilian Health in Britain during the First World War’ Journal of Contemporary History, 15:2 (April 1980), pp. 211–44. Lloyd George believed that ‘a million men’ were lost to the military because of their levels of unfitness and poverty. Winter argues this was an underestimate of ‘the true extent of the disability and illness from which the working population of Britain suffered’. Sara Horrell, David Meredith and Deborah Oxley, ‘Measuring Misery: Body Mass, Ageing and Gender Inequality in Victorian London’, Explorations in Economic History, 46:1 (2009), pp. 93–119. Sara Horrell and Deborah Oxley, ‘Crust or Crumb?: Intrahousehold Resource Allocation and Male Breadwinning in Late Victorian Britain’, Economic History Review, 52:3 (1991), pp. 494–522. Most of the data come from the midlands and north of London. Mary Elisabeth Cox, Hunger in War & Peace: Women and Children in Germany, 1914–1924 (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 115–22.
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Appointed to Enquire Into and Report Upon (i) the Actual Increase since June, 1914, in the Cost of Living to the working classes and (ii) and counterbalancing factors (apart from increases of wages) which may have arisen under War Conditions. This study has remained central to debates on the sufficiency of foodstuffs in Britain during the First World War ever since. It confirmed what many working people like James Henson already knew, that the costs of living in Britain had increased substantially during the war. Yet the report also documented increased rates of employment, as well as increased wages. The report looked at more than just food and considered increased costs of fuel, rent, tram and train fares, and clothing. Using a small number of studies, it reported that ‘the increase in the expenditure on clothing from July, 1914, to August, 1918, was 96%’.36 For the present study, we are most interested in the report’s findings on food. The 1918 study contrasted with a widescale household survey of the United Kingdom conducted in 1904 by the Board of Trade. This survey included information from households in ‘Scotland, North England (including Lancashire and Yorkshire), Midlands, London, rest of England and Wales, and Ireland. The rest of England and Wales includes Eastern, Southern and South Western counties, together with the whole of Wales.’37 This study was a major milestone in using quantitative evidence to understand the living standards of societies.38 While there were smaller local studies done in later years leading up to the war, there was no similar study in terms of scope or size from which to create a baseline of living standards for July 1914. With some careful modifications and accounting for minimal changes in prices and consumption, the Working Classes Cost of Living Committee of 1918 used the 1904 study as the basis for a comparison to living standards in 1914. After making adjustments for the data collected in 1904, the 1918 study found that, despite rising food prices in 1918 compared to 1914 (see Table 23.4 for references on prices), overall calories did not materially change. ‘In June 1918, the working classes, as a whole, were in a position to purchase food of substantially the same nutritive value as in June 1914. Indeed, our figures indicate that the families of unskilled workmen were slightly better fed at the later date, in spite of the rise in the cost of food.’39 Using their calculations, the reduction in average total food consumption between 1914 and 1918 was less 36
37 38
39
Working Classes Cost of Living Committee 1918, Report of the Committee Appointed to Enquire Into and Report Upon (i) the Actual Increase since June, 1914, in the Cost of Living to the working classes and (ii) and counterbalancing factors (apart from increases of wages) which may have arisen under War Conditions (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO), 1918), p. 6. Report of the Committee, p. 4, p. 11. Ian Gazeley and Andrew Newell, ‘Poverty in Britain in 1904: An Early Social Survey Rediscovered’ Discussion Paper. Social Science Research Network, 2007. Report of the Committee, p. 9.
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than 3 per cent. Furthermore, the report claimed that compared to 1913, children were much healthier in 1918. From London it is officially reported. . .that ‘the percentage of children found in a poorly nourished condition is considerably less than half of the percentage in 1913. A similar improvement is shown by the figures furnished by Birmingham, Bolton, Bradford, Bristol, Glasgow and Nottingham. The general impression, especially of the poorer children, is favourable. . .And the view that parents are now better [able] to give their children the necessary food is borne out by the information we have received as to the number of meals provided to ‘“necessitous children’” by the local authorities. . .The last available figure for England and Wales, those for 1917, compared with the estimated number in 1914, show a decline by about four-fifths in the country as a whole.’40
The report also found that the number of paupers in July 1918 was twothirds the number there had been in July 1914.41 The 1918 report details that unemployment was also reduced between 1914 and 1918. In June 1914 unemployment rates were 2.8 per cent, and in July 1914, 2.4 per cent. In June 1918 unemployment rates were down to 0.7 per cent, in July 0.6 percent, and in August 0.5 per cent.42 Furthermore, ‘short time [employment] also is now [1918] very exceptional.’43 Beyond changes in unemployment, there were also shifts in the skill-levels of workers completing them. ‘Many who normally would be learners now earn an adult man’s wage, and many who in ordinary times would be employed on quite unskilled work are now enabled to do work of a semi-skilled character, and have risen to a higher grade of remuneration’.44 If one uses the number of calories alone as the primary indicator of health, the data and findings of the 1918 report seem reasonable. Certainly, Britain was not plagued by the hunger, famines or even starvation more common on the continent, particularly in eastern Europe. In 1977, Jay M. Winter published his first article on the health of civilians in Britain during the First World War.45 In it, and in subsequent publications, including a distinguished book, Winter argued that living standards had been better for the poorest members of society during the war.46 He challenged assertions made in the aftermath of the Great War that the working classes in
40 41 42 43 44 45
46
Ibid., p. 9. Ibid. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid. Ibid. Jay M. Winter, ‘The Impact of the First World War on Civilian Health in Britain’ The Economic History Review, 3:3 (1977), pp. 487–507. Jay M. Winter, The Great War and the British People (London: Macmillan, 1985).
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Britain had suffered significant hardship and hunger compared to civilians on the continent. As evidence he presented mortality statistics for working class civilians that showed an improvement rather than a decline, as suggested by previously scholars, during the war once the ‘influenza and declining mortality rates’ were considered. He also presented infant mortality rates in England and Wales, showing amongst other findings that ‘mortality in the first day and in the first week of life in England and Wales was lower in every war year than in either the pre-war or immediate post-war periods’.47 Winter’s findings and arguments have ignited a forty-year controversy on the living standards of working-class British people during the First World War, which rests heavily on analyses of the abundance and quality of the food supply. Given the wellknown report and findings of the 1918 Working Classes Cost of Living Committee, which Winter used in his arguments, it may seem surprising that such a controversy can exist. Yet even after the 1918 report, and well before Winter’s findings, other scholars argued that the living conditions in the United Kingdom were negatively affected by the war, including the availability of vitamins in food, and could explain a range of excess civilian deaths.48 In a critique of Winter’s general thesis that nutrition and living standards improved in the Great War for the poorer classes, historian Linda Bryder has taken issue with his assertion that ‘because of the armed conflict, this country [Britain] became a healthier place in which to live’.49 Amongst her criticisms, Bryder is sceptical of Winter’s reliance on mortality rates, rather than incidences of morbidity. Furthermore, she argued, the types of men involved with the data he studied were too limited; the occupations he portrayed were too narrow. Bryder also argued that Winter was too dismissive of arguments that increased rates of tuberculosis during the war were not linked with poorer nutritional inputs. Furthermore, she found that the experiences were varied and that a general assessment of averages masked the findings of different subgroups. Bryder also demonstrated political motivation for some of the statements on improved nutrition standards made by leaders immediately following the war. These are only a few of her more substantive criticisms, and Winter, naturally, responded forcefully the following year.50 He reviewed ‘some of the aggregate evidence of improvements in health which Bryder brushes aside as of limited value’, arguing that ‘it makes no sense to dismiss
47 48
49
50
Winter, ‘The Impact of the First World War’, p. 494. Liebmann Hersch, ‘Demographic Effects of Modern Warfare’ in What Would Be the Character of a New War? Enquiry Organized by the Inter-parliamentary Union (London: P.S. King & Son, Limited, London, 1931). Linda Bryder, ‘The First World War: Healthy or Hungry?’ History Workshop Journal, 24:1 (Autumn 1987), pp. 141–57. Jay M. Winter, ‘Public Health and the Potential Economy of War, 1914–1918, History Workshop Journal, 26:1 (Autumn 1988), pp. 163–73.
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them [aggregate data] out of hand. There were significant variations in the effects of the war on different social groups, but variance is a meaningless concept when unrelated to a statement of overall trend.’51 Regardless of whether or not one agrees with the Winter hypotheses, his ideas have shaped the views of a generation of scholars and students on the well-being of civilians in Britain in the First World War and the practicality of using diverse statistical sources to better understand civilian health in wartime.52 Perhaps the most important work in the last decade to examine the availability and quality of food on the British home front during the First World War is that by Ian Gazeley and Andrew Newell. Gazeley is an economic and social historian of modern Britain with a special focus on poverty, inequality and nutrition, and Newell is a labour economist who has published extensively on living standards, unemployment and wages. They have worked together for nearly two decades on questions related to living standards in modern Britain. From 2010 to 2013 they led a group of scholars on the project ‘Living Standards of Working Households in Britain, 1904–1960’, which resulted in many important publications. For the purposes of this chapter, I will focus on their modern analyses and findings from the 1918 Report of the Working Classes Cost of Living Committee. Gazeley and Newell discovered some of the original household budgets that made up the 1904 Board of Trade study that the 1918 Committee used as a baseline for its comparison. This discovery and their analyses of the diet of working class and poor people in Britain in the Great War have moved the discussion away from calories alone towards a more detailed appraisal of vitamins and essential minerals necessary for life.53 They took seriously the claims made in the 1918 report that ‘the working classes, as a whole, were in a position to purchase food of substantially the same nutritive value as in June 1914’ and that ‘families of unskilled workmen were slightly better fed at the later date, in spite of the rise in the cost of food’.54 Re-analysing the data, they found that, while there were roughly the same amount of calories in Britain during the war, the gap between calorie consumption of unskilled and skilled workers contracted 12 per cent. There was also a reduction in vitamins A and 51 52
53
54
Ibid., p. 163. For example, prominent economic historian Professor Hans-Joachim Voth re-examined Winter’s use of data on health and argued against its comparability to statistics in Germany and France during the First World War. See Hans-Joachim Voth ‘Civilian Health During WWI and the Causes of German Defeat: A Reexamination of the Winter Hypothesis.’ Annales de démographie historique, Les réseaux de parenté (1995), pp. 291–307. Ian Gazeley and Andrew Newell, ‘The First World War in Working-Class Food Consumption in Britain’ European Review of Economic History, 17 (2013), pp. 71–91. Ibid., p. 71.
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B12 for skilled and unskilled workers, and skilled workers also suffered from a reduction in vitamins C, D, and riboflavin.55 This work, along with other research on poor and working-class Britons by Gazeley and Newell, adds greatly to our understanding of changing diets, suggesting that the vitamin intake of working-class British people was reduced during the First World War. Indeed, the nuance this new research provides may result in future researchers giving up long-held assumptions on living standards during the war. This in turn suggests the importance of following their lead back to the archives. Now that the First World War has been over for more than a century, perhaps comparisons of the food supply in Britain with that of its friends and foes on the continent during wartime will slow. On average, Britain did have greater food production and more imports than its enemies. But the United Kingdom has never been made up of uniform ‘average’ citizens. While the average calories for the British population presented at the start of this chapter may appear sufficient, they are only averages. Certainly, many people received more calories before the war, and many received less. There is a wealth of diversity hidden in those averages, and this needs to be better articulated and understood. As scholars do the heavy archival work of gathering and collecting local studies, the new data they unearth can be analysed to understand how different parts of British society fared. How did female calorie consumption on the home front compare to that of men? To what extent did age influence caloric consumption? The many smaller studies on the improvement of children’s health during the First World War referred to in the 1918 report might be a fascinating starting point. And what of geographical differences? The 1918 study did not even include Ireland, though the 1904 study used as a baseline for 1914 comparisons did. Even differences in socio-economic class, for which we have some answers, could be further delineated. Some fifty years ago, addressing the discussion of regional variation in British nutrition, D. E. Allen wrote ‘I wonder how far it really makes sense to speak and write in terms of national aggregates at all in a field such as nutrition. Even more, trying to carry back a subject like this historically, it seems to me all but obligatory to attempt the reconstruction (so far as the records make this feasible) on a basis that is primarily regional.’56 That call is still out.
55 56
Ibid., p. 88. G. E. Allen, ‘Regional Variations in Food Habits’ in Derek Oddy and Derek Miller (eds.) The Making of the Modern British Diet (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 1976), pp. 146–7.
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PART V Social Impacts
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24 Press and Propaganda
The war has resolved itself into a conflict between the mechanics of Germany and Austria on the one hand, and the mechanics of Great Britain and France on the other. . . I believe the British workman is the better man of the two, and if he chooses to put his back into it he is going to win in the end. (Cheers.)1 Do not let us forget how this Army was raised. At the end of 1915 nearly 2½ millions had joined the colours voluntarily, and as large a number by the attestation scheme had expressed their readiness to join. It is no British arrogance which makes me say that an achievement like that had never been heard of in the world before, and, in my belief, it would have been impossible in any country except our own. But what our soldiers have done, and will do, would be useless without the other army – the army that remains at home. . . is it not the fact that all these things show an amount of organization of a peaceful country for war such as has never happened before in the history of the world? It would not have been possible without the whole-hearted cooperation of the people of this country.2
The First World War was a period of development and experimentation in propaganda and official relations with the press. Policies and organisations were created ad hoc throughout the war. With each stage, however, both operations and content stressed patriotism and voluntary participation as key ideals. Older accounts of propaganda and press coverage emphasise the exploitation of atrocity stories and demonisation of enemies to suggest primarily negative manipulation.3 More recent scholarship increasingly stresses 1
2
3
Speech by David Lloyd George at Trades Union Congress, Bristol, 9 September in ‘Plain Words to Labour. Mr. Lloyd Geoge at Bristol’, The Times, 10 September 1915, pp. 9–10. Speech by Andrew Bonar Law at Lord Mayor’s Banquet, 9 November in ‘No Short Cut to Peace. Mr. Bonar Law on the Outlook’, The Times, 10 November 1917, pp. 7–8. E.g., Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in War-Time: Containing an Assortment of Lies Circulated throughout the Nations during the Great War (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1928); J. M. Read, Atrocity Propaganda, 1914–1919 (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1941); Cate Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning: Propaganda in the First World
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the frequency of positive and inclusive messages.4 It largely recognises that the negative picture of propaganda as a deceptive, dishonest, secretive and cynical assault on public understanding does not reflect wartime propaganda activity so much as a post-war turn against the war’s validity that left some blaming propaganda for their own previous endorsement. Moreover, the greater excesses in the war that followed settled its reputation.5 When the National War Aims Committee (NWAC) called a conference in Liverpool in late 1917 to establish local committees ‘to promote the work of propaganda’ and to ‘meet the pacifist propaganda’, the conference’s proceedings were extensively reported in the local press, as was a public meeting in the city addressed by the former prime minister, Herbert Asquith, on behalf of the NWAC.6 If such propaganda was secretive, it hid in plain sight. Rather than revisit previous scholarship, this chapter explores propaganda and the press through the constant of voluntary participation. It argues that, throughout the war, both the management of official relations with the press and the work of propagandists operated on an assumption of the desirability, appeal and achievability of voluntary participation. This assumption was maintained, despite evidence of declining voluntarism, because of conceptions of suitable patriotic citizenship. Politicians like David Lloyd George and Andrew Bonar Law (both speaking as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the extracts above) declared a conviction that, when the need for service was explained effectively to citizens of the United Kingdom, they would respond appropriately. Behind these major figures, an ‘other army’ of lowly propagandists repeated this call for voluntary participation. At the least, an earlier appeal to voluntarism provided justification for compulsion. First, the chapter covers the establishment of the voluntary model, discussing the system of ‘D’ Notice censorship by which the press was constrained, and various forms of recruiting propaganda, both military and civilian. In
4
5
6
War (London: Allen Lane, 1977); Peter Buitenhuis, The Great War of Words: Literature as Propaganda, 1914–18 and After (London: B. T. Batsford, 1989). E.g, Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Jim Aulich and John Hewitt, Seduction or Instruction? First World War Posters in Britain and Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007); Catriona Pennell, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); David Monger, Patriotism and Propaganda in First World War: The National War Aims Committee and Civilian Morale (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012). In addition to Gregory, Last Great War, ch. 2, esp. pp. 40–4, see David Welch, Propaganda: Power and Persuasion (London: The British Library, 2013), ch. 1 for further discussion. ‘Allies’ War Aims. Conference in Liverpool.’ and ‘Fighting on to Victory. Mr. Asquith’s Reply to German Ambiguities’, The Liverpool Courier, 12 October 1917, pp. 4, 5 and 7. Cf. Brock Millman, Managing Domestic Dissent in First World War Britain (London: Frank Cass, 2000), esp. chs. 9–11, for a much more critical view of the NWAC.
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England, Scotland and Wales, recruiting propaganda stressed voluntary participation throughout, while public events and the exploitation of new technology promoted ordinary people’s participation. In Ireland after the 1916 Easter rising, following the outcry against the attempt to extend conscription, propagandists renewed calls for voluntary military participation in 1918, despite limited enthusiasm. Finally, a discussion of voluntarism and values argues that expositions of ‘British’ civilisational values and condemnations of atrocities and the Armenian genocide targeted sympathy for weaker nations from both neutrals and domestic doubters. However, official attitudes weakened this approach. Assumptions that such audiences were amenable to an official narrative of British fair-mindedness and the defence of the weak went alongside a persistent unwillingness to treat seriously the voices of critics or opponents. By dismissing, rather than engaging with, dissenting views, officials and propagandists missed opportunities for more meaningful appeals.
Establishing Voluntary Action Calls for national service were routinely couched in voluntary terms. One of the first groups summoned to patriotic conduct was the press. Before 1914, the Admiralty, War Office, and Press Committee (AWOPC) sought to improve cooperation between the press and armed forces, but immediately after the war’s outbreak a new organisation, the Press Bureau, was announced by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill.7 The AWOPC Secretary set the new organisation’s tone with a letter instructing editors to avoid discussing sensitive military information: . . .The names of ships. . . should not be reported; nor. . . (a) Movements of Ships, Troops, Aircraft, or War Material; (b) Fortifications, Defence Works, Arsenals, Dockyards, Oil Depots, Ammunition Stores, and Electric Light Installations. . . In fact no information should be given bearing on naval or military movements, as such information – however remote it might appear to be – would probably be of advantage to the enemy, and, therefore, prejudicial to national interests.8
The bureau became a conduit for government departments to restrict material ‘prejudicial to national interests’. It issued 747 D Notices (plus 20 ‘Ireland D Notices’) between 1914 and 1919, backed by (rarely used) coercive authority from Defence of the Realm Act regulations. Both contemporary and
7
8
Sir Edward Cook, The Press in War Time: With Some Account of the Official Press Bureau (London: Macmillan, 1920), p. 38. Edmund Robbins (Secretary, Admiralty, War Office, and Press Committee) to newspaper editors, 8 August 1914, cited in Nicholas Wilkinson, Secrecy and the Media: The Official History of the United Kingdom’s D-Notice System (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 74–5.
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subsequent accounts have portrayed this system unfavourably. The influential newspaper-owner, Sir George Riddell, criticised the ‘inadequate information’ and ‘policy of secrecy’ through which the bureau operated. ‘Ministers’, he noted in a letter to the bureau’s directors in March 1915, ‘are continually referring to the importance of energy and self-sacrifice on the part of the industrial population, who cannot be expected to display these qualities unless, generally speaking, they are acquainted with the facts’.9 Later scholars, meanwhile, have suggested that a ‘paranoid’ government sought to ‘pull the wool over the public’s eyes’ with the press’s corrupt collusion, while simultaneously deriding officials’ ability to control news content.10 The reality lies somewhere between these views. News control remained partly negotiable, with AWOPC members and groups like Riddell’s Newspaper Proprietors’ Association regularly debating censorship and unwelcome restrictions.11 The bureau, meanwhile, resisted some official attempts to quash inconvenient, rather than dangerous, information, and tried to persuade naval censors, especially, to relax restrictions.12 At the same time, however, newspapers accepted most notices. The bureau, under the direction of the journalist E. T. Cook and the colonial administrator Sir Frank Swettenham from 1915, recognised that censorship was, in principle, ‘repugnant to a democracy accustomed to a completely free Press’ and aimed ‘to interfere as little as possible with military criticism and not at all with political criticism’.13 Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the notices’ content confirms their primary focus was on security (see Table 24.1). Restrictions most frequently addressed specific military and naval information or information providing targets for enemy attacks.14 A few sought silence on strikes, usually because they involved wartime production,15 and reports might either reveal the location of production sites or identify potential shortages of supplies. Occasionally, D notices targeted specific papers, as when South Wales editors were reminded of regulations against publishing material which incited strikes, such as interviews with strike leaders, both ‘in the public interest and for their 9
10
11
12
13 14
15
Lord Riddell, Lord Riddell’s War Diary, 1914–1918 (London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1933), pp. 17–9. Gerard J. DeGroot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (London: Longman, 1996), pp. 182–7. See, e.g., the extensive correspondence between Riddell and the Press Bureau in The National Archives: Public Record Office, Kew (henceforth TNA:PRO), HO139/10. On press complaints about the naval censors, see, Wilkinson, Secrecy, pp. 90–1; Riddell, War Diary, pp. 26–9. On Bureau efforts to intercede in naval censorship, see Douglas Brownrigg, Indiscretions of the Naval Censor (London: Cassell, 1920), pp. 21–3. Cook, Press in War Time, pp. 138, 180. These figures derive from a database constructed by the author from the notices in TNA: PRO HO139/43-47. E.g. D267, D285, D311, D458, D460, D462, D487, D497, D500, D551, D576.
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120
100
80
60
40
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Table 24.1. Frequency of key themes in Press Bureau D Notices, from a database constructed by the author from the draft notices in TNA:PRO HO139/43–47.
20
0
own protection’.16 Individual newspapers were punished for ignoring guidelines: the Globe was suppressed for two weeks in 1915 for repeating a false story about Lord Kitchener’s death after the bureau had confirmed it was untrue, while the Southampton Pictorial was (rather excessively) prosecuted for printing pictures of a Red Cross event attended by wounded soldiers.17 Generally, however, the press accepted restrictions, except where notices went beyond requesting caution and instead chastised their tone.18 Editors regularly complained about the failure to prosecute rival papers for breaches, suggesting they were willing to participate, provided transgressors did not gain advantages.19 However, they also resisted efforts to make D Notices more formally enforceable.20 Press control thus remained negotiable, and declining numbers of notices over time suggests a disinclination to over-regulate, once most ‘sensitive’ topics were covered (see Tables 24.2 and 24.3). Certainly, censorship did not prevent press controversies like the 1915 ‘shells scandal’ or the 1918 Maurice affair,21 and by 1918 some critical commentators worried the press had too much influence over government, rather than the other way round.22 Soon after the war, both Cook and Riddell suggested that the compromises achieved were tolerable. While Riddell chafed at the restrictions and felt no ‘concordat was ever reached between the authorities and the Press’, he recognised the honest intentions behind the bureau’s decisions. While Cook lamented some lapses in press discretion, he was sure that ‘the Press did excellent service in sustaining the Home Front’, and felt that ‘tightening the restraint upon the Press would have struck at the roots of its usefulness in wartime’.23 The key exception to this general picture was Ireland. Other newspapers in the United Kingdom were largely free to express military or political criticism, and the bureau’s supposedly inadequate oversight of provincial papers was criticised for leaving scope for security breaches.24 However, radical Irish nationalist papers were closely monitored. Arthur Griffith’s Scissors and 16 17 18
19 20
21
22
23 24
TNA:PRO HO139/43, D273, 16 September 1915. Cook, Press in War Time, pp. 112–3; Wilkinson, Secrecy, p. 99. See, e.g., Riddell’s hostility to criticism of overly sensational reporting of small victories in Riddell, War Diary, p. 19. See also Wilkinson, Secrecy, p. 92. Cook, Press in War Time, pp. 79–80. See, e.g., Riddell’s diary, 21 October 1915, in Riddell, War Diary, pp. 131–2; Wilkinson, Secrecy, pp. 100–2. For useful discussions, see Peter Fraser, ‘The British “Shells Scandal” of 1915’, Canadian Journal of History, 18:1 (1983); Stephen Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain, vol. 2: The Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), esp. pp. 275–87, 333–7; Mark Hampton, Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850–1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), pp. 137–9. Riddell, War Diary, pp. 24–5; Cook, Press in War Time, p. 186. See, e.g., TNA:PRO HO139/10, correspondence between Riddell and Sir Frank Swettenham about ‘dangerous’ publications in Glasgow and South Wales, 23–9 October 1915.
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Table 24.2. Average D Notices issued per month
24.2
17.5 14.2 11 9.3
3.8
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919
Table 24.3. D Notices issued per month
38
29 25
19
13
24
23
21
21 18
12
15
14 10
11
23
23 19
22 17
15 15 12
10
11 11
23 19
15
13
13
11
8
10
8 5 3
4
5
18
13 8
8 4
3
17
13 9
10
7
8
10
1
Paste, which arranged British press content to portray Britain negatively, was wholly suppressed in 1915.25 Ben Novick suggests that, despite more extensive 25
Virginia E. Glandon, Arthur Griffith and the Advanced-Nationalist Press: Ireland, 1900–1922 (New York: P. Lang, 1995), pp. 147–53.
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Table 24.4. D Notices with Ireland as the key theme
1
incidents/disturbances
9
10
military informaon government negoaons
3 6
1
1
establishment of Irish Censor noces Convenon proceedings, events, statements suppression – Sinn Fein suppression – general
actions against Irish newspapers, advanced nationalist ‘propagandists always found a way to avoid regulations’.26 Following the Easter rising, Irish censorship was conducted from Dublin Castle. Donal Ó Drisceoil suggests it remained relatively moderate, while issues like the conscription crisis could not plausibly be censored.27 Nonetheless the bureau treated Irish matters more strictly than elsewhere [see Table 24.4]. Nothing specifically about Ireland was issued by the bureau until April 1916, and relatively little was issued regarding the rising’s aftermath.28 However, particularly in 1918, notices restricted commentary on the activities of the Irish Convention, an assembly convened, in light of the alarming by-election successes of Sinn Féin in 1917, to attempt to bring representatives of different political viewpoints (excluding Sinn Féin, which declined to attend) together in an ultimately failed attempt to find a satisfactory scheme for Irish self-government. The bureau, following the lead of the Irish press censors and Defence of the Realm Regulation 27AA, insisted that meaningful progress could not be made there if discussions were heavily reported.29 Most notably it overtly (in conjunction with wider official attempts to combat the rise of an anti-war party),30 tried to suppress publicity for Sinn 26
27
28
29 30
Ben Novick, Conceiving Revolution: Irish Nationalist Propaganda during the First World War (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), p. 36. Donal Ó Drisceoil, ‘Keeping Disloyalty Within Bounds: British Media Control in Ireland, 1914–1919’, Irish Historical Studies, 38:149 (2012). Database analysis suggests 31 notices in which ‘Ireland’ was the key theme, including 18 of 20 ‘Ireland D Notices’ (the other two were categorised ‘Addition to previous notice’ since they built on previous instructions). See, e.g., TNA:PRO HO139/45, D618, 22 January 1918. Michael Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Féin Party, 1916–1923 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 142–6.
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Féin. Where other notices concerning dissent spoke generally, Irish notices specifically identified their target. *** While the press voluntarily subordinated full freedom to ‘national interest’, voluntarism was also the keynote of military and civilian recruiting propaganda. The fact that this remained the preferred approach reflects the positive message propagandists, and politicians like Bonar Law, consistently delivered: unlike other nations, Britain’s civilians did not require compulsion because they understood the war’s necessity and willingly accepted their duties.31 It was expected that they would exhibit what Adrian Gregory calls the ‘ethic of doing one’s bit’.32 This attitude was maintained even as state interventions and the imposition of conscription demonstrated voluntary means were insufficient. Despite the notoriety of ‘shaming’ recruitment, whether Kitchener’s finger, the interrogation of ‘Daddy’ about his war or the distribution of white feathers, more frequent emphasis was put on participation and camaraderie, as scholars have long since shown.33 Promoting the choice to take part offered a positive motivation, rather than a negative browbeating. A variant on ‘Your King and Country Need You’ depicted an upright Scotsman for inspiration rather than Kitchener’s disembodied disapproval, and provided a more meaningful symbol for potential Scottish recruits [see Fig. 24.1]. However, recruitment propaganda was not uniformly positive. Inclusive messages were contextualised by negative counterparts, whether through evoking atrocities or implying that not choosing to serve was dishonourable. In this, military recruitment foreshadowed later campaigns, which combined praise, recognition and claims that good Britons knew their task with warnings of what might happen if the task was not met. At its most extreme, this consequence was Britain’s brutal invasion by a barbaric enemy. Less dramatically, the negative motivation was the need to compel something that could be voluntarily attained. Throughout, emphasis remained on free choice. Even after conscription, propagandists sometimes preferred to recognise conscripts’ service rather than separate it from voluntarism. A local speaker in Keighley, Yorkshire, J. W. Morkill, for instance, told a public meeting that he ‘had proof that of those [Keighley] men who were called up compulsorily, it was not that they “funked” or were disloyal, but because nine out of ten thought they had domestic circumstances which prevented them from leaving home with a quiet 31
32 33
On British civilians’ serious engagement with ‘high-diction’ principles like justice, honour and duty, see Pennell, Kingdom United, pp. 58–64. Gregory, Last Great War, p. 95. Nicholas Hiley, ‘“Kitchener Wants You” and “Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?”: The Myth of British Recruiting Posters’, Imperial War Museum Review, 11 (1999); Aulich and Hewitt, Seduction or Instruction, ch. 2.
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Figure 24.1 Your king and country need you to maintain the honour and glory of the British empire, by Lawson Wood. Poster no. 17 for the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, printed by Dobson Molle and Co Ltd, 1914. Imperial War Museum PST 11415.
mind’.34 In Morkill’s interpretation, such people had chosen different duties, such as caring for dependent relatives, rather than evaded military duty. After the introduction of conscription in 1916, English, Scottish and Welsh recruiting turned to civilian work and conduct. Efforts to restrain food consumption sought to persuade civilians to voluntarily economise via the ‘Eat Less Bread’ campaign of mid-1917, stressing that reduced imports benefited
34
‘Mr Will Thorne, M.P., on War Aims’, Keighley News, 15 December 1917, p. 5, in Monger, Patriotism and Propaganda, p. 194.
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servicemen, the paragons of wartime virtue. Rather than hectoring poor housewives, however, Ministry of Food organisers like Dorothy Peel and the New Zealand Fabian, Maud Pember Reeves, advocated greater pressure on wealthy households – since the ‘rich can afford to eat little bread: the poor cannot’ – and useful and sympathetic guidance about cheap alternatives to nutritionally valuable bread.35 Such approaches acknowledged ideals should be matched with practicality. Choice and voluntarism were easier for the comfortably-off; thrift was plausible where money existed for luxuries. Similar views were expressed in campaigns for war savings. At a meeting at the Royal Albert Hall, both the National War Savings Committee (NWSC) Chairman, Sir Robert Kindersley, and the Chancellor, Bonar Law, expected ‘the well-to-do in this country to set an example of right and wise spending’.36 While critics noted self-abnegation was absent at the Ritz’s restaurant,37 socially conscious volunteers like Reeves and Peel at least pointed officials to the differing burdens of patriotic duties.38 Indeed, in most strands of propaganda, voluntary endeavours and local knowledge modified more aloof demands from central authority. The Parliamentary Recruiting Committee (PRC), the Ministry of Food, the Ministry of National Service (MNS), the NWSC and the NWAC all depended upon the voluntary work of local activists. They formed local committees, chose when and where in town public events should occur, distributed pamphlets, and administered extended schemes like the various fundraising weeks that proliferated in the war’s later years. Much of this work was done free (or for basic expenses), performing work of national importance, whether for ‘pure’ voluntarist patriotism or self-preservation.39 Rather than a sinister, centrally driven propaganda machine, much propaganda work devolved upon the local voluntarism of clergymen, local officials, party organisers, prominent
35
36
37
38
39
Quotation from the leaflet Ways in Which Bread and Flour Are Wasted (Ministry of Food, 1917), reproduced in E. Royston Pike (ed.), Human Documents of the Lloyd George Era (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1972), pp. 212–13. For fuller discussion, see David Monger, ‘Tangible Patriotism during the First World War: Individuals and the Nation in British Propaganda’, War & Society, 37:4 (2018). TNA:PRO NSC7/36, F. Primrose Stevenson, ‘Report of Proceedings at a War Savings Meeting Held at the Royal Albert Hall, London on Monday, 22nd October 1917’, pp. 3, 14. L. Margaret Barnett, British Food Policy during the First World War (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985), pp. 142–3. Despite such interventions, official actions sometimes failed to respond effectively. See, e.g., Bernard Waites, A Class Society at War: England, 1914–1918 (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1987), p. 228 on the foolish decision to allocate rations based on pre-war consumption, thus granting greater rations to the wealthy. For some discussion of varying motivations, see Monger, Patriotism and Propaganda, ch. 3.
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Figure 24.2 Female worker carrying on her father’s job as official bill poster and town crier in Thetford, while he is at the front. Photography by Horace Nicholls. Imperial War Museum Q 31027.
local women (often expected to lead separate schemes for women), boy-scouts, schoolchildren, and others [see Fig. 24.2].40 Nor was such activity solely the province of official propaganda. During the conscription crisis in Ireland in 1918, Sinn Féin sought to organise parish committees to purchase and store non-perishable food in case of a rebellion during the harvest, and to mobilise local branches to assist Catholic priests in promoting pledges of resistance and collecting a national defence fund.41 Whether supporting or resisting the war effort, national work required local workers.
40
41
See, e.g., the range of activities expected of local figures before ‘War Weapons Week’ in the summer of 1918: TNA:PRO NSC7/38, circular letter ‘War Weapons Week (War Bond Campaign). Suggestions for Local War Savings Committees’. Laffan, Resurrection of Ireland, pp. 136–41.
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Figure 24.3 4,000 women wanted for fruit picking from the end of July to midSeptember in the Blairgowrie and Auchterarder districts, poster, no date but presumed to be 1917. The National Archives, PRO/NATS1/109.
Most domestic propaganda reflected communal efforts, deriving part of their effect from demonstrated local endorsement. National Service appeals were nationwide, but also targeted specific local communities. A poster seeking fruit-pickers in Auchterarder and Blairgowrie, in Perthshire, depicted a woman loaded down with baskets of fruit, imagining a group of soldiers sharing jam, while the text emphasised ‘parties of friends’ could apply to work together to ensure that their district’s ‘fruit[,] which is wanted by Soldiers and Sailors[,] should be picked before it spoils’ [see Fig. 24.3].42 Scottish women could thus enjoy their friends’ company, working in a way that paralleled soldierly comradeship, while preventing waste and making a tangible contribution to the war effort. Another poster specifically addressed Welsh Free Church communities. Signed by representatives of several Welsh denominations, it asked for national service work or, failing that, voluntary participation in minimising waste and cultivating unused land. ‘In making this appeal,’ it noted, ‘we are not unmindful of the great sacrifices already made by the Free Churches of the Principality’. Nonetheless, it continued, the ‘call is for more and more sacrifice . . . We have every confidence that when this further appeal is made we shall not be found wanting.’43 Once again, it expressed the conviction that, when a plain need was shown, a targeted community would answer the appeal. Civic pride was also regularly piqued, whether through
42
43
TNA:PRO NATS1/109, ‘4,000 Women Wanted for Fruit Picking from the End of July to Mid-September in the Blairgowrie and Auchterarder districts’. TNA:PRO NATS1/1091, ‘National Service. To the Free Churches of Wales and Monmouthshire’. The poster was also printed in Welsh.
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fundraising events like War Weapons Week, when civilians could combine their contributions to bring prestige to their local community, or by speakers emphasising one locality’s achievements at the expense of others.44 Local communities were encouraged to compete to demonstrate their greater national sentiment through local efforts. War Weapons Week was only one of many public propaganda campaigns. Though attention is often paid to media like posters and films, wartime propaganda was, first and foremost, public, performed and participatory. Faith continued in the value of platform propaganda, often explicitly mirroring the conventions of political events. Programmes regularly involved introductions by local dignitaries, motions and votes of thanks (often seconded). Such manpower-intensive events were not continued through lack of imagination, nor so party workers could ensure roles for themselves or their friends (though this played a part). Rather, ritualised aspects provided a familiar format which affirmed the event’s significance, involved the audience as participants, and made messages easier to follow and accept. Hence, touring films were often accompanied by speeches, demonstrating they were not mere entertainment. If potentially boring, repetitive and ritualised, events were also inclusive, allowing a person to arrive at any point in the proceedings and find their place.45 Local newspapers disseminated public events to wider audiences, often providing verbatim reports of speeches and extended descriptions of processions or platform activities which allowed readers indirect immersion in the event. Thus, propaganda and the press complemented each other in presenting active, voluntary participation.
Irish Military Recruitment While domestic propaganda largely addressed civilian efforts from 1916, voluntary military recruitment was revived in Ireland after the failed effort to introduce conscription in early 1918. That attempt, despite the poisonous post-rising atmosphere in Ireland, was governed, Gregory notes, by a need to show the rest of the United Kingdom that equal sacrifices were demanded from Ireland.46 Following its rapid withdrawal, however, propaganda for
44
45 46
On War Weapons Week, see David Monger, ‘Familiarity Breeds Consent? Patriotic Rituals in British First World War Propaganda’, Twentieth Century British History, 26:4 (2015), pp. 519–24; see also Monger, Patriotism and Propaganda, pp. 183–4 for the promotion of one locality at the expense of others. Monger, ‘Familiarity Breeds Consent’, pp. 515–18. Adrian Gregory, ‘“You might as well recruit Germans”: British Public Opinion and the Decision to Conscript the Irish in 1918’, in Senia Pašeta and Adrian Gregory (eds.), Ireland and the Great War: A War to Unite Us All? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002); see also Laffan, Resurrection of Ireland, p. 132.
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voluntary military service resumed, as part of what Catriona Pennell describes as a ‘confused strategy that contained elements of compulsion and persuasion’. One idea called for an attempt to recruit Irish nationalists to the French Army via the intercession of the Catholic Church, but was abandoned in the face of British political disquiet at the impact on Ireland’s post-war position.47 Perhaps the most interesting effort, however, was that of the Nationalist MP, Arthur Lynch, who had raised an Irish brigade during the South African War to fight Britain, and had a death sentence commuted upon his return.48 After 1914, however, he backed British entry into the war, denying that German victory would benefit Ireland.49 In the summer of 1918, he attempted to recruit a battalion in Munster. Lynch wanted to inspire young Irishmen by creating a distinct nationalist unit with a unique uniform. ‘Every appeal to National sentiment should be fostered. If the young men are smitten by some captivating idea, such as in regard to a national uniform, their desire should be gratified’. More broadly, Lynch’s campaign echoed many across Britain: I regard all Ireland as my field for recruiting. . . I propose to issue an appeal or manifesto to the Irish people. . . In any district, however, I would make use of all the means in my power of exciting popular attention and of winning popular favour. To this end I would endeavour to secure the goodwill of notable representatives, such as the district County Councillors and Parish Priests; and in each country district also, I would endeavour to get hold of what I call the pivot men, that is to say, men who possibly may not be in public positions, but whose words and influence would have weight in turning opinion, particularly that of the young men. . . If it were possible to arrange it, I would address Sinn Féin bodies in a similar way. . . as to the most suitable methods I would be guided in a particular district by local opinion, while exercising, of course, my own judgment as to the best procedure.50
While the campaign supposedly depended upon his personal presence at all events, in other respects what Lynch proposed was similar to campaigns run by the PRC, MNS, NWSC and NWAC, relying on local knowledge and the 47
48 49
50
Catriona Pennell, ‘Presenting the War in Ireland’, in Troy R. E. Paddock (ed.), World War I and Propaganda (Leiden: Brill, 2014), p. 62; Jérôme aan de Wiel, ‘The “Hay Plan”: an Account of Anglo-French Recruitment Efforts in Ireland, August 1918’, Etudes Irlandaises, 25/1 (2000); an earlier version of this article appeared in The Irish Sword, 21/86 (1999). Arthur Lynch, My Life Story (London, 1924), pp. 225–36. Lynch, Life Story, pp. 296–7; see also Arthur Lynch, MP, Ireland: Vital Hour (London, 1915). TNA:PRO NATS1/256, Lynch to Lt. A. Cox (Secretary, Irish Recruiting Council (IRC)), 16 July 1918.
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voluntary support of local notables to give his national message local credibility. However, he attained little success. Distinctive uniforms were hindered by slow responses and logistical quibbles.51 Requests for a car were repeatedly delayed, despite Irish Recruiting Council organisers believing that ‘[a]n Irishman is impressed by a display and good cars rolling up to meetings or office, etc., create a stir, and when there is a stir in Ireland it means business’.52 Sinn Féin’s successful by-election campaigns, such as that in East Clare in mid-1917, had shown the importance of cars in allowing activists to reach remote areas, poorly served by rail.53 However, rented cars were unavailable to Lynch because owners feared they ‘would suffer serious damage in a campaign which is unpopular’. Nor were such fears unmerited – on one occasion, Lynch’s car was supposedly surrounded by 10,000 people, though it ‘got off easily’.54 On another, Lynch and his colleague, the Labour MP James O’Grady, were confronted by ‘various members of the crowd making gestures which signified our early demise’ and had to be escorted to their car by ‘prominent Sinn Feiners’.55 Though Keith Jeffery has pointed to increased Irish enlistments after August 1918, crediting voluntary recruitment efforts for the increase,56 Lynch failed. Local areas declined his visits, suggesting they boosted Sinn Féin support rather than recruitment. The Earl of Arran forwarded the County Louth Recruiting Committee’s view that the meetings ‘merely give Sinn Feiners an opportunity of manifesting their sentiments in public, under circumstances that forbid the intervention of the police, since the avowed object of the speakers is to reason with these very people’.57 Here, Sinn Féin had, apparently, found a way to exploit recruitment propaganda for its own advantage. Propaganda in Britain, before and during the war, depended substantially on the legitimacy conveyed by a speaker directly presenting and defending
51
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54
55 56
57
TNA:PRO NATS1/256, J.A. Corcoran (War Office) to Commander-in-Chief, Ireland, 12 September 1918. TNA:PRO NATS1/256, Col. J. Reid Hyde to W. Vaughan, 28 August 1918. Laffan, Resurrection of Ireland, pp. 108–9. For other examples of the value of motor transport, see Mel Farrell, ‘“The Tide Had Definitely Turned”: The Irish Party, Sinn Féin, and the Election Campaigns in Longford, 1917–18’, New Hibernia Review, 21:3 (2017), p. 96. TNA:PRO NATS1/256, Reid Hyde to Vaughan, 28 August 1918; Vaughan to Treasury, 3 September 1918. Lynch, My Life Story, pp. 303–5. Keith Jeffery, Ireland and the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 7–8. TNA:PRO NATS1/256; Earl of Arran (Recruiting Committee, County Louth) to Irish Recruiting Committee, 2 September 1918; see also I.F.J. Fitzpatrick (Kilrush) to Area Organizer, Limerick, 1 September 1918; Lt. Abraham (Ennis) to Area Organizer, Limerick, 2 September 1918.
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arguments to an audience,58 and, indeed, speeches remained a key method of propaganda communication for Sinn Féin in Ireland.59 A speaker who willingly sought to engage Sinn Féin supporters in order to recruit provided a ready opportunity for counter-propaganda that might be suppressed in other circumstances. By 1918, Sinn Féin had gained considerable public support at the expense of Ireland’s Parliamentary Nationalists through several by-election successes, the unintended consequence of linking resistance to conscription with Sinn Féin alone.60 By early October only twenty-nine recruits had been obtained, and when Brigadier-General Hammond inspected seventy-seven recruits in late October he noted suspicions that the unit would never form.61 George Bernard Shaw published a letter to Lynch, suggesting Irish recruitment would fail as long as the ‘governing class’ assumed it was everybody’s duty to ‘take up arms in its defence’. Lynch, by contrast, blamed the failure on the authorities’ ‘arrogant denial of any concession to a national sentiment’.62 Nonetheless, his conviction that voluntary enlistment could still work indicates the powerful commitment to free choice maintained through the war.
Voluntarism and Values Lynch’s doubts about British official attitudes is demonstrable in other contexts, but his activities also reflected wider propaganda efforts in another way. He was one of several former enemies or critics of Britain who undertook propaganda in the British cause. Most famous of these was Jan Christiaan Smuts, the former Boer Commando leader who joined the Imperial War Cabinet in 1917, departing South Africa, according to H. C. Armstrong, in a ‘volley of curses’ at his supposed betrayal, but arriving in Britain ‘in a whirlwind of applause’.63 He was a propaganda star, who, Armstrong notes, encouraged civilian pride in British values and principles. As an enemy58
59 60
61
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63
For the importance of direct engagement with the public before, during and after the war, see, e.g., Jon Lawrence, Speaking for the People: Party, Language and Popular Politics in England, 1867–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), esp. pp. 164, 178–88; Jon Lawrence, Electing Our Masters: The Hustings from Hogarth to Blair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 88, 90, 109. Laffan, Resurrection of Ireland, p. 265. Ibid., chs. 7–8; Farrell, ‘Tide Had Turned’; Tim Bowman, ‘The Irish Recruiting and AntiRecruiting Campaigns, 1914–1918’, in Bertrand Taithe and Tim Thornton (eds.), Propaganda, Political Rhetoric and Identity, 1300–2000 (Stroud: Sutton, 1999). TNA:PRO NATS1/256, list attached to letter from T.B. Sellar (IRC) to James O’Grady, 7 October 1918; Brig-Gen. Hammond, ‘Notes on Inspection of Recruits for Colonel Lynch’s Brigade’, 27 October 1918. George Bernard Shaw, War Issues for Irishmen: An Open Letter to Colonel Arthur Lynch from Bernard Shaw (Dublin: Maunsel & Co., 1918), p. 9; Lynch, My Life Story, p. 304. H. C. Armstrong, Grey Steel: J. C. Smuts – A Study in Arrogance (London: Barker, 1937), p. 276.
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turned-advocate, Smuts’ strongest contribution was to embody Britain’s claim that it was defending civilisation.64 Smuts’ speech in Tonypandy has been used to encapsulate the NWAC’s broad patriotic narrative.65 In this discussion, however, Smuts’ most important contribution was to co-opt critical views into his illustration of British civilisation. Addressing an audience in industrial South Wales during a fraught period in October 1917, Smuts related workers’ desires for a greater say in their conditions of employment to the wider principles of self-government supposedly embodied by Britain’s empire: What is the basis of the British Empire? It is liberty – (cheers) – it is constitutional government, and it is freedom. . . The real principle on which you exist is the principle of self-government conceded to every part of the British Empire, or. . . to be conceded more and more in the future. That is the principle, good for you not only in your Government but in your private lives. In your ordinary industrial concerns you want freedom. You do not want to be slaves, you do not want to be dictated to; you want security, you want freedom, and you want self-government in your industrial life in Wales, and these principles on which the British Empire exists are the principles which we want to see triumph. (Applause.)66
Smuts’ speech demonstrated two successful elements of British propaganda – the co-option of dissenting ideas into propaganda narratives, and the use of the idea of defending small nations as a flattering reflection on British liberty and tolerance. The best example of the former approach was propagandists’ heavy endorsement of the League of Nations during 1917–18, thus appropriating an initiative of the dissenting Union of Democratic Control, devised to prevent secret diplomacy from causing another war.67 Doing so minimised differences between critics and the state while indicating official openness to debate (something at which light-touch censorship also aimed).68 Earlier in his speech, Smuts declared ‘After three years of the agonising loss and suffering caused by this war the hearts of this little nation [Wales] beat true’. Immediately afterward, he referred to his own previous ‘war of a small
64 65 66
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Armstrong, Grey Steel, pp. 276–9, 294–5. Monger, Patriotism and Propaganda, pp. 100–1. General Smuts’s Message to South Wales: Speech Delivered at Tonypandy, Rhondda, On October 29, 1917 (London, n.d.), p. 6. A shorter version appeared as ‘General Smuts at Tonypandy’, Mid-Rhondda Gazette, 3 November 1917, p. 1. Monger, Patriotism and Propaganda, ch. 6; Monger, ‘Transcending the Nation: Domestic Propaganda and Supranational Patriotism in Britain, 1917–1918’, in Paddock, World War I and Propaganda. On this last point, see Millman, Managing Domestic Dissent, p. 78, and Cook’s discussion of the decision to avoid inhibiting press discussion of diplomatic affairs whenever possible, to prevent assumptions that the press repeated an official line: Cook, Press in War Time, pp. 119–24.
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nation against the biggest nation in the world’.69 These words exemplify propaganda’s use of the defence of small nations to win sympathy from potentially doubtful audiences. Nicoletta Gullace’s account of atrocity propaganda’s use to enliven and humanise Britain’s international legal case for war remains a classic example. Recognising that dry legal arguments would not capture mass sympathy, propagandists used Germany’s assault on French and Belgian civilians to show that disregarding one treaty meant abandoning all respect for law.70 Another example was the parliamentary report produced by Arnold J. Toynbee and Lord Bryce on the Armenian genocide. Toynbee and Bryce’s collaboration with an international network of informants was motivated by humanitarian concern for the Ottoman Empire’s persecuted Armenian minority. Nonetheless, Toynbee was granted the freedom to spend several months compiling the report while working at Wellington House because it had ancillary propaganda benefits.71 The report’s revelations consolidated claims, particularly commended to the neutral United States, that this was a war between civilised and barbarous nations.72 Moreover, the stronger and more accurate the report, the better it was as propaganda, so Charles Masterman tolerated Toynbee’s methodical progress. Even better, the report’s authors received extensive support from James Barton, an influential missionary organiser with access to Woodrow Wilson and a flair for publicity, which meant their collection received wider attention than other materials despatched to the United States.73 69 70
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General Smuts’s Message to South Wales, p. 3. Nicoletta F. Gullace, ‘Sexual Violence and Family Honor: British Propaganda and International Law during the First World War’, American Historical Review, 102:3 (1997). For various (largely dismissive) comments regarding propaganda motivations relating to the book, see, e.g., Ara Sarafian, ‘Introduction’, in James Bryce and Arnold J. Toynbee (eds.) The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce, Uncensored Edition (Princeton NJ: Gomidas Institute, 2005); David Miller, ‘The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: A History of the Blue Book’, RUSI Journal, 150:4 (2005); Michelle Tusan, Smyrna’s Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide, and the Birth of the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); Taner Akçam, ‘Anatomy of Genocide Denial: Academics, Politicians and the “Remaking” of History’, University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Occasional Paper, 2005: http://chgs.umn.edu/ histories/occasional/Akcam_Anatomy_of_Denial.pdf (accessed 16/10/2013); Tusan, ‘James Bryce’s Blue Book as Evidence’, Journal of Levantine Studies, 5:2 (2015). Jessica Bennett and Mark Hampton, ‘World War I and the Anglo-American Imagined Community: Civilization vs. Barbarism in British Propaganda and American Newspapers’, in Joel H. Wiener and Mark Hampton (eds.), Anglo-American Media Interactions, 1850–2000 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). For fuller discussion, see David Monger, ‘Networking against Genocide during the First World War: The International Network behind the British Parliamentary Report on the Armenian Genocide’, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 16:3 (2018).
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Expressing sympathy for small nations might also win over the United Kingdom’s most troubled nation.74 The Irish Nationalist, William Redmond, in justifying his own enlistment in 1917, suggested: Britain had kept her share of the compact as to Home Rule, and it was for Ireland to show that she was ready. . . to keep her share. . . Had not the Boers kept their pledge to work loyally in the Empire, having been granted freedom in their own country? The Irish surely could do no less.
On top of this primary desire to demonstrate voluntary service in recognition of the agreement between Britain and Ireland, Redmond reflected on Germany’s conduct. Ireland, too, has shared with all of humanity the horror of those new methods of warfare inaugurated by Germany. . . There are few Irishmen who would not consider any advantage to Ireland too dearly bought if the price were alliance with the hordes who have been guilty of the infamies and atrocities perpetrated by Germany.
Such considerations, to Redmond, made voluntary service imperative for Ireland.75 Despite his convictions, however, there were plenty of Irishmen, if not willing to consider alliance with Germany, then certainly willing to counter accounts of German atrocities with examples of British mistreatment of Ireland.76
Conclusion While the voluntary defence of small nations carried some weight across the United Kingdom, Lynch’s complaint about official arrogance recurs in other contexts. Talk of Britain’s restraint and benevolence was substantially undermined by the response to the Easter Rising. While Redmond still urged Irish loyalty, the diminishing power of such ideas was symbolised in the by-election victory of Éaman de Valera, newly released from prison for his part in the rising and supported by armed members of the Irish Volunteers, in Redmond’s former constituency, East Clare, after Redmond’s death at Messines.77 More broadly, official unwillingness to truly comprehend opposition voices cost propagandists the chance to counteract their adversaries. ProGerman comments from overseas Irish writers, according to a MI7b analyst providing a digest for counter propaganda, merely represented ‘the usual 74
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For the significance of small nations for Irish recruiting, see Novick, Conceiving Revolution, pp. 103–7. William Redmond, ‘From the Trenches: A Plea and a Claim’ (originally published in the Dublin Review, April 1917), in Major William Redmond (London, n.d. [1917]), pp. 28–31. Novick, Conceiving Revolution, esp. ch. 2. Laffan, Resurrection of Ireland, pp. 106–12.
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extreme Irish nationalist’ attitude, implying it was not worth addressing. British dissent was likewise negligible, produced by ‘high-mindedness, vanity or treachery’, said the same critic. Peace advocacy in Germany was not worth fostering because Germany’s majority socialists endorsed imperial, annexationist goals, while the minority with real convictions were unsound as they wished to destroy the ‘fabric of modern society’.78 Thus, while Britain’s wartime propaganda was in many respects more sophisticated than is usually conceded, the adversarial patriotism through which certain groups were dismissed meant unduly rigid stances regarding political or diplomatic compromise. Wartime communication excelled at providing ways for civilians to feel they played meaningful parts in a necessary war against ruthless, uncivilised enemies. It successfully undercut some dissent by appropriating critics’ ideas into official narratives, and promised great future rewards for Britons’ sacrifices and endurance: If you want a better England, if you want a better Wales, if you want a better Tonypandy, then let us win victory first. . . no real progress can be made in your own economic and industrial developments until we have this matter of peace settled.79
However, the seeming inability to comprehend opposing viewpoints not only inspired the least creditable aspects of Britain’s propaganda – for instance, pandering to anti-Semitism to discredit Bolshevism.80 It also meant that certain options, like the encouragement of enemy moderation, or concessions to domestic political critics, perfectly plausible given the general narrative of voluntary participation and civilised values, were excluded from propagandists’ rhetorical arsenal. Such an approach succeeded in keeping the broadly supportive, consenting majority committed to the war effort until the armistice, but its vision of a more harmonious post-war United Kingdom and world did not eventuate. Transnational sympathy and support for the Armenians evaporated, while in Europe and closer to home, depression, revolution and civil war rendered Smuts’ vision of happy, harmonious and peaceful towns, nations and international communities very hazy indeed. The negative reputation which propaganda subsequently developed related substantially to the disconnect between the positive, idealistic aspects of wartime propaganda and the disappointing realities of the post-war period.
78
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Quotations from P. C. M. [Peter Chalmers Mitchell], Report on the Propaganda Library (MI7b, August 1917). For full discussion, see David Monger, ‘Know Your Enemy: Peter Chalmers Mitchell, British Military Intelligence and the Understanding of German Propaganda in the First World War, History, 103:358 (2018). General Smuts’s Message to South Wales, p. 14. Monger, Patriotism and Propaganda, pp. 131–2.
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25 Pacifism
This chapter examines a paradox which I have previously noted regarding ‘pacifism’ in the First World War.1 That word, coined in 1901, was then used in three senses. The first two were associated with the peace movement: the absolute pacifism that conscientiously objected to all fighting; and the pacificism that sought to abolish war (for example, by creating a league of nations) but accepted that in the immediate future force (for example, military sanctions) might still be needed. The third and loosest sense of pacifism described war-weariness or defeatism that was unrelated to the peace movement’s confidence that international relations could be reformed: it was merely anti-war. The paradox is that where, as in the UK, the peace movement was deepest-rooted, public support for the war effort was nonetheless best maintained. In other words, the first two senses of pacifism correlate negatively with the third. Admittedly, one qualification must immediately be noted: the UK drew back from imposing conscription upon its Irish territory, because, despite a rush to the colours in 1914 by Catholics as well as Protestants, nationalism and republicanism had by 1916 generated considerable anti-war feeling there. This Ireland-Britain split was however the only significant regional division within the UK, although Cyril Pearce has recently argued for a hitherto unrecognized degree of variation in local political culture across England, with some communities showing greater sympathy than others for the minority opposing the conflict.2 The resolution to the paradox is that freely operating peace movements were an attribute of liberal modernity, as also were the political authority, administrative efficiency, economic resilience and social unity needed for a
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Martin Ceadel, ‘Pacifism’ in Jay Winter (ed.), The Cambridge History of the First World War, vol. 2 The State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 605. Pearce has mainly studied Huddersfield but suggests that similar cultures may have existed in Nelson, Bingley and Shipley, and in parts of north and east London, Middlesex, rural Essex, Letchworth, Bristol, Birmingham, and Norwich: Cyril Pearce, Comrades in Conscience: The Story of an English Community’s Opposition to the Great War (rev. edn, London: Francis Boutie, 2014), p. 188.
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war of attrition. A modern liberal state like the UK took a gamble during 1914–18: it accepted the risk of tolerating dissent and recognising conscientious objection in order to enhance its political legitimacy. This chapter argues that as matters transpired – and smarter German behaviour might have changed this – the gamble paid off: the peace movement hindered the government in certain significant ways but on balance helped it manage home-front pressures. The peace movement has both a ‘primary’ and a ‘secondary’ manifestation. The former consists of dedicated, single-issue associations, and the latter of organisations with broader agendas such as progressive parties and religious bodies. Despite its longevity – the Peace Society, founded in London during 1816, was already anticipating its centenary – in the summer of 1914 the UK’s primary movement was completely ineffective. Only the Neutrality League formed by Norman Angell, author of the pacificist bestseller of four years previously, The Great Illusion, made a serious effort to mobilise the widespread isolationist sentiment; although, having ignored the crisis until AustriaHungary declared war on Serbia, Angell had left himself insufficient time.3 By contrast, the secondary peace movement, though also unable to stop British intervention, had considerable influence. The ruling Liberal Party’s slogan had been ‘peace, retrenchment, and reform’ when in 1906 it had won its initial electoral landslide in which many candidates from its radical wing had unexpectedly been returned. These were pacificists who understood neither the realist case for keeping the ports across the English Channel in friendly hands that had underpinned the UK’s traditional concern to preserve a balance of power in Europe, nor the threat to that balance which had recently arisen from Germany’s unification and industrialisation. Instead, they aspired to reduce armaments expenditure, arbitrate international disputes and avoid diplomatic entanglements, especially if these last involved aligning with Tsarist Russia. They blamed secretive diplomats and arms traders for their government’s entente policies, and in addition were suspicious of Asquith and Grey as Liberal Imperialists. The prime minister and foreign secretary had to hope that, as the European crisis developed, both their own party and the public more generally would come to appreciate the geopolitical reasons for standing by France and working with Russia. It is one of the tragedies of 1914 that, because the UK government could not announce in advance its willingness to intervene militarily, it failed to secure the maximum deterrent value from that willingness. To the extent that it thus unwittingly encouraged German aggression, the pacificism of the secondary peace movement had a baleful effect.
3
Martin Ceadel, Living the Great Illusion: Sir Norman Angell, 1872–1967 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 154–60.
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In the event, Asquith and Grey did not have to wait until their colleagues belatedly acknowledged the realist case, because Germany sent an ultimatum to Belgium on 3 August and invaded the following day. This violation of Belgian neutrality provided pacificist reasons for UK intervention, namely the need both to uphold international law and to punish the brutal treatment of a small power by a great one. Many Liberals were won over by the attack on the Belgians, while others like Lloyd George availed themselves of it as an idealist ladder down which to climb from an isolationism of which they were already repenting for realist reasons. As the Liberal former Lord Chancellor Earl Loreburn later argued, a military intervention on nakedly geopolitical grounds would have provoked more resignations from the cabinet and made army recruitment much harder.4 Catriona Pennell has pointed out that the big spike in volunteering came in September,5 which implies that a military emergency after the event might have compensated for an unpopular casus belli in August. Even so, it cannot be doubted that the German army’s action made life considerably easier for Asquith and Grey. With the UK at war, the old primary associations immediately became moribund.6 Despite its absolute-pacifist principles, the Peace Society did not even condemn the war. The two pacificist associations – the International Arbitration League, which in its first incarnation dated from 1870, and the International Arbitration and Peace Association, which had been set up ten years later – eventually accepted British intervention, although because Germany had rejected arbitration they had little to offer. They were supplanted during the first year of the war by new associations, both absolutepacifist and pacificist. As the war became one of attrition, the new primary movement divided into three distinct elements that impacted upon the government in different ways. The first consisted of absolute pacifists, a tiny minority that attracted little attention until conscription was introduced in 1916 but then became an irritant. The second and most worrying to the government was composed of radical pacificists who, although ostensibly calling only for democratic control over the post-war settlement, were in fact awaiting their opportunity to demand a negotiated end to a seemingly stalemated conflict. And the third comprised liberal pacificists who accepted British intervention but tried to ensure it was indeed a war to end war by promoting a league of nations, an idea which the government adopted for its own ends.
4 5
6
The Earl Loreburn, How the War Came (London: Methuen, 1919), p. 241. Catriona Pennell, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 146–7. See Keith Robbins, The Abolition of War: The ‘Peace Movement’ in Britain 1914–1919 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1976) and Martin Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1854–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), ch. 7.
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Each will now be analysed in turn, before the role of women in the peace movement is more briefly acknowledged. The two absolute-pacifist fellowships launched late in 1914 had surprisingly little to say about the war itself. The No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF) was established by Independent Labour Party members whose nonconformitysuffused interpretation of socialism was that it respected the sanctity of human life. But it focused on conscription rather than on the fighting, and ended up as a welfare organisation for objectors. The Fellowship of Reconciliation was formed by an inter-denominational group of Christian pacifists antagonised by church leaders claiming that the war was not only just but holy. But it soon adopted a quietist position, so could be ignored. The UK had allowed militia service to lapse in the nineteenth century just as other states were espousing conscription; and its aversion to compulsion was taken for granted. Sought by Conservatives for military reasons, conscription was in fact ‘as important for those it kept out of uniform as for those it brought in’, as historians of pacifism have long recognised,7 because the most pressing need was to stop key munitions workers joining up. But precisely because conscription was an aspect of manpower planning, the labour movement was hostile, as, on voluntarist grounds, were most Liberals. However, Asquith brought the Conservative and the Labour parties into his government, and introduced conscription as part of a tacit wartime contract based on parity of sacrifice. The élites, who were already doing more than their share of the fighting and dying, paid heavy income taxes and an excess-profits levy, granted regulatory powers to trade unions, and early in 1918 were to concede a trebling of the electorate. In return the masses diluted hard-won working practices and accepted military compulsion. For their part prominent Liberals, whose resignations from his cabinet Asquith feared, insisted that conscription be softened by recognition of conscientious objection. Albeit only after a period during which deliberate ambiguity co-existed with unintended confusion, this recognition was clarified as uniquely generous by the standards of the time. Only three other conscripting combatants made legal provision for conscientious objection: Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Of these, the UK was significantly the most generous in two respects. First, Canada, New Zealand and the United States recognised only members of historic peace churches: this greatly simplified their exemption procedures, which became a matter of checking a religious affiliation. In Britain, however, even atheists could invoke the conscience clause, which placed a huge responsibility on the 1,800 or so local tribunals which had somehow to assess claims. These bodies have received much
7
Thomas Kennedy, Hound of Conscience: A History of the No-Conscription Fellowship, 1916–1919 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1981), p. 133.
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criticism for their treatment of conscientious objectors but seem to have reflected local notions of fairness.8 Faced with some claims of conscience that were ‘trivial and shallow to the last degree’, as even the Fellowship of Reconciliation complained,9 the tribunals cannot be blamed for all their negative decisions. Secondly, Canada, New Zealand and the United States offered exemption from combatant service only: in the last of these, for example, those recognised as objectors from historically absolute-pacifist churches were nonetheless (if they passed a medical examination) inducted into the American army, albeit for non-arms-bearing roles; but there they were subjected to such pressure that four-fifths of them abandoned their stand and accepted combatant duties. In Britain, after a period of uncertainty, work of national importance under civilian control was offered; and in principle even unconditional exemption was available. The NCF proudly boasted of how few British objectors gave up the struggle and agreed to fight.10 Even so, they faced problems in two situations. The first was when their claims were rejected as insincere by their local tribunal, so they were inducted into the army where many of them refused to obey orders. Famously, in June 1916, thirty-five were sent to the front line in France and given death sentences that were, however, immediately commuted to ten years penal servitude.11 This crude attempt by the army to frighten objectors merely demonstrated the willingness of the latter to die for their beliefs and constituted a publicrelations blunder that still resonates today. Yet it also reflected an early fear that shirkers unable to convince tribunals of their sincerity might even so evade their citizenly obligations and damage the war effort. This soon proved groundless: Britain’s conscientious objectors were too few to matter militarily. They were long believed to have numbered around 16,500, though painstaking research by Pearce suggests that the correct total is closer to 20,000 when cases reported in local newspapers but not included in central records are taken into account. Of course, even this higher figure was militarily trivial – 0.4 per cent of their cohort – and far less significant than exemptions awarded on other grounds: Pearce points out that even in Huddersfield, one of the local communities that took in his words ‘a decidedly sceptical’ view of the conflict, less
8
9
10 11
For a sympathetic recent account of the tribunals see James McDermott, British Military Service Tribunals, 1916–1918: ‘A Very Much Abused body of Men’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011). John Rae, Conscience and Politics: The British Government and the Conscientious Objector to Military Service 1916–1919 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 111. Kennedy, Hound of Conscience, 139. The fullest account, which corrects the previously accepted total of thirty-four, is Gary Perkins, Bible Student Conscientious Objectors in World War 1 Britain (Borthwick: Hupomone Press, 2016), p. 232 (endnote 153).
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than 1 per cent of applications for exemption during the first year of conscription cited conscientious grounds.12 Reassured by the modest number of pacifists, particularly in relation to seekers of exemption on other grounds, the authorities soon adopted a more pragmatic approach towards them. Those court-martialled were sent to civil prisons, where they were treated like ordinary inmates. Moreover, their cases were reviewed by a central tribunal which, being more insulated from civilsociety pressures, took a more lenient view. And a Home Office scheme for providing civilian work of national importance was instituted that most objectors found acceptable in principle. Even the NCF’s leading contrarian, C. H. Norman, accepted alternative service, though he became a disruptive influence in the work camps which struggled both to provide appropriate work and to maintain discipline. When during the manpower crisis of early 1918 young employees in hitherto protected occupations such as mining were called up in a ‘clean cut’, many – in some places half – of those then claiming a conscientious objection waited to be inducted into the army before declaring themselves and opting for the Home Office scheme. They thereby skipped the tribunal stage altogether, although they are counted in the total of conscientious objectors.13 The second problematical situation arose from the reluctance of tribunals to grant the unconditional exemption that was confirmed as available in the legislation extending conscription to married men. However, this had always been intended as an exceptional privilege; and only 350 were ever granted. Most went to Quakers because of their historical reputation as Britain’s most famous secondary peace association, which was ironic given how divided they had by then become: as many as 33.6 per cent of their males of military age enlisted in the armed services during the First World War; as few as 45.4 per cent declared themselves conscientious objectors,14 though they were strongly supported by a newly established and very assertive Friends’ Service Committee; and a third group pursued the middle way either of humanitarian volunteering, for example in the unofficial Friends’ Ambulance Unit, or of subsidising pacificist activities. Unlike the Quakers, sects that were solid in their conscientious objection – for example, the recently established International Bible Students Association (later known as Jehovah’s Witnesses)15 and the Christadelphians – were little known to the public and stayed aloof from the peace movement. 12
13 14 15
Pearce, Comrades in Conscience, p. 138. See also Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 101. Rae, Conscience and Politics, p. 69. Ibid., p. 73. For an excellent account of the IBSA, see Perkins, Bible Student Conscientious Objectors.
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Some objectors refused the alternative service they were offered and chose instead to go to prison. Their ‘absolutism’ was the most visible demonstration of the wartime influence of Britain’s pacifist associations, because initially the NCF as well as the Friends’ Service Committee promoted this position in the hope of thereby making the conscription process unworkable. But the total of absolutists, though now reckoned by Pearce to be ‘closer to 1,400’ than to the 985 previously estimated, fell well short of the 10,000 predicted privately in April 1916 by Bertrand Russell, a prominent NCF activist, let alone the 20,000 publicly predicted the following month by its charismatic leader Clifford Allen.16 The most enthusiastic exponents of the absolutist position were socialists such as Allen and Morgan Jones, later (in August 1921) the first conscientious objector to be elected as an MP, who initially believed that they were ‘dealing smashing blows to militarism in this country and it is my confident belief it will never recover’.17 But this belief in absolutism as a conscription-wrecking political force soon faded, especially when socialists realised that Russian revolutionaries were doing much more than British pacifists to influence the course of the war. Ironically, therefore, just as they were gaining some public recognition as sincere idealists, leading absolutists were also losing confidence in the political relevance of their stand. Locked away, they felt detached from the NCF, which, to the contempt of the Friends’ Service Committee, increasingly focused on improving the lot of the majority of objectors who had accepted alternative service. Nonetheless, the absolutists achieved one political victory: in November 1917, following a campaign centred on the saintly, well-connected, and ailing Quaker-convert Stephen Hobhouse, those in the worst health were released on medical grounds (technically into the army reserve): in the next eighteen months 333 absolutists were let out.18 A government concerned with retaining the moral high ground did not want the embarrassment of deaths in custody; and its concession ensured that the death rate for conscientious objectors stayed below the prisoner average. But in order to maintain the wartime contract, the government balanced this humanitarian concession to absolutists by technically disfranchising all objectors for five years after the end of the war. Britain’s comparatively generous procedure for exempting pacifists almost certainly caused some opponents of that particular conflict expediently to claim an objection to all war. B. N. Langdon Davies later wondered about his own successful claim of conscientious objection: ‘Was I an out-and-outer? 16
17
18
Pearce, Comrades in Conscience (2014 ed.), p. 155. Jo Vellacott, Bertrand Russell and the Pacifists in the First World War (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980), p. 43, 53. Rae, Conscience and Politics, 167. Jones to Allen, 29 May 1916, cited in K. Robbins, ‘Morgan Jones in 1916’, Llafur 1 (4), summer 1975, p. 39. Rae, Conscience and Politics, p. 225.
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Did I really believe in non-resistance or had the Military Service Acts made me rationalize myself into it? To this day I do not absolutely know.’19 According to John Rae, many of the young men called up in the ‘clean cut’ of early 1918 were guilty of ‘open abuse of the conscience clause’.20 But even if it generated some dubious claims of pacifism, the conscience clause also directed most opposition to military service into legal channels, Pearce noting that ‘the vast majority of the unwilling . . . attempted to use the Tribunal system’.21 Adrian Gregory has persuasively argued that anger towards ‘conchies’ diverted public anger away from the rather larger problem of non-conscientious ‘shirkers’22 – a displacement that preserved social harmony. Conscientious objection has also distracted historical attention from those of a merely antiwar persuasion who prudentially dodged conscription. Pearce is now working on this neglected subject, thereby excavating the anarchist and Irishrepublican undergrounds that helped some of those called up in Britain to evade service.23 What now seems surprising is how little of this there seems to have been. The biggest ‘pacifist’ headache for the government throughout the conflict was the radical-pacificist Union of Democratic Control (UDC). Privately launched on 10 August 1914 by Norman Angell, Ramsay MacDonald, E. D. Morel, and C. P. Trevelyan, it was an outgrowth of the short-lived neutrality campaign, and sought support from known critics of ‘the old control of foreign policy by a narrow clique, and the power of armaments organizations’.24 Flushed into the open on 10 September by the right-wing Morning Post, it denied being a ‘stop the war’ organisation (though it hinted it would in due course propose peace negotiations) and claimed merely to want a post-war settlement that respected democratic wishes. By the time the UDC went public it had grown over-confident, as is evidenced by Angell’s private statements. Writing to an American acquaintance on 18 September, he predicted a ‘revulsion of sentiment’ against UK involvement in the war and claimed that ‘scores of millions in England’ shared the UDC’s views. The previous evening, moreover, he had told a private dinner in London of his American followers that the authorities were fearful of popular unrest: ‘Machine guns lie prepared for action in the cellars of Buckingham Palace’.25 Yet Angell soon discovered that even his longstanding supporters mostly 19
20 21 22 23 24
25
Julian Bell (ed.), We Did Not Fight: 1914–18 Experiences of War Resisters (London: Cobden Sanderson 1935), p. 191. Rae, Conscience and Politics, p. 158. Pearce, Comrades in Conscience, p. 149. Gregory, Last Great War, p. 122. I am grateful to Dr Pearce for showing me an early draft of part of his text. Marvin Swarz, The Union of Democratic Control in British Politics during the First World War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 25. Ceadel, Living the Great Illusion, pp. 172–3.
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hated the UDC for implying a moral equivalence between UK and German behaviour during the summer of 1914. In consequence, the demand for his services as speaker and author fell off so sharply that he went to the United States. Meanwhile, E. D. Morel took charge of the UDC, and built it up for what was now understood to be a long and difficult haul. His strokes of genius were to stop the organisation being distracted by the conscription issue and, though himself a Liberal parliamentary candidate, to identify trade unions and socialist groups as the most important secondary peace movement in waiting. During 1915, therefore, he hired an experienced Labour Party agent to solicit affiliations to the UDC, with considerable success.26 Early in 1916 public opinion more generally began to turn slowly towards the UDC’s position for three reasons. The first was the mounting cost of the war, which produced calls for a negotiated peace. Refusing either to demand German evacuation of Belgium as a precondition of talks or to return AlsaceLorraine to France without a plebiscite, the UDC formulated peace terms that had no chance of success while either side hoped to win, though Morel did accept the need for reparation to Belgium.27 The UDC joined other peace associations on a Peace Negotiations Committee, which met from March 1916 until the start of the German offensive in March 1918 and collected 221,617 signatures to a petition.28 But such efforts merely hardened the resolve of those who wished ‘to carry the fight to a decisive victory’, as Lloyd George put it in a famous interview on 28 September 1916. On 6 December he duly replaced Asquith as prime minister, at which point Grey also left office. The Lloyd George government’s identification with a knock-out blow enabled Asquith and Grey, once objects of radical suspicion as Liberal Imperialists, to be largely rehabilitated as guardians of their party’s pacificist tradition. Moreover, the UDC had received a second boost in May 1916 when the United States’ President, Woodrow Wilson, condemned secret diplomacy. And it enjoyed a third in March 1917 when Tsarism fell and its replacement demanded a post-war settlement without annexations or indemnities. ‘The Russian Provisional Government has followed President Wilson in endorsing the principles of the U.D.C.’, Morel exulted.29 The feeling that a logjam had been broken and that a compromise peace was somehow now available developed across the political spectrum. It was reflected in the public declaration in July by the poet and decorated serving officer Siegfried Sassoon that what had begun ‘as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of
26 27 28 29
Swarz, Union of Democratic Control, pp. 59–61. Ibid., pp. 75–6. Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists, p. 208. Swarz, Union of Democratic Control, p. 157.
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aggression and conquest’,30 which implied that it could satisfactorily be ended. More importantly, the labour movement became radicalised in a pacificist rather than a revolutionary sense. In August, soon after an eye-opening official visit to Russia’s struggling government, Labour’s Arthur Henderson left the war cabinet in order to work with its former (and future) leader MacDonald to transform their party from a federation of trade unions and socialist societies into a direct-membership organisation open to middle-class radicals as well as to manual workers. Labour also committed itself to socialism: that this ideology made significant gains in 1917 was reflected in the fact that Angell then aligned himself with the ILP. (He had returned home in May 1916, seemingly to declare himself a conscientious objector, but found himself too old to be conscripted.) Thus, just as the Liberals were splitting between Lloyd George and Asquith with disastrous consequences, Labour’s pro- and anti-war sections not only came together but broadened the party’s political base. What made possible both this reunification and the wooing of disillusioned Liberals was the adoption of UDC principles as the party’s foreign policy. Understandably, the UK government became worried about morale, and during the summer of 1917 began to raid peace associations in pursuit of incriminating evidence, such as finance from Germany. Though this did not exist, a search of Morel’s house uncovered a technical offence that resulted in a five-month spell in prison, which weakened the UDC at a critical time. Peace associations were also required to submit all leaflets and pamphlets to the censor, a regulation with which the Friends’ Service Committee refused on principle to comply, leading to the imprisonment of several of its members. Seditious remarks were also prosecuted more stringently: Bertrand Russell went to prison for an injudicious sentence in the NCF’s periodical. Even so, it is worth emphasising that advocating pacifism and opposing conscription or the war were never offences: Russell was punished for a gratuitous sideswipe against American troops. Without legal power to suppress non-seditious dissent, the government adopted what Brock Millman has called a ‘countermobilizational’ strategy: in June 1917, it established a National War Aims Committee, an ‘officially unofficial’ yet Treasury-funded body which ‘looked like the UDC, to which it was obviously intended to be an antidote’31 – a considerable tribute to the organisation Morel had constructed. The Bolshevik revolution of 7–8 November 1917 intensified social anxiety of an anti-war variety. On 29 November Lord Lansdowne, who as Foreign Secretary of a Conservative administration had been responsible for the entente with France, publicly expressed what Ross McKibbin has termed a ‘class-eugenicist’ concern that the country’s élite was being sacrificed. This 30 31
J. S. Roberts, Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) (London: Richard Cohen, 1999), pp. 107–8. Brock Millman, Managing Domestic Dissent in First World War Britain (London: Frank Cass, 2000), pp. 229–36.
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differed from the ‘race-eugenicist’ fear of decimating their ethnically English populations which stopped South Africa introducing compulsion and contributed to two referendum defeats for Australia’s conscriptionists.32 Lansdowne’s call for a statement of moderate war aims was welcomed by pacificists. The Cobdenite ex-editor of the Economist, F. W. Hirst, founded a Lansdowne Committee, to which the UDC gave private support but stayed publicly aloof so as not to embarrass the former Foreign Secretary.33 The Bolshevik regime not only declared against annexations and indemnities but published the secret treaties into which its Tsarist precursor had entered. This, in conjunction with domestic pressure, forced Lloyd George to state the UK’s war aims, which significantly he did in front of a trade-union audience on 5 January 1918, three days before President Wilson set out his fourteen points. The Lansdowne Committee also targeted organised labour, holding ‘Lansdowne/ Labour Conferences’ on 18 February, 6 March and 31 July. The long gap between the second and third of these resulted from Russia’s separate peace and Ludendorff’s resultant attempt to win the war before American troops arrived in Europe and before his country’s home-front problems also became acute. Had Germany instead made a serious effort at peace during the spring of 1918 – for example, by offering the status quo ante – a war-weary British public would have been tempted. The UK government intensified its pressure on the peace movement, and legislated both to raise the conscription age and to extend it to Ireland, though it did not go through with the latter. But by August the Ludendorff offensive had failed; and in the autumn Germany sought peace, converting itself into a democracy to qualify for an armistice based on Wilson’s fourteen points. The UDC felt vindicated that in strictly military terms the war had not been fought to a finish, and Morel boasted that ‘the Union’s Policy has become the World’s Peace-Programme’.34 The UK government had no option, diplomatically or politically, but to accept this fudging of Germany’s de facto defeat: had hostilities continued into 1919 anti-war feeling might have reached dangerous levels. In the short-term the armistice paid a political dividend to those considered most committed to seeing the war through. Although during the campaign for the December 1918 general election Lloyd George promised that conscription
32
33 34
Ross McKibbin, ‘Conscription in the First World War: Britain and Australia’, in Robin Archer, Joy Damousi, Murray Goot, and Sean Scalmer (eds), The Conscription Conflict and the Great War (Clayton, Victoria: Monash University Publishing, 2016), p. 171. See also the comments by John Connor on pp. 155–6 of the same volume, and John Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World System, 1830–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 346. Swarz, Union of Democratic Control, pp. 193–4. The U.D.C. (November 1918), p. 276.
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would not continue into peacetime, this may have been an unnecessary concession, since both UDC activists and Asquithian Liberals fared disastrously. But by 1921 public opinion began to doubt the value of victory: the abrupt collapse of the post-war economic boom cannot wholly explain why the Treaty of Versailles took so much of the blame. For the political élite J. M. Keynes’s celebrated indictment, which coincided with and completely overshadowed a similar one from Angell, played its part.35 But for the Labour Party deep foundations of suspicion had already been dug by the UDC. At the 1922 general election, thirty UDC members were returned as Labour MPs. When in January 1924 the first Labour government was somewhat fortuitously formed, no fewer than fifteen UDC members became ministers, nine of them in the cabinet, including MacDonald who was both prime minister and foreign secretary. The radical pacificism of the UDC had thus helped to establish Labour as a governing party, in the process stabilising Britain’s newly democratised political system. Meanwhile many pacificists loyal to Asquith and Grey had from the outset supported the UK’s military intervention, albeit reluctantly, and had almost immediately converged on an international organisation as the mechanism for preventing future conflicts. In the first month of the war a Cambridge academic, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, called for ‘a league of the nations of Europe’. In the utopian spirit of the moment, he envisaged a federation to which all nations would surrender their armaments. But soon thereafter a Liberal MP, Aneurin Williams, and a former British ambassador to Washington, Viscount Bryce, both proposed an inter-governmental – and therefore more achievable – league. As elaborated by a group chaired by Bryce which met over the winter of 1914–15, this did little more than to require states to delay while their political disputes were submitted to the league for judgement: it did not require them to accept that judgement. But because sanctions would be imposed on states that refused to delay in this way, the league proposed by the Bryce group differed from the ‘international council’ suggested by the UDC, which was merely a forum for public diplomacy that would not require any security commitment from member states. Bryce’s league required member states to enforce its rules, if necessary by military action, even though these rules were limited. A League of Nations Society was formally launched in London on 3 May 1915, being soon joined by a League to Enforce Peace, launched in Philadelphia on 17 June, which adopted an almost identical programme. Unlike its American counterpart, which was operating in a neutral country, the League of Nations Society was vulnerable to charges of ‘pacifist’ distraction from the war effort and did not 35
J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London: Macmillan) and Norman Angell, The Peace Treaty and the Economic Chaos of Europe (London: Swarthmore Press) were both published in December 1919.
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undertake public campaigning during its first two years, its membership then being less than 200.36 During that period, however, the league idea was taken forward by statesmen, either on their own initiative or as a result of skilful lobbying. As early as 10 August 1915 Grey proposed it to President Wilson’s adviser Colonel House: the British foreign secretary saw it as a means of tying the United States into the enforcement of any peace agreement that arose from the Wilson administration’s desire to mediate.37 The president saw a practical advantage for his country in engaging itself in the management of the international system: the reform of maritime law. Shortly before the first of his two long wartime visits to the United States, Angell had made himself even more unpopular in his home country by publishing an article in an American magazine pointing out how the interests of a neutral trader such as the United States were currently damaged by the Royal Navy’s right to impose a wartime blockade. He soon developed this into an argument that the United States should intervene militarily in order to insist upon a reformed law of the sea as part of a postwar settlement that would also construct a league of nations. This line of argument influenced intellectuals close to Wilson, who himself read Angell’s work and quoted from it in the speech to the first annual meeting of the League to Enforce Peace on 27 May 1916 in which he not only condemned secret diplomacy but endorsed ‘an universal association of the nations to maintain the inviolate security of the highway of the seas for the common and unhindered use of all’.38 Astonishingly, therefore, Angell, though still a neutralist, pacifist pariah in the UK, emerged across the Atlantic as an internationalist advocate of military intervention with friends in high places. When the United States entered the European conflict in April 1917, a league of some kind became probable, though Wilson blocked the agreeing of a blueprint in advance. The League of Nations Society launched a public campaign; but in the spring of 1918 a group close to Lloyd George, keen to distract from demands for a negotiated peace, proposed the immediate creation of a league based on the existing coalition against Germany. Failing to win over the existing league society, in June they formed a rival one, the League of Free Nations Association. When shortly afterwards the war moved towards a rapid conclusion, the two league societies merged in October 36
37
38
The still valuable pioneering study is Henry Winkler, The League of Nations Movement in Great Britain, 1914–1919 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1952). Peter Yearwood, The Guarantee of Peace: The League of Nations in British Policy 1914–1925 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 8. See also L. W. Martin, Peace without Victory: Woodrow Wilson and the British Liberals (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1958) and George W. Egerton, Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations: Strategy, Politics, and International Organization, 1914–1919 (London: Scolar Press, 1979). Ceadel, Living the Great Illusion, pp. 193–4, 199–201, 210–11.
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1918 as the League of Nations Union, which in due course became the UK’s largest-ever peace association. When at the Paris Peace Conference a League of Nations was created, the core (articles 12–16) of its ‘Covenant’, international law’s first abridgement of a sovereign state’s right to declare war, bore a close resemblance to the Bryce proposals of four years previously. Arguably, therefore, the Bryce group, along with the various league societies and the personal lobbying by Angell and others, constituted the most influential pressure-group operation in international history.39 By contrast, article 10, which caused the US Senate to refuse ratification, was of Wilson’s own devising. The First World War marked a breakthrough for the UK’s women in peace activism, as in so many other spheres. Having cut their campaigning teeth in the pre-war suffrage campaign, some of them were keen to take up other causes; and, being spared both military service and gendered accusations of cowardice, that minority of suffragists which opposed the war could take up the peace question with comparative impunity. No man could have got away with visiting Germany and talking peace with its foreign secretary, as Emily Hobhouse did in June 1916.40 The best-known female peace initiative of the war was the International Conference of Women at The Hague during April 1915, which led to an international attempt to organise mediation by neutral countries41 and to the formation of the Women’s International League (WIL) in London five months later. In 1916, moreover, a Women’s Peace Crusade was launched by the Glasgow ILP; and the Women’s Co-operative Guild also campaigned for a negotiated peace. Despite some claims of a special maternal interest in warprevention these female associations did not expound a fully articulated feminist pacificism: indeed, as Dr Maude Royden of the Fellowship of Reconciliation pointed out, on the peace issue there was ‘no cleavage of opinion on sex lines’.42 Being nonetheless organised by gender rather than by specific versions of either pacifism or pacificism, these women’s groups had to accommodate diverse viewpoints, which blunted their contribution to public debate. 39
40
41
42
For a fuller justification of this claim see Martin Ceadel, ‘Enforced Pacific Settlement or Guaranteed Mutual Defence? British and US Approaches to Collective Security in the Eclectic Covenant of the League of Nations’, International History Review 35, 5 (2013), pp. 993–1008. Jennifer Hobhouse Balme, Agent for Peace: Emily Hobhouse and Her Courageous Attempt to End the First World War (Stroud: History Press, 2015) pp. 48–9, 103–15, 136. David S. Patterson, The Search for a Negotiated Peace: Women’s Activism and Citizen Diplomacy in World War I (New York: Routledge, 2008). Dagmar Wernitznig, ‘“No Documents, No History”: A Political Biography of Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948)’, unpublished DPhil thesis, Oxford University (2015). A. Maude Royden, ‘War and the Women’s Movement’, in C. R. Buxton (ed.), Towards a Lasting Settlement (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1915), p. 136.
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Much more important at the time was the organisational role women played in other peace associations, especially the NCF which they kept going after its male leaders were imprisoned. Catherine Marshall, who had first encountered it as an observer sent by the WIL, soon became its principal organiser, both impressing and intimidating Bertrand Russell before her health broke down.43 In addition, female editors issued the NCF’s periodical after the authorities had dismantled its printing press in February 1918 because of an article deemed seditious; and a female acting honorary secretary went to prison for refusing to divulge the printer of its March 1918 newssheet.44 Despite such activities, however, the unprecedented mobilisation at this time of women’s political, social, and economic energies was on balance overwhelmingly helpful to the prosecution of the war. To conclude: the peace movement constrained the war effort in some ways yet helped it in others. Those constraints would have been greater had Germany avoided crushing Belgium in 1914, made a credible status quo ante offer during 1917–18, or been able to continue the war into 1919. As it was, the pacificism of the ruling party’s radical wing stopped the UK warning Germany that it would stand by France. The UDC pressured the government into a statement of war aims, helped Labour become a credible alternative to Liberalism, and did much to discredit Versailles in advance. Moreover, the NCF secured concessions for conscientious objectors who in comparative terms were already well treated. But the government was helped by war-supporting liberal pacificists who not only promoted a league of nations but did so in an implementable form which first Grey, then Wilson, and finally assorted European realists, espoused for their own purposes. The league not only helped to entice the United States into the conflict: it also offered an idealistic argument for persisting with the war in the difficult period of 1917–18. Even the UDC’s steering of the Labour movement towards radical pacificism, though at the time troubling to the government, had the beneficial effect of steering it away from Marxism. Finally, conscientious objection proved to be more of a lightning rod than a leak below the waterline: it canalised most dissent into constitutional processes and was in any case a vital part of the inter-party contract which ensured political stability. In the event, therefore, the net effect of the UK’s peace movement on the war effort proved positive: the liberal state’s gamble had paid off.
43 44
Vellacott, Bertrand Russell and the Pacifists, pp. 141–6. Kennedy, Hound of Conscience, pp. 243–9.
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26 Homes and Families in Wartime
Introduction At the outbreak of the First World War, families across Britain, were infinitely varied. An assortment of combinations of individuals resided together in a multitude of different types of homes, which in their own diverse ways acted as the focus of families’ economic activities and as spaces of emotional belonging and comfort. Homes could contain several generations, a widow supported by her sons, a co-habiting couple, perhaps with previous partners they could not afford to divorce,1 combinations of grown-up siblings, relatives, lodgers and domestic servants living together. Families and homes were often finely balanced economic units, relying upon a range of methods of production and consumption to make ends meet. Class, economic circumstances and the particularity of the geographical locale in which a family resided all shaped the day-to-day practices of domestic life, and the contributions that different members needed to make to the economic survival of the home. What was cooked, eaten, grown, preserved or even produced not only linked to whether the family lived in an urban or rural place but also conformed to shifting and contested regional and local traditions. For example, although the consumption of both potatoes and oatmeal was declining in Ireland, they still retained a more central place in Irish families’ food production and consumption in 1914 than they did in some other parts of the United Kingdom.2 But regional differences cannot be defined or categorised just through the four different countries that made up the United Kingdom; individual regions retained their own important particularities. The Staffordshire oatcake had a place in the diet of the working class in that county. The Black Country pig, who resided in the backyards of numerous terraced houses around Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton, continued to
1
2
Pat Thane and Tanya Evans, Sinners? Scroungers? Saints? Unmarried Motherhood in Twentieth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Leslie Clarkson and Margaret Crawford, Feast and Famine: Food and Nutrition in Ireland 1500–1920 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
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make a contribution to family budgets in the first half of the twentieth century, even though they were becoming less common in some rural households. Furthermore, many regional industries, even in 1914, relied upon outworkers, such as Aran or Fair Isle knitters in Scotland or the Worcestershire glovemakers undertaking piecework in their homes. Whilst a majority of trades and retail outlets remained family businesses, shops and pubs in towns and villages merged home and work, and in rural areas the vast majority of farms and all smallholdings relied on family labour. This was particularly the case in Wales, where nearly 70 per cent of holdings had less than 50 acres of land prior to 1914 and were predominantly worked by families, including their children.3 Both symbolically and practically the home and the family were fundamental to the national war effort. They were symbolically the ‘heart of the nation’, that was being fought for. The ideological importance of the home and the significant financial expenditure undertaken by the government and charities to maintain homes and families increasingly led to public concern and involvement in, what were once private family concerns. Guidance and instructions on food consumption and preparation, infant care and child welfare, wives’ sexual behaviour, alcohol consumption and the cleanliness of the home all served to rework and renegotiate divisions between private and public spheres, so that in wartime the boundaries around the home and the family become more porous. It is not, however, easy for historians to trace the workings and re-workings of private family life within homes during the conflict. The domestic and the private sometimes seems to be hidden in archives, appearing only in fleeting references in newspapers, diaries, letters, school logbooks and local government and voluntary organisational records, reports of government ministries and of military tribunals, ephemera, photographs and memories. The timeconsuming research of recovering multiple snippets and traces of the practical challenges of sustaining homes and families has not been carried out evenly across all the four nations, but it is still possible to suggest there are indications of small, sometimes subtle, shifts in roles and responsibilities within families or attitudes towards them that occurred in wartime. Domestic networks were often required to increase their productivity and reduce their consumption of food for the war effort at a time when many families had contributed their menfolk to the armed forces. This chapter, in seeking to explore the social impact of the First World War on homes and families, will therefore discuss three broad areas: first, the expanding and shifting areas of responsibility within the family; second, the 3
Thomas George, ‘Female Agricultural Workers in Wales in the First World War’, in M. Andrews and J. Lomas (eds.)The Home Front in Britain (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 92–107.
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hardships and challenges which had to be faced; and finally, the difficulties of conducting domestic life under public surveillance. It will provide at least a glimpse of what home and family meant to people. It will suggest that, although the ways in which individual homes and families functioned, survived and provided support were stretched by the conflict, and although they adapted and shifted a little, in most respects they survived, largely unchanged.
Expanding and Shifting Areas of Responsibility In propaganda, political rhetoric and the imagination, families were not just a set of relationships; homes were not merely places to live. Both were culturally invested with so much more, a sense of belonging, ideals and actualities to be protected, dreamed about, fought for and finally returned to. Ostensibly, one of the reasons men enlisted was to protect their homes and families. This connection between active participation in armed conflict and protecting home and family was more credible when on the 16 December 1914, as Susan Grayzel has pointed out, the shelling of coastal towns such as Whitby and Scarborough and the Zeppelin raids defined women and children as targets of war, rather than a group shielded from its impact.4 Such events legitimated the discourse of propaganda posters including the one addressed to the men of Essex encouraging them to join those who had volunteered and were already protecting their ‘homes’ from ‘devastation’, and their ‘wives and daughters from being dishonoured’.5 Another recruitment poster depicted a British soldier exclaiming to the public, ‘Isn’t this worth fighting for?6 Clad in a kilt, he pointed towards rolling countryside, a dairy herd and, most importantly, a thatched cottage;7 all emblems of a specifically English, rural home which needed to be protected. This peculiarly southern English house, as Alun Howkins has suggested, existed in the imagination of many soldiers, even those who lived in urban working-class communities across the four nations.8 In peacetime it was assumed women would take responsibility for emotional labour within families – little changed in wartime. Eric Leed, unfairly perhaps, suggests that ‘imaginings were nothing more than a kind of false 4
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Susan Grayzel, At Home Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Kindle Edition, date), p. 4. Men of Essex Regiment, Essex Regiment Poster (IWM PROC 286) reproduced in Imperial War Museum, Fit Men Wanted; Original Posters from the Home Front (London: Thames and Hudson, 2012). www.miriad.mmu.ac.uk/visualculture/posters/exhibition3/ Parliamentary Recruiting Committee 1915, The University Library Special Collections Leeds http://library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-exhibitions-war-propaganda#activateimage7 Alun Howkins, ‘The Discovery of Rural England’, in R. Colls and P. Dodd (eds.), Englishness, Politics and Culture 1880–1920 (London: Croom Helm, 1986), pp. 55–82.
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consciousness’.9 Nevertheless women undertook to nurture a sense of home and family in the imaginations of husbands, sons, brothers and sweethearts in the forces. Their letters sought to maintain family bonds. Women operated as brokers for news between siblings, a minor inconvenience, but one of many new time-consuming responsibilities some mothers, who wrote individually to several sons every week, or wives, who wrote to husbands every day, took on during wartime. Rachel Duffett has suggested that the parcels women sent were seen as ‘proof that the men at the Front were not forgotten and that their sacrifices were acknowledged and appreciated’;10 they also helped to maintain the idea of the home in men’s imagination. Lois Turner, a young middle-class girl from Stone in Staffordshire, seemed to have regarded the correspondence she exchanged with a number of men as a form of war work. The replies suggest her efforts helped nurture men’s idea of home: one said, ‘I must write and thank you for those dear little macaroons you sent in Billie’s parcel especially for me’, and on another occasion, ‘I am so jolly glad I came to see you. Dear Lois. . .. I can just picture you making that nice homemade bread.’11 According to Joanna Bourke, ‘men’s identities remained lodged within their civilian environment’.12 Home and fighting fronts were intimately linked by the heavy traffic of letters; in 1916, for example, 5,000,000 letters were sent each week from the British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium to Britain.13 These enabled couples to share memories of the past and dreams of the future. But Hayley Carter’s research on letters between couples physically separated by war also suggests they used letters to recreate their mundane chats around the kitchen table or fireside, discussing the progress and welfare of their children, the household or their concerns for each other.14 Thus, John wrote to Bessie in July 1917: I have so often been thinking of you and have been wondering if you have been stinting yourself of necessaries or little extras in the way of food or clothes? Do you need a tonic? I don’t want you to get to look old or
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Eric Leed, No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War One (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 72. Rachel Duffett, ‘Beyond the Ration: Sharing and Scrounging on the Western Front,’ Twentieth Century British History, 22: 4 (2011), pp. 453–73; here p. 460. Staffordshire Record Office SRO 5778/1/21. Joana Bourke Dismembering the Male: Britain, Men’s Bodies and the Great War. (London: Reaktion Books, 1996), p. 170. See, for example, Dan Todman, The Great War and Myth and Memory (London: Hambledon, 2008); Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Michael Roper The Secret Battle Emotional Survival in the Great War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009). Archival work carried out for PhD at University of Worcester – see also https:// historywm.com/podcasts/letters-home-from-the-western-front-hayley-carter-series
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careworn or miserable, but I think the children will keep you from the latter at least.15
At Christmas 1916, Bessie cooked Christmas puddings for the family, sending one to John to share with his fellow soldiers. Providing domestic care, homely comforts, and emotional support to distant family member was an everexpanding role. William John Brown from Worcester, who joined up when seventeen, requested his mother send him news of his poorly father and his beloved pigeons as well as items such as writing paper and Woodbines, saying in one letter, ‘ I want you to try and send me a handkerchief as we can’t go out when we like, and I want a handkerchief bad’.16 Such letters also indicate the new roles and responsibilities that wives and children took on within households, family farms, smallholdings and businesses when husbands or sons left for war. Not long after he joined the army, John expressed his concern about his pregnant wife alone, undertaking what would once have been the shared task of dealing with the family pig. ‘So sorry to think of you salting the pig without me’, he wrote in December 1915, adding: ‘do be careful not to slip on the cellar steps’.17 The slaughter, butchering and salting of the pig were physically onerous tasks that she would have struggled to complete unaided. Responsibility for the family pig, for cottage gardens in rural areas and for allotments often shifted when men joined up, and when children, the elderly and women took on new roles, expanded already existing tasks and when, perhaps as importantly, their labour became visible. By 1917 a Midlands’ newspaper remarked that ‘the countrywoman has become a very valuable asset to the nation. But for her, in many villages throughout the country, there would be no one to care for the gardens and allotments.’18 Women’s roles also changed in other economically important areas of activity. In lists of family businesses in Stourbridge directories published between 1914 and 1917, Diana Russell has identified a number of women who appeared for the first time to be running family businesses: Mrs Bates has become a music dealer, Mrs Bill a flour dealer, Mrs Howles a grocer, Mrs Parkes has taken charge of the butchers, and Mrs Preece was listed by 1917 as a boot and shoe dealer.19 But it would be wrong to assume that there were not 15
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18 19
Extracts here from Worcestershire Archives and Archaeology Service, Ref 705.1076 BA 9733, transcripts of letters written by a private soldier to his wife. Letters and images in the private collection of Sean Brown by whose kind permission this extract is reproduced here. Extracts here from Worcestershire Archives and Archaeology Service, Ref 705.1076 BA 9733, transcripts of letters written by a private soldier to his wife. The Coventry Evening Standard, 25 October 1917. Diana Russell, archival work carried out in preparation for PhD study at the University of Worcester.
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women running businesses prior to the war or that there was always an easy or willing transfer of responsibilities from men to women in family businesses. Karen Hunt has drawn on her research in Staffordshire to point out ‘there were many examples where it suited tribunals to press reluctant husbands to turn to their wives to take over their businesses’.20 This was a phenomenon not restricted to Staffordshire. Mr Henderson, a grocer in Dumfries, had purchased his business in 1909, with assistance from his father, a retired shepherd who also helped him in the shop, as did his sister. His brother had already joined up and been killed when he unsuccessfully appealed against military service in 1917, arguing that without his work taking out the van to make sales, his business would not be viable. He was given just over a month to transfer the skills and organisation to another member of the family, although he had explained his sister could not undertake the role.21 Concern about the effects of their prolonged absence from their business was one of the core reasons many men resisted the rush to the colours and sought exemption from military tribunals after 1916. The Motherwell Times reported that a thirty– year old briquette seller and removal contractor, with three horses on the road, had informed a tribunal that his wife had been seriously ill for eighteen months, and had had two operations in three months. His business, he explained to no avail, would have to close down if he went into the army.22 In a conflict where food became a weapon of war, harvests needed to be gathered and work continually undertaken to maintain family farms, smallholdings, crofts and cottars as going concerns, ensuring the long-term viability of these family units. Nell Haynes of Newlands must have been very relieved that, although her husband, Will, was enlisted, his commanding officer gave him leave to return from fighting on the western front in France during the battle of the Somme, to help gather the harvest on their smallholding in Pershore, Worcestershire. Tragically, however, his death later that year left her and her four children running the smallholding unaided during the rest of the conflict and for many years after. Women like Nell were already making an established, although sometimes hidden, contribution to food production, preservation and preparation prior to the outbreak of war. This took place alongside other domestic tasks, so that their day might include weeding, caring for poultry, baking, taking cows to graze on the local common, washing, harvesting fruit, and in autumn picking damsons and blackberries from woods. Nell had a young family, but the physical strength of many sons was crucial to family enterprises; a J. P. from the Isle of Mull noted in 1919 that during the war he had had to do considerable work ‘persuading parents to let 20
21 22
Karen Hunt, Staffordshire’s War: Voices of the First World War (Stroud: Amberley Publishing Limited, 2017), p. 56. Dumfries and Galloway Standard and Advertiser, 7 February 1917. Motherwell Times, 27 April 1917.
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their sons join the colours’.23 But it was not just the removal of men from the family concern that created difficulties for agricultural units in wartime. Thomas George has charted how ‘wives, daughters and female domestic servants were integral components of the farm structure, undertaking tasks including tending to poultry and cattle, cleaning out the stables, milking and making butter’.24 By March 1916, Carmarthenshire War Agricultural Committee had identified that munitions factories and tinplate works nearby in the southwest at Pembrey, Llanelli and Swansea had lured young girls from farm work in the area.25 Even when the war did not directly intervene, families did not necessarily reside in idyllic bliss within their homes and family businesses, wherever they were. In Wyre Piddle in Worcestershire, the publican struggled with his wife’s predilection for a tipple which spilled over into drunkenness whenever he was absent, whilst William Marshall, a 50-year-old man, was summoned for threatening to murder his mother. She told the court that: ‘All she wanted was for her son to live away from her house.’ When she locked him out he would apparently burst the door open. She wanted ‘him to keep away from her’. In denying the charge William said that the land they farmed ‘was as much his as his mother’s’.26
Hardships and Challenges The relationship between the idealised version of home, to be protected by warfare, and the everyday life of many working-class families was somewhat tenuous. The privations of war made managing household consumption more challenging, a task left predominantly to women, whether or not they undertook paid work beyond or within their home.27 To the already existing difficulties of maintaining a home on a limited budget, in wartime mothers and wives faced hardship and inconvenience caused by delayed separation allowances, meagre widows’ benefits, price rises, food scarcity, and then food queues. By 1917 there were reports of women, or their children in their place, standing in food queues for six hours for a packet of margarine [see Fig. 26.1]. 23
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Ewen Cameron and Iain Robertson, ‘Fighting and Bleeding for the Land: The Scottish Highlands and the Great War,’ in Catriona M. Macdonald and Elaine W. McFarland (eds.) Scotland and the Great War (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1999), pp. 81–102; here p. 94. E. Whetham and Joan Thirsk, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 8 1914–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 64. The Carmarthen Journal, 31 March 1916, p 3. Worcester Herald, 1 September 1917. Karen Hunt, ‘A Heroine at Home: The Housewife on the First World War Home Front’, in M. Andrews and J. Lomas (eds.) The Home Front in Britain (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 73–91.
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Figure 26.1 Queuing for food, Victoria Street, Blackburn. The shop window facing the policeman says ‘England expects economy’. Home Office photograph. Imperial War Museum Q 56276.
In some industrial areas, wartime problems had been further exasperated by rent increases, until 1915 when the government introduced rent controls, following the Glasgow rent strike.28 For families, who could not could fully replace men’s contribution to the household in financial or practical terms, or protect the family income by readjusting household roles and responsibilities, wartime brought genuine hardship. Price rises occurred with the outbreak of war, and not all women responded with equanimity. A housewife was dismayed to discover in August 1914, that a grocer in Bermondsey was attempting to charge 8½d for a packet of Quaker oats which usually retailed for 5½d and 4d for sugar previously sold for 2d. She refused to take the goods, asked for her money back and left, before speedily returning with twenty other women who threw produce around and 28
For further discussion of the Glasgow rent strike, see Joseph Melling, ‘The Glasgow Rent Strike and Clydeside Labour – Some Problems of Interpretation,’ Scottish Labour History Society Journal 13 (1979), pp. 39–44; Seán Damer, State, Local State and Local Struggle: The Clydebank Rent Strike of the 1920s (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, Centre for Urban and Regional Research, 1985).
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threatened to wreck the place before police were called to take charge of the situation.29 In 1917 there were potato riots in Maryport, Cumbria and the surrounding areas.30 Similarly in Wrexham a riot broke out when women fought over a cartload of potatoes.31 Even if not all housewives resorted to direct action, in these activities and the Rugby Muddling Strike that Karen Hunt has discussed,32 there was a clear sense that not all price increases were justified and some were doing well out of the conflict. Nearly twenty years after the war one well-connected middle-class woman wrote with brutal honesty: ‘my grandfather was a farmer, and farmers have never hated war’.33 For those families, who were already in a marginal position prior to hostilities, in debt or behind with the rent, the loss of a husband’s or son’s earnings had devastating consequences. In October 1914 a letter appeared in the Worcester Daily Times setting out the parlous finances of a neighbour whose husband had enlisted and who was trying to support herself and a family of four boys and one girl. It listed her outgoings and noted that the food budget worked out at about one penny per head per meal.34 The Dean of Worcester Cathedral wrote to a local paper to express his dismay at the plight of another mother of five who, behind with her rent, had apparently ‘promised to pay the landlord the arrears as soon as she received her separation allowance. This should have arrived. . . but there was some delay. When she got back home after a visit to the Guildhall, a notice to quit possession of her tenement had been left for her.’35 The Dean’s concern about such cases was not unique; indeed, newspapers at the time are full of alarm about families suffering due to delays in separation allowances and then to the inadequacy of such payments. Many shared the view articulated by the Prince of Wales Fund in its appeal sheets issued in Glasgow in September 1914 that efforts should be made to: ‘guarantee to soldiers and sailors serving with the colours that the wives, families and dependents will be looked after and that their homes will remain intact’.36 But in many cases this was simply not what happened. Numerous letters in local newspaper from wives complained about the challenges of surviving on separation allowances. Sylvia Pankhurst, writing at the time and later, sheds light on the economic difficulties of the wives and families,37 as does the work 29 30 31
32 33 34 35 36 37
Worcester Herald, 8 August 1914. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02b0m0s Deirdre Beddoe, Out of the Shadows: A History of Women in Twentieth-Century Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), p. 50. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02b2jng Iris Barry, ‘We Enjoyed the War’, Scribners Magazine, 1934, pp. 279–83. Worcester Daily Times, 30 October 1914. Worcester Herald, 16 January 1915. Falkirk Herald, 17 April 1915. Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst, The Home Front: A Mirror to Life in England during the World War (London: Hutchinson, 1932).
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of Susan Pedersen38 and more recently Dianne Jones.39 Yet war did force the government to accept the complexity of family structures and begin to pay support to dependents, mothers and siblings. In 1916 it finally enshrined in law payments to women who had cohabited and had children outside marriage, euphemistically called ‘unmarried wives’. Although Pedersen argues that the social and political implications of separation allowances were ‘structured around maintaining the domestic rights of men’,40 these payments and widow’s benefits did place money, however meagre, into the hands of women. Those whose husbands had earned poor wages, and who had numerous children, might find themselves better off. The payments were at least regular and reliable. In Warwickshire, George Hewins’s wife moved her family of eight children into a larger house on the back of her separation allowance payments.41 However, the financial situation of families on the home front had as many variations as did the make-up of families and their living arrangements. In September 1917, the Edinburgh Evening News published a letter from the daughter of a soldier on behalf of her mother whose husband had been conscripted into the army. Her son had been killed in August 1915 serving with the Royal Scots. The letter explained that prior to the war the writer’s father, a compositor earned 30 shillings (£1.50) a week, while her brother also brought home 10 shillings (50p) a week. Her mother had received no pension following her son’s death and was now surviving on 12s 6d (62½ p) a week separation allowance. To this young lass and her mother, women with young children receiving separation allowance of 31 shillings (£1.55) were ‘living the life of Riley’.42 If this woman struggled financially after her son died, widows fared little better. Janis Lomas has drawn attention to the expectations of many authorities that widows should move to smaller accommodation as their need for space was apparently reduced by their husbands’ deaths, something not easily achieved when families were already living in poverty, making a home by renting only one or two rooms.43 The daughter of a war-widow whose father died in 1915 recalled her mother was left with ‘six children and none of them old enough to carry on the business my Father had saved up for. I was only 38
39
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Susan Pedersen, ‘Gender, Welfare, and Citizenship in Britain during the Great War’, The American Historical Review 95:4 (1990), pp. 983–1006. Dianne Jones, unpublished and, as yet, incomplete MPhil thesis, University of Chichester 2018. Pedersen, ‘Gender, Welfare, and Citizenship in Britain during the Great War’, pp. 983–1006. Angela Hewins, The Dillen (London: Elm Tree Books, 1981), p. 138. Edinburgh Evening News, 1 September 1917. Janis Lomas, ‘Delicate Duties’: Issues of Class and Respectability in Government Policy towards the Wives and Widows of British Soldiers in the Era of the Great War.’ Women’s History Review 9:1 (2000), pp. 123–47.
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12 and 5 brothers under me. My Mother used to work in the Royal Marine Barracks doing men’s washing, as the war pension was very low at the time.’44 The Chairman of the Conference of Scottish and Municipal Country Authorities may have remarked that: ‘There should not be any hesitation on the part of authorities in recognizing the need for more generosity in the matter of the present semi- starvation allowance’;45 but others were more sceptical about the poverty of wives of men in the services. Several slightly humorous extracts from wives’ letters to the authorities are to be found printed in newspapers. For example: Dear Sir, – Will you please send me my husband’s money at once, as I am walking about Bolton like a bloody pauper. Dear Sir, If I do not receive my husband’s pay. I shall be compelled to lead an immortal life.46
The use of italics drawing attention to spelling mistakes indicates the different class and education of the readers of such letters, compared to those who had written them. In making their lack of education the butt of its readers’ amusement, the newspaper undermined the very real plight of soldiers’ wives. Other letters pointed out ‘there is plenty of work for women at the present time’.47 There was, it seems, sometimes praise, or at least a surprising level of sympathy, for the family networks of care which enabled some women to work. For example, six-month-old baby, Mary Sophia Bowter, whose father as a reservist had been called up in 1914, was left in the care of her ten-year-old aunt while her mother was hop-picking in Fladbury, Worcestershire. When the child died, the coroner was of the opinion that, while it was a case for enquiry, ‘there was no neglect’, and the jury returned their fees to the mother to convey their condolences.48 For some women whose domestic arrangements were less than ideal, the war may have come as a welcome break, for others the hard work, anxiety and responsibility of coping on their own was crushing. The much quoted: woman with a very bad husband [who] owned frankly that she would not be sorry if he were killed. ‘But I suppose he’ll be spared, and others as’d be missed’ ll be taken, for that’s the way of things.’ Said she, ‘It’s the only time as I and the children’ as peace, The war’s been appy time for us,49
44 45 46 47 48 49
War Widows’ Archive, Staffordshire University Research Collections, Box 1. Falkirk Herald, 17 April 1916. Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal, 10 November 1917. Midland Daily Telegraph, 22 August 1917. Worcester Herald, 30 September 1914. Mrs Caroline Peel quoted in Joyce Marlow, The Virago Book of Woman and the Great War (London: Virago, 1998 reprinted 2009), p. 201.
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should be compared to Elizabeth Mundy from Llanelli who walked into the sea, drowning her two-year-old son and trying to drown herself. She was apparently depressed, as her husband had been away in France for prolonged periods of time.50 Likewise Myrtle Hill’s analysis of the diaries of the English lay missionary Rosamond Stephen, who spent time in St Matthew’s Parish, Belfast, reveal the trauma many women suffered, including one who had cut her throat, distraught with worry about her sons in the trenches.51 As the conflict wore on, food shortages and the government attempts to reduce waste and feed the nation more economically, made the daily choice of preparing the family’s tea, and many tasks which made up the minutiae of everyday life within the home, issues of national importance. The suggestion that ‘a few leaflets could be scattered, broadcast amongst the poor, advising them to masticate their foods more thoroughly (and thus lessen the bulk needed)’, articulated in August 1914,52 was no longer considered bizarre. This attempt at public control of what seems the most personal of habits was later repeated in The Win the War Cookbook. Families were encouraged to consume eggless sponge cakes to ensure eggs were sent to the wounded and, by 1917, to try a wide range of time consuming, arduous, and sometimes bizarre recipes to save and preserve food. These included making pastry with ground maize, barley or oats and using potatoes in bread and cakes to replace flour. The Government Food Advisor, Constance Peel, in Victory Cookbook (1918), featured a Christmas pudding, which resembled an exotic vegetable stew, substituting root vegetables and sweet fruits for sugar with one ounce of ginger to mask the taste. Little wonder that some housewives like Mary Jowett of no fixed abode, who had five little children, and two sons who had gone to war, one of whom had been killed, resorted to stealing eggs and bacon. She was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour.53 As submarine warfare escalated and shortages became more severe, the Defence of the Realm Act forbade householders throwing away edible food scraps; the King’s Proclamation in 1917 not only asked people to eat less bread but also to ‘abstain from the use of flour in pastry and moreover carefully to restrict or wherever possible to abandon the use thereof in all other articles than bread.’54 In Guernsey the ban on using sugar for anything but domestic preserving carried a potential fine of £100.55 In Kidderminster the Reverend Campbell Lee, speaking in Milton Hall, explained that the ‘battle of the loaf had begun’, warned people against ‘calling up the loaf for duty between meals’, 50 51 52 53 54 55
Robin A Barlow, Wales and World War One (Llandysul: Gomer, 2014), p. 208. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01yx52t (accessed 10/6/2018). Worcester Daily Times, 10 August 1914. Worcester Herald, 10 July 1915. The King’s Proclamation, 29 May 1917. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01sggj7
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and requested they resisted elevenses. Likewise, the local food campaign reminded the residents that ‘the Cupboard is the Housewife’s Trench and She Must Defend it’ or face potential fines for wasting bread.56 Choices about food are not merely about nutrition or making ends meet; food consumption is one of the defining private practices of everyday life for most families, offering a sense of regional, personal and family identity. The shift in the public discourse from education, words or encouragement and persuasion, to a rhetoric of threat in relation to the choice of food, brought the war into families’ homes and everyday lives in a new and persuasive way. Quandaries over every little bit of consumption, including whether to have a slice of bread in the middle of the morning, made housewives and families’ domestic lives the subject of new levels of governance.
Domestic Life under Public Surveillance The significance of homes and families for the war effort, the economic expenditure by the government on separation allowances and widow’s benefits, and the contributions made by various charities supporting homes and families that were being fought for, also augmented governance over workingclass homes. Working class women, as Braybon and Summerfield point out, were already often seen to be ‘in need of moral education and guardianship[;] like servants, they needed “watching”’.57 The work of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association (SSFA), which had 900 branches and 50,000 volunteers by 1915, has come in for particular criticism in relation to this process of ‘watching’. Pedersen suggests that their supposedly supportive and friendly visiting often spilled over into surveillance, acting as a morality police to soldiers’ wives, with the potential to distribute and withhold supplementary benefits according to their judgment of recipients’ ‘good behaviour’.58 Many of the charitable and women’s organisations which sprung up during this period, including the Wives’ Fellowship, founded in 1916 within the Anglican Church to support wives of soldiers, or the social interaction and education for working-class women provided in Tipperary Clubs,59 all walked a perilous path between support and surveillance and between education and empowerment. Official organisations also employed surveillance techniques. The Ministry of Pensions established 304 Local War Pensions Committees 56
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Kidderminster War Savings Committee Scrapbook, Worcester Archives and Archeological Service, Ref. 899:310 BA10470/537. Gail Braybon and Penny Summerfield, Out of the Cage: Women’s Experiences in Two World Wars (London: Thorsons Publishers, 1987) p. 107. Pedersen, ‘Gender, Welfare, and Citizenship in Britain during the Great War’, p. 992. Anna Muggeridge’s ongoing PhD research at the University of Worcester on women in the Black Country between 1914 and 1948 has explored the Tipperary Club in Walsall, which provided a social space for working-class women in the area during the conflict.
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spread throughout the four kingdoms. Part of their role was to investigate and report upon the ‘worthiness’ of any woman in receipt of a separation allowance or a war widow’s pension.60 The direct payment of money to women, albeit on their husbands’ behalf, created anxiety and ‘gender trouble’,61 stretching and challenging Victorian and Edwardian bourgeois discourses of domesticity.62 The consequent concern that women were squandering their separation allowances was articulated in relation to housewives’ apparent laziness, lack of cleanliness, morality or excessive drinking, and all manner of other private family concerns. A plethora of officials and individuals took it upon themselves to monitor the behaviour of wives and widows during the conflict. Even though less than 2 per cent of wives lost their separation allowances for misconduct, that still amounted to 13,418 families, whilst – as Lomas points out – in the year following the setting up of the Special Grants Committee in March 1918, 939 war widows forfeited their pensions.63 For all wives and widows keen to avoid such an occurrence, it would have been hard to escape the sense of surveillance and condemnation that surrounded their conduct. Canon E. A. Burroughs accused soldiers’ wives of drinking excessively, thanks to ‘heedlessly liberal separation allowances’, and went on to say that in his view ‘eighteen shillings a week and no husband were heaven to women who, once industrious and poor, were now wealthy and idle’.64 These anxieties intersected with particular regional and national apprehensions about alcohol. Soldiers’ wives were banned from pubs in Cardiff for a time, while at Cupar, in Fife, there was an attempt to apply a curfew preventing women from leaving their homes after ten in the evening.65 Holly Dunbar argues that there was a moral panic over women drinking in the Irish popular press during the first two years of the conflict. The assumption that alcoholism was associated with men made women’s drinking more worrisome, particularly to those in the temperance movement.66 In wartime Ireland, there were
60 61
62
63
64
65
66
First Annual Report of the Ministry of Pensions 1918, Cmd. 14, p. 69. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 2011). Leonore Davidoff, and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780–1850 (London: Routledge, 2013). Janis Lomas, ‘Soldiering On: War Widows in First World War Britain’, in Andrews and Lomas (eds.), The Home Front in Britain, pp. 39–56. Quoted by Stuart Mews, ‘Urban Problems and Rural Solutions: Drink and Disestablishment in the First World War’ in Derek Baker (ed.), The Church in Town and Countryside (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). Philippa Levine, ‘“ Walking the streets in a way no decent woman should” Women Police in World War One’, Journal of Modern History, 66:1 (1994), pp. 34–78; here p. 53. Holly Dunbar, ‘Women and Alcohol during the First World War in Ireland’, Women’s History Review, 27:3 (2018), pp. 379–96.
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concerns about women leaving home to drink in public houses, where they apparently fell into immoral behaviour with soldiers, but also about them drinking illicitly, described as ‘shebeening’, in homes. Judges’ dim views of women’s drinking were sometimes expressed through intemperate language. One suggested that the ‘husband had been in hourly danger of losing his life for his country while his wife at home was drinking his very blood’.67 Alternatively, in Derry a soldier’s wife ‘was put under the care of a probation officer on a charge of neglecting her eight children’.68 This case merged concerns over women drinking and anxieties about infant welfare. Hughes and Meek likewise argue that: ‘by 1915, the views of charity and parish officials on soldier’s wives squandering separation allowances and neglecting their children through drunkenness were pervading the Scottish media’.69 Such discourses make it hard to gauge whether the rise in prosecutions of drunken mothers for apparently neglecting their children in Edinburgh was an indication of shifts in behaviour or practices of policing and prosecution.70 The poor fitness of recruits in the South African War had already fuelled a concern with the health and welfare of infants,71 but the loss of lives during the First World War accelerated the focus on motherhood, and not only preserving infant life but also improving the health of children. An indication of how the conflict shaped the approach to infant welfare can be gauged from a report of a baby show held in Stirling. The efforts of the Lady Health Visitor apparently led to a total of 225 infants entering the show, who according to the local newspaper ‘were divided into five classes according to age’. The money prizes were apparently determined with attention ‘given to many points which may be summed up in the Military Medical Board’s formula Class A – fit for general service’.72 Infant mortality figures were certainty a cause for concern; the bishop of London pointed out that while nine soldiers died ever hour in 1915, twelve babies also died every hour, so that it was more dangerous to be a baby living in the slums than a soldier on the western front.73 Such concerns led to a growth in the provision of infant welfare, albeit with significant regional variations and differing infant mortality rates.74 67 68 69
70
71 72 73
74
Ibid., p. 338. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01s94fw (accessed 8/6/2019). Annmarie Hughes and Jeff Meek, ‘State Regulation, Family Breakdown, and Lone Motherhood: The Hidden Costs of World War I in Scotland,’ Journal of Family History, 39:4 (2014), pp. 364–87; here p. 367. C. Brown, ‘Piety, Gender and War in Scotland in the 1910s’, in MacDonald and McFarland (eds.) Scotland and the Great War, pp. 172–91; here p. 187. Anna Davin, ‘Imperialism and Motherhood,’ History Workshop Journal (1978), pp. 9–65. Stirling Observer, 21 July 1917. Quoted in Jay Winter, The Great War and the British People (London: Macmillan, 1985), p. 193 Ibid.
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Gerald De Groot’s observation, that infant welfare clinics were run by ‘middle class women who dispensed advice formulated by middle class men to working class mothers’,75 is a however a little harsh. Clinics operated very differently, shaped by local conditions and personnel. Sylvia Pankhurst drew much more positive conclusions based on the work undertaken by a number of suffrage organisations which became involved in clinics for mothers and children. Mrs Fawcett, leader of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, suggested: ‘the care of infant life, saving children, and protecting their welfare was as true a service to the country as that which men were rendering by going in the armies’.76 A public house named The Gunmakers’ Arms in London was acquired by suffrage workers to establish a clinic and crèche. Infant and maternal welfare was a cause that could be shared by imperialist feminists like Millicent Fawcett and the more communist-leaning Sylvia Pankhurst, leader of the East London Suffragettes. It could also unite women who had campaigned both in favour of, and against, women’s suffrage. It placed home and the family and a very traditional role for women right at the heart of national discourse but led to new possibilities for interference in working-class families, which were not always welcome. Hence a letter was written to the Stirling Saturday Observer on 25 November 1916, in response to the Scottish Mother’s Union urging ‘the mothers of Stirling to stir up – the Town Council to devise some means of stemming the tide of infant mortality’. It was signed ‘A Mother’ and launched a vitriolic attack on schemes including: ‘the compulsory notification of pregnancy, an ante-natal clinic for expectant mothers and visitations’. What would ‘inevitably happen when the well meaning and official societies of the king, the government assisted and encouraged, get to work’ was that these visitations would all be focused on the working classes rather than the better off. Warming to the theme, it explained that in Stoke- on-Trent the trained midwives had requested the visits of these ‘zealous often autocratic meddlesome ladies, might be postponed until the tenth day’, adding: The habit of these ladies is to descend on the hapless mother when her baby is a day old, armed to the tongue with lectures, pamphlets and even scales. . .
Continuing: Are we women to stand quietly and let it be? I see by the papers that Dundee has received a gift of £4,000 for a child clinic. Who gave such a gift? It is only getting in the thin end of the wedge, and I would urge our Town Council to take no steps in the matter as we Scottish Women never shall be slaves. 75
76
Gerard J. De Groot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (London: Longman, 1996), p. 218. Millicent Fawcett, What I Remember (London: Putnam, 1925), quoted in De Groot, Blighty, p. 214.
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Not everyone shared her anxieties over this interference, which was supposed to be in the ‘interests of child welfare’. But child welfare, whether intentionally or not, was part of a wider increase in surveillance. Hughes and Meek have argued persuasively that one of the hidden costs of the conflict was rises in single parenthood from desertion, widowhood and illegitimacy, although there needs to be some wariness in assuming that the greater visibility of the multitude of different patterns of family life and organisation of the home indicates significant actual change. In Scotland they argue this was accompanied by a significant level of surveillance, not only ‘conducted by the Ministry of Pensions which soldiers, wives, widows, lone mothers, and young workingclass woman had to contend with but also that effected by parish councils, charity organisations, the media and working class men’.77 In many parts of the United Kingdom this list could be extended to include a range of health and legal officials. Families which were struggling to cope, even when there was no mention of alcohol, were often subject to criticism, rather than sympathy and support, as motherhood increasingly came under the spotlight. For example, Maud Hewiett, a mother of six, whose husband had been injured at the front and transferred to the Military Police, was found guilty of wilfully neglecting two of her children, following reports from the School Attendance Officer and Assistant Medical Officer who considered her domestic skills to be wanting.78 Maud, from Pershore, Worcestershire, explained she ‘had spent pounds at the chemists in trying to cure the scabies’ to no avail. The magistrates felt that, as Maud received a separation allowance, she must have more money coming into the house than before the war and could therefore afford treatment. The presiding magistrate, when pronouncing her guilty and fining her, told her that in future she must pay more attention to the cleanliness of her house and her children.
Conclusion The regionally specific experience of war on the home front in the United Kingdom did not permanently change the organisation or gender division within homes and families. The scale of the conflict did, however, stretch, rework and reassign, for a while at least, the practices of daily life for many families and may indeed have sown the seeds for the privileging of home and family in both the imagination and public discourse in the post-war period.
77
78
Annmarie Hughes and Jeff Meek, ‘State Regulation, Family Breakdown, and Lone Motherhood: The Hidden Costs of World War I in Scotland’, Journal of Family History, 39:4 (2014), pp. 364–87; here p. 365. The Worcester Herald, 27 October 1917.
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The hardship and financial struggles of daily life for families running their homes was to some degree reduced by separation allowances and pensions, but they came with an increased public concern and surveillance of private domestic life, something that would have been unimaginable to previous generations, but set a precedent for the next conflict little more than twenty years later.
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27 Crime and Policing .
Introduction Seasoned London detective Frederick Porter Wensley recorded in his memoirs that he had been ‘much affected by the war . . . both personally and professionally’. He had experienced huge family tragedy with the deaths of two sons in the armed forces. His work routine had also been transformed: ‘ As the war went on large numbers of the criminal classes were drawn into the fighting services, but on the other hand, there sprang up a variety of new offences peculiar to the time.’1 The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), rushed through Parliament in August 1914, ushered in a wide range of regulations and prohibitions, including restrictions on lighting and licensing as well as the movement of people, vastly increasing the powers of the state. Whilst the number of prosecutions in the courts for serious ‘crimes’ fell, the volume of work that police officers were required to do expanded seismically across the UK. In England, Wales and Scotland moral panics emerged about an epidemic of ‘juvenile delinquency’ and about the detrimental effects of ‘khaki fever’ on adolescent girls, seen as a threat to public order, health and morality. Rioting, occasioned by food shortages and xenophobia, placed additional strain on police officers, who also shouldered a wide range of civil defence duties. As police strength was diminished by recruitment, new ‘types’ of police officer appeared on the scene, including the first women in uniform. This chapter aims to assess the extent of this reconfiguration of police personnel, police duties and of those who constituted the ‘policed’ across the four nations of the UK. It begins by assessing the broad statistical trends that are captured in annual criminal justice statistics before moving on to look at the experience of policing that is illuminated in memoirs and diaries, newspaper columns and other forms of reporting. By the late nineteenth century all areas of England, Wales and Scotland were covered by a patchwork of individual police forces or constabularies, administered by local police authorities on a city, borough/burgh or county 1
F. P. Wensley, Detective Days: The Record of Forty-Two Years’ Service in the Criminal Investigation Department (London: Cassell, 1930), p. 207.
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basis. Indeed, there were 250 separate police forces or constabularies in Great Britain when war broke out.2 The legitimacy of this model was grounded in the liberal concept of civil policing by consent: through which local and central government acted as an interdependent system of checks and balances on each other.3 Under DORA, central government gained powers to unify areas that straddled the boundaries of existing police districts if there were military reasons by designating them as ‘special police areas’. Yet it did so sparingly: most obviously through the creation of the Gretna Special Police Area on 1 June 1917, which consolidated the munitions factory under the control of the Ministry of Munitions, where previously it had been split between the county constabularies of Dumfries (Scotland) and Cumberland (England) since it straddled the border.4 The historical experience of policing in Ireland was very different, given that the origins of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) lay explicitly in a model of centralised paramilitary colonial policing.5 By 1870 the RIC acted as a single force covering all urban and county areas, with the exception of Dublin where the Dublin Metropolitan Police continued to operate.6 It has been argued that the RIC was significantly ‘domesticated’ during the course of the nineteenth century so that by 1900 it had a Catholic majority, was rarely armed, was undertaking mainly ‘civil’ duties and was responsive to ‘the needs of small, relatively law-abiding, rural communities’.7 Certainly, the two decades that preceded the First World War can be seen as ‘the more peaceful that the RIC had experienced’.8 Yet, as the historian John Brewer has suggested, the RIC continued to be ‘caught in conflict’ between the models of ‘civil’ and ‘colonial’ policing, ‘the outcome of which depended upon the wider political events, local circumstances and popular protests that pertained at the time’.9 These differing systems of
2
3
4
5 6
7
8 9
British Parliamentary Papers (BPP), Annual Reports of His Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary (HMIC) for 1914, Cd. 7849 (Scotland) and paper number 188 (England and Wales). C. Emsley, The English Police: A Political and Social History (London: Longman, 1996); N. Davidson, L. Jackson and D. Smale, ‘Police Amalgamation and Reform in Scotland: The Long Twentieth Century’, Scottish Historical Review, 95:1 (2016), pp. 88–111. The National Archives, London (TNA), HO45/10959/328532, Police, Gretna Special Police Area. V. Conway, Policing Twentieth-Century Ireland (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 14. J. Herlihy, The Royal Irish Constabulary: A Short History and Genealogical Guide (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997); Donald J. O’Sullivan, The Irish Constabularies, 1822–1922 (Dingle: Brandon, 1999). W. J. Lowe and E. L. Malcolm. ‘The Domestication of the Royal Irish Constabulary, 1836–1922’, Irish Economic and Social History, 19 (1992), pp. 27–48, here p. 27. Conway, Policing, p. 18. J. D. Brewer, The Royal Irish Constabulary: An Oral History (Belfast: Queen’s University, 1990), p. 12.
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Table 27.1. Number of persons for trial in superior courts, 1913–18. 14,000 12,000 10,000 8,000
England/Wales Scotland
6,000
Ireland 4,000 2,000 0 1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
Source: BPP, Cmd. 2207, Statistical Abstract for the UK.
governance and the politics of rule are crucial to understanding the differing experience of policing during the war years in Britain and Ireland.
Crime and Wartime: Patterns of Offending During the war years there was a noticeable decline in the number of people tried for criminal offences across the UK in the higher courts, which dealt with serious cases of violence and property crime (see Table 27.1). This drop was most marked in England and Wales, where prosecutions in 1916 had sunk to 40 per cent of what they had been in 1913. In Ireland and Scotland the decline was more gradual, with the lowest figures emerging in 1918, when prosecutions were just over a half (57 per cent and 53 per cent respectively) of what they had been in 1913.10 It is a moot point as to whether criminal justice statistics are a direct reflection of levels of actual offending behaviour or whether they are a measure of the efficiency, legitimacy and priorities of
10
Data for convictions (although not discussed here) demonstrate very similar trends to those for prosecutions across the UK. Data for Ireland do not include persons tried, executed and interned under martial law in the wake of the Easter rising.
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policing and legal process.11 Indeed, they are probably best seen as the outcome of the relationship between behaviours and the processes of intervention. A refocusing of police time on security and emergency duties may have played a part in reducing prosecutions; so, too, the tightening of licensing regulations (including pub opening hours) may have curbed actual drunkenness, which had long been seen as a cause of crime.12 The key factor in this seeming reduction in wartime crime, which was widely identified at the time, was the voluntary recruitment (and conscription from 1916) of young men into the armed forces, removing from the civilian population the demographic group who, historically, had been most likely to offend. When the 1916 judicial statistics for Scotland were published the following year they were accompanied by stark comments on decreases in family violence: the fall in ‘assaults by husbands’ and ‘in cruel and unnatural treatment of children’ by male offenders were seen as a direct consequence of ‘the absence of so many men on active service’.13 Similarly for England and Wales it was noted that prosecutions for sexual offences had fallen by a third between 1913 and 1917, whilst those for crimes of violence had fallen by 55 per cent in line with the ‘absence overseas of a large part of the adult male population’.14 Conversely, however, there was a very noticeable increase in prosecutions for bigamy by the end of the war (the annual average nearly quadrupled, from 128 persons prosecuted per year in 1910–14 to 494 in 1915–19). Whilst these hint at the insecurity and volatility of emotional attachments forged in wartime, it seems most likely that the rise in prosecutions was a result of the introduction of separation allowances and widows’ pensions for servicemen’s wives and the assiduity with which claimants were scrutinised.15 Cases that may never previously have come to light were uncovered as a result of bureaucratic surveillance. Most were prosecuted at the end of the war, with a peak of 917 persons tried in 1919, three quarters of whom were men.16 As Clive Emsley has argued, mass recruitment and conscription did not mean there was a simple shift of crime ‘from the jurisdiction of the civilian criminal justice system into the military’ to be dealt with through the court 11
12 13 14 15
16
R. M. Morris, ‘“Lies, damned lies and criminal statistics”: Reinterpreting the Criminal Statistics in England and Wales’, Crime, History and Societies, 5 (2001), pp. 111–27. Emsley, English Police, p. 123. Judicial Statistics of Scotland for the year 1915 (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1917). BPP, Cmd. 1424, Judicial Statistics for England and Wales 1919 (published 1921), p. 5. S. Pedersen, ‘Gender, Welfare and Citizenship in Britain during the Great War’, American Historical Review, 95.4 (1990), pp. 983–1006; J. Lomas, ‘“Delicate duties”: Issues of Class and Respectability in Government Policy towards the Wives and Widows of British Soldiers in the Era of the Great War’, Women’s History Review, 9:1 (2000), pp. 123–47. See also BPP, Paper number 173, Annual Report of HMIC, England and Wales, 1917. BPP, Cmd. 1424, Judicial Statistics for England and Wales, 1919.
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martial.17 Rather, the boundaries between military and civil courts were ‘permeable’; indeed, ‘service personnel who committed criminal behaviour in homes, streets, pubs’ and other public spaces still came within the orbit of civilian police and courts.18 New offences such as absence without leave – which was by far and away the largest category in the court martial – were created by the military context, although the civilian police were often roped in to trace soldiers’ whereabouts.19 Indeed, the behaviour of adult males continued to be the focus of both civil and military court proceedings across the war years and, in many regards, patterns of criminal justice prosecution continued as previously. Just over 90 per cent of all those dealt with in the criminal courts were male prior to the war; this dropped to around 75–80 per cent during wartime. Nevertheless, there was a significant numerical drop – of over a half – in the number of males appearing before the higher courts across the UK, whilst the number of females remained remarkably static.20 If the metrics for ‘serious’ crime went down overall because of its association with masculinity, upward trends were manifest in relation to children and young persons. The First World War saw a resurgence of ‘moral panic’ regarding juvenile crime, as newspapers noted a widespread increase in the problem of ‘the “bad boy”’ in urban areas in the early months of 1916.21 For example, Huddersfield magistrates were reported as stating that ‘there was an astonishing increase of crime by boys’ and that ‘crime among children was going up by leaps and bounds’.22 Concerns about the ‘alarming’ increase in ‘juvenile delinquency’ dated back to the end of the Napoleonic Wars and were nothing new.23 Yet, as David Smith has shown, in the specific context of the First World War it was linked to ‘anxieties about national and racial decline’.24 The 1908 Children Act had set up the separate entity of the juvenile court to 17
18 19 20
21
22 23
24
C. Emsley, Soldier, Sailor, Beggarman, Thief: Crime and the British Armed Services since 1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 14. Ibid., pp. 14 and 58. Ibid., p. 73. In Scotland and Ireland (although not England and Wales) there was a very slight numerical rise in the prosecution of females in the higher courts during the war years. For an influential definition of ‘moral panic’, see S. Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 9. I use it here to refer to the way in which a problem is labelled, constructed and amplified through the process of media reporting, leading to dominant ascriptions of causation and solution. This is not to suggest the absence of any underlying social issue; clearly the effects of the dislocations of war were experienced in a myriad of complex ways by children and adolescents. Manchester Courier, 25 January 1916, p. 6. H. Shore, Artful Dodgers: Youth and Crime in Early Nineteenth-Century London (London: Boydell, 1999); G. Pearson, Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1983). D. Smith, ‘Juvenile Delinquency in Britain in the First World War’, Criminal Justice History, 11 (1990), pp. 119–56, here p. 119.
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Table 27.2. Juvenile courts: number of children and young persons proceeded against. 60,000 50,000 40,000 England/Wales 30,000
Scotland Ireland
20,000 10,000 0 1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
Sources: Judicial Statistics for England and Wales, 1919, Cmd. 1424; Judicial Statistics for Scotland for 1915, 1916 and 1917 (Edinburgh: HMSO); Judicial Statistics, Ireland, 1913–1918, Cd. 7536, Cd. 8077, Cd. 8633, Cd. 9066, Cmd. 43 (note: 1917 data for Ireland was not published).
hear cases involving those aged 8–16 before magistrates. It was, thus, a relatively recent institution when war started. Indeed, the institution of the juvenile court can itself be said to have created juvenile crime, in that it demarcated the need for an official process to deal with behaviours that were in many cases comparatively trivial and which might previously have been handled through more informal disciplinary or restitutive methods.25 The publication of annual statistics for juvenile justice (as for other judicial statistics) was delayed during wartime but, as Table 27.2 shows, the juvenile courts were used with assiduity in England and Wales to deal with delinquent behaviour leading to significant increases in 1915, 1916 and 1917, when the number of cases (over 51,000) was 36 per cent higher than the pre-war figure. Around 40 per cent of these were for theft and other minor property offences, and 17 per cent for malicious damage to property. There were also increases 25
B. Weinberger, ‘Policing Juveniles: Delinquency in Late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century Manchester’, Criminal Justice History, 14 (1993), pp. 43–4.
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across the war years in proceedings for ‘stealing growing fruit’ – for which 3,308 juveniles were brought before the court in 1917 in England and Wales – as well as for contravention of police regulations (which included obstructions to streets and public spaces by playing football or other games). Although the wartime data for the juvenile courts was not disaggregated by gender, the preoccupation with the ‘bad boy’ problem and the published data for 1919 (in which only 4 per cent of persons proceeded with were girls) strongly suggests that the juvenile courts were mainly processing working-class boys. As Smith has shown, criminal justice practitioners, social workers and educationalists argued that offending behaviour by boys had increased as a direct result of the circumstances of war. Blame was placed on absent fathers – assumed to be responsible for the disciplining of sons – as well as working mothers. Thus ‘the war had produced conditions that had caused a serious breakdown in family life’.26 The black-out was seen to create opportunities for theft and burglary and, in relation to the school-age population, very significant curtailment to schooling left children free to roam the streets for longer. Schools were commandeered for military purposes, and those still in use had to accommodate larger classes and introduce a shift system with children attending for morning or afternoon only.27 Others referred to ‘war excitement’ and the stimulation of ‘the picture house’ in provoking ‘a too combative and mischievous spirit in boys, which is reflected in their conduct and games’.28 In May 1916 the Home Secretary, Herbert Samuel, called for a range of solutions, including better oversight of ‘rational recreation’ given that many boys’ clubs had lost male staff to the war effort and boys were ‘running wild’ as a result.29 In December 1916 a national Juvenile Organisation Committee (JOC) was formed to coordinate clubs and brigades for boys and girls, and local branches were subsequently formed at the local level. Indeed, the decline of juvenile crime by 1918 was often attributed to this. As Weinberger has argued, the setting up of the JOC simply gave an ‘official seal of approval’ to the scouting and lads’ club movements which had developed on a charitable basis during the Victorian and Edwardian periods and were now a formal ‘branch of public policy’ as part of a wider crime prevention strategy.30 What is striking about the moral panic over juvenile crime and the First World War is the concerted effort to provide responses and solutions before the problem was fully charted or analysed. The continued rise in statistics for juvenile offending in England and Wales was at least in part a result of the publicity given
26 27
28
29 30
Smith, ‘Juvenile Delinquency’, p. 120. E. Abbott, ‘Juvenile Delinquency during the First World War: Notes on the British Experience, 1914–18’, Social Service Review, 17.2 (1943), pp. 192–212, here p. 200. Comments of Spurley Hey, Director of Education in Manchester, quoted in Abbott, ‘Juvenile Delinquency’, p. 207. Quoted in Abbott, ‘Juvenile Delinquency’, p. 194. Weinberger, ‘Policing Juveniles’, p. 47.
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Table 27.3. Courts of summary justice: number of persons dealt with for indictable offences, 1913–18. 70,000 60,000 50,000 40,000
England & Wales Scotland
30,000
Ireland 20,000 10,000 0 1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
Source: Cmd. 2207.
to the ‘bad boy’ problem, which led to a further cycle of reporting. In Scotland, whilst the urban areas of Dundee and Glasgow manifested similar concerns and shared all the causal factors identified by those concerned about juvenile crime, it was only when statistics were published in 1917 that it became apparent that any increase north of the border was a myth: ‘in view of statements often made to the contrary it is interesting to note that the number of persons convicted under 14 years of age is very slightly higher than in 1914 and is considerably less than 1915’.31 In Ireland figures rose slightly by 1915 to give an increase in juvenile crime of 15 per cent compared to the 1913 figure. Yet these had dropped drastically below the 1913 figure by 1918 when, for obvious reasons, police officers in Ireland had other concerns than apple-scrumping. When it came to the business of the lower courts generally – summary proceedings that were heard before magistrates rather than judges and juries – the picture was more subtle although some decline in numbers was apparent, most obviously in Scotland and Ireland. Magistrates continued to be extremely busy in England and Wales during the war years, and in 1917 they handled more indictable offences (those that might also be tried by higher courts under certain circumstances) than before the war [Table 27.3]. However, a further 31
Judicial statistics for Scotland for 1916 (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1917).
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Table 27.4. Courts of summary justice: number of persons apprehended or summoned for non-indictable offences, 1912–18. 800,000
700,000 600,000 500,000 England & Wales 400,000
Scotland
300,000
Ireland
200,000 100,000 0 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 Source: Cmd. 2207.
probing of the judicial statistics shows that the 1917 expansion was mostly due to an increase in the volume of simple larceny cases which were in all likelihood offences attributed to children (and thus included in the juvenile court data too). In fact, the vast majority of magistrates’ time was spent on non-indictable offences (minor matters that could only be dealt with through summary justice). These increased in England and Wales in 1916 when magistrates dealt with over 677,000 cases, overtaking pre-war levels [see Table 27.4]. This business overwhelmingly consisted of road traffic and motoring offences, drunkenness and breaches of the licensing laws, the infringement of byelaws and police acts relating to public nuisance, food adulteration and public health, and cases of vagrancy and street-betting. Such infringements continued during wartime, as previously. Most significantly, however, magistrates dealt with breaches of DORA, aliens’ restrictions and other wartime emergency regulations [see Table 27.5]. In 1916 breaches of emergency regulations constituted 20 percent of all non-indictable offences handled by magistrates in England and Wales. This activity was, of course, a direct reflection of the work of the police, to which this chapter now turns.
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Table 27.5. Courts of summary justice, England and Wales: persons proceeded against under Defence of the Realm Acts and other emergency regulations, 1914–18.
Defence of the Realm Acts Aliens Restriction Acts National Registration Acts
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
83 3,226
33,071 7,551 50
121,563 14,279 879
50,506 13,606 1,192
46,426 12,107 459
Source: Cmd. 1424.
The Experience of Policing Wartime emergency regulations added very significantly to the workload of police officers whose job it was to implement them at a local level. His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary for England and Wales noted at the end of 1915 that: The volume of work done in carrying out the Aliens Registration Act alone is enormous. One city force has made over 100,000 registrations under that Act, and has to maintain an office staff of 20 men and women to keep pace with the work, whilst outside inquiries into cases of suspicion coming within the scope of this Act, of the Defence of the Realm Regulations, and the Official Secrets Act occupy the greater part of the time of both uniform and plain-clothes police.32
As Norman Morrison, a police officer who was stationed in Oban on Scotland’s west coast in 1916, put it, ‘we were daily and hourly paying tribute at the shrine of DORA’.33 Tasks of observation alone increased the scope and scale of policing incrementally: all ‘vulnerable points’ (railway stations, viaducts, harbours, light-houses) were to be watched. Nevertheless, the particular needs of wartime policing depended on local contexts as well as the phasing of the war. Whilst the many orders and regulations relating to DORA were distributed ubiquitously to police stations across the UK, police officers on the ground had to work out which aspects were most applicable in practice and develop their own local interpretation of its requirements. The daily journal of PC John Polson of Inverness-shire Constabulary, stationed at Dornoch on Scotland’s east coast when war broke out, reveals the importance placed on coastal surveillance given initial fear of attack from the sea (pre-dating awareness of the possibility of aerial bombardment). On 32 33
BPP, Paper number 35, Annual report of HMIC for England and Wales, 1915, p. 5. N. Morrison, My Story (Inverness: Highland News, 1937), p. 70.
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9 October 1914 he recorded that he had ‘informed personally those having lights in windows facing seawards on the coastline, to extinguish [them] as far as possible’. On 16 October he was up all night watching and patrolling after receiving reports of ‘suspicious lights on sea’. Other duties mentioned in his journal in the first year of war include putting up the vast number of bill posters relating to DORA and army recruitment that were sent to police stations for public display; arranging billets with local ‘landladies’ for soldiers quartered in the town; arresting and escorting deserters; and advising ‘aliens’ resident in the area (such as the ‘French chef and French maid at Dunrobin Castle’) that they needed to register at Dornoch police station.34 In southeast Scotland, police officers worked closely with other emergency services in the wake of the Zeppelin air-raids of 1915–16, collecting information about casualties and the extent of damage as well as co-ordinating the response. As David Smale has shown, the Zeppelin raids on Edinburgh and the east coast in April 1916 led to an intensification of prosecutions under the lighting regulations in the Scottish borders (usurping the informal warnings used in the earlier days of the war). Indeed, statistics for vastly increased DORA prosecutions in England and Wales evidence the fact that this clamp-down was a national operation.35 Yet for police officers in some rural locations – especially in Ireland – the fact of wartime did not intrude excessively on the routines of everyday life. RIC Constable Jeremiah Mee was stationed at Geevagh on the Sligo/ Roscommon border during the first eight months of the war. He recorded that ‘the outbreak of war . . . did not alarm the Irish people. The continent then seemed to be very far away . . . [and] the pressing question in the people’s minds was what would happen to the Home Rule Bill’. There was a significant dissipation of the political tensions that had been brewing, since it was agreed that Home Rule would not be implemented until the war’s end. DORA applied equally to Ireland, but Mee described it from the police perspective as ‘a cumbersome act’ that was difficult to ‘digest’, the vocabulary used often requiring a dictionary to decipher, and the constant amendments making it difficult for officers to keep up with what was required. Much of it remained irrelevant for him since there were no ‘aliens’ or strategic targets such as railway stations or viaducts in Geevagh. As a result, ‘a special file was opened for the Defence of the Realm circulars which came by the bundle and which ceased to have any meaning for us’; they were simply tidied away.36 34 35
36
Highland Archives, Inverness, R91/B/5/5/18 Daily Journal, Dornoch, 1912–16. D. Smale, ‘The First World War and Policing in the Scottish Borders’ part I, History Scotland, 18.1 (January/February 2018) pp. 32–9, here p. 39; see also part II, 18.2 (Mar/ April 2018), History Scotland, pp. 36–42. J. A. Gaughan (ed.) The Memoirs of Constable Jeremiah Mee (Dublin: Anvil Books, 1975), pp. 38 and 40.
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The Easter Rising of 1916 was to rupture this apparent calm in Ireland, leading to a week of violence, mostly in Dublin, in which 482 people were killed (318 civilians, 116 military personnel and 16 policemen).37 During this time members of the Dublin Metropolitan Police were confined to barracks, although a small number were on plain-clothes observations to gather intelligence, and the rising was dealt with by the military; 3,343 arrests were made across Ireland, with 1,811 interned under military (rather than criminal) law.38 The most serious incident of the rising outside Dublin involved the siege of the RIC barracks at Ashbourne, Meath, (in which eight officers were killed), but for the most part the RIC was not specifically targeted at this point.39 Yet Jeremiah Mee was aware of a sudden shift in mood in response to the execution of the fifteen Easter Rising rebels following court martial trials behind closed doors. He commented on the growth of a ‘distinct coolness’ towards RIC officers who had previously become accustomed to being treated with respect.40 Mee reported that the authorities instructed RIC officers to refrain from prosecuting petty cases to avoid publicity as Sinn Fein developed tactics of ‘passive resistance’ in court (refusing to remove hats, and treating the courts with contempt).41 Still, rare personal testimonies of RIC policemen suggest that the mundane administrative duties of everyday rural policing continued. William Dunne, who was sent to County Kerry in the southwest of the island when he joined in 1917 (and was interviewed by historian John Brewer in 1987–88), found that ‘there was no serious crime, a case would be, well, no lights on bicycles’, whilst ‘in town we looked, more or less, for drunks and disorderly behaviour’ (which had long constituted a significant proportion of cases brought before Irish magistrates).42 Dunne intimated that the police were still on the whole accepted by the local population, many of whom had relatives in the constabulary: ‘We got on fairly well, good folk, good friendly air.’ He was initially stationed in the Lakes of Killarney, where duties related to protecting wild deer from poachers, advising summer tourists and directing what little traffic there was: ‘We carried no arms at that time’.43 This was to change very significantly in 1919 when the RIC became direct targets in the War of Independence as representatives of the British state. Thus, in Ireland it was the context of Home Rule that shaped the experience of policing as much as the war against Germany. Those officers who were most affected by duties directly associated with the First World War were those
37 38 39 40 41 42 43
BPP, Cd. 9066, Judicial Statistics, Ireland, 1916, p. 62. O’Sullivan, Irish Constabularies, p. 60. Ibid. Gaughan (ed.) Memoirs of Constable Jeremiah Mee, p. 49. Ibid., p. 50. Quoted in Brewer, Royal Irish Constabulary, pp. 58 and 66. Ibid., p. 76.
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based in coastal areas. As elsewhere in the UK, coastal police were issued with a circular instructing them to be prepared for a German landing by making plans to move inhabitants two miles inland and to destroy crops with fire.44 The sinking of the Lusitania off the coast of County Corie on 7 May 1915 by a German torpedo kept local RIC officers extremely busy, as they dealt with the dead and the needs of survivors and families.45 Moreover the context of war with Germany was turned into an opportunity by Sinn Fein; coastal watches were maintained in 1915–16 (leading to the arrest of Roger Casement) because it was known from intelligence gathering that the Germans might be sending men and arms to support the nationalist cause.46 Emsley has argued that the First World War led to an increase in ‘political surveillance by the police to a level unknown since the struggle against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France’ in Great Britain.47 On ‘red Clydeside’ police officers were involved in the surveillance of pacifist and communist activists, including revolutionary socialist John Maclean (who was arrested and imprisoned in 1915 under DORA regulations) for undermining the war effort by inciting strikes amongst the workforce and undermining recruitment.48 Moreover, Regulation 9A of DORA allowed the Home Secretary to ban any public meeting that might make undue demands upon the police, effectively resulting in the curbing of civil liberties to reduce the need for policing. The clause was initially directed at pacifists and anticonscriptionists. Yet in practice it was mainly invoked because of fear of disorder associated with the counter-mobilisation of ‘patriotic protesters’ who demonstrated against such meetings.49 Indeed, as David Englander has cogently argued, ‘the principal threat to public order came not from the demands of the revolutionary labour movement but from the unorganised elements of the population – from foreignhating, flag-waving loyalists, from women, from juveniles and the unskilled, from discharged and demobilised soldiers and from anxious and unsatisfied consumers’.50 Riot and disorder resulting from xenophobia and food scarcity created probably the most significant challenge for policing in Britain. The weeks following the sinking of the Lusitania saw the eruption of spontaneous 44 45 46 47 48
49
50
Gaughan (ed.), Memoirs of Constable Jeremiah Mee, p. 62. O’Sullivan, Irish Constabularies, p. 240. Ibid., p. 255. Emsley, English Police, p. 121. National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh (NRS), HH16/132, Criminal case file, John Maclean 1917–18. See for example NRS, HH31/19/3, First World War, Defence of the Realm regulations, 1917. D. Englander, ‘Police and Public Order in Britain 1914–1918’, in C. Emsley and B. Weinberger (eds.) Policing Western Europe, 1850–1940: Politics, {rofessionalization and Public Order (Westport, CT: Meckler, 1991), p. 127.
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anti-German rioting, particularly in London, Merseyside, Tyneside and Manchester, described by Englander as ‘some of the most widespread and sustained acts of violence ever witnessed in Britain’.51 Many of those arrested were young unskilled males, but women were also reported to be significant participants. The concomitant high price of food meant that looting from shops was common, many of those involved reportedly not thinking they were committing an offence.52 The police barely coped, and they struggled in particular to deal with disorderly servicemen. During the last of the Lusitania riots, in Rhyl, North Wales, local police officers were besieged in their station in an attempt to protect a German piano tuner from ‘a crowd of jeering, drunken soldiers’.53 Indeed, it was the outbreak of rioting that led ministers to conclude that internment of all ‘enemy aliens’ was necessary, in large part for their own protection. Nevertheless, it did not end there and in June 1917 the police in Leeds and London had to deal with anti-Semitic riots directed against Jewish communities. In most parts of the UK, the police were under very significant pressure during the First World War because they lost officers to the armed forces first through voluntary recruitment and, later, when they were not included on the list of reserved occupations (as was to happen initially in the Second World War) with the move to conscription. London’s Metropolitan Police had lost a quarter of its officers to the military by the end of the first year of the war, and provincial police forces in England and Wales a fifth.54 In Scotland a third of the permanent establishment had joined the military by the end of 1916.55 In November 1915 it was finally agreed that no further officers might be withdrawn from the Met, and that borough and county police officers could be exempted if their Chief Constables declared that their work was essential for the war effort.56 Police leave was cancelled, retirements and resignations refused, and the weekly day of leave dispensed with. Police pensioners were re-employed as part of a ‘Police Reserve’ and there was a very significant expansion of the Special Constabulary, volunteers who worked part-time hours and who, in the years immediately before the war, had been recruited to assist with industrial unrest. In England and Wales around 122,000 Special Constables were enrolled at the end of 1915, whilst in Scotland the equivalent
51 52 53
54 55 56
Ibid., p. 105. Ibid., p. 107; Manchester Guardian, 14 May 1915, quoted in Ibid. Manchester Guardian, 24 May 1915, quoted in Englander, ‘Police and Public Order’, p. 124. Emsley, English Police, p. 121. BPP, Cd. 8504. Annual Report of HMIC for Scotland for 1916. Englander, ‘Police and Public Order’, p. 95. These were dealt with by military tribunals to which a chief constable had to submit an ‘appeal’.
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number was nearly 16,000.57 Whilst these figures were around four times the number of regulars, it was estimated that in some cases it might take six to ten Special Constables to cover the work of one regular officer. Indeed, most specials performed a four-hour tour of duty when available and fitted their hours around their civilian occupations. Yet wartime conditions continued to have negative effects on police morale, leading to the rise of unionisation and, in August 1918, to a police strike in London which was a ‘protest against the loss of status’, including insufficient protection against conscription, severe over-work for those who remained, and the fall in the value of the police pay packet given wartime inflation.58 The London police strike led to a promise of a pay rise and a war bonus (as well as pensions for widows) but the discontent festered further, leading to the police strike of August 1919 and ultimately the creation of the Police Federation.59 In Ireland, demoralisation had set in before the Great War started as a result of the home rule situation. Low pay and overwork had led to a police strike in Belfast in 1914, recruitment was already collapsing and officers were resigning at this point given the uncertain future for the RIC whose members were trusted by neither nationalist nor unionist activists.60 As in other parts of the UK retirements were not permitted after 1915, and resignations were only accepted from those joining the military, which was the only route out. It is hardly surprising therefore that in Ireland, too, a representative body was formed in 1918 to fight for better conditions.61 Thus, across the UK the Great War did little to bolster the confidence of serving police officers and one of its consequences was the demoralisation that waited resolution when war ended.
Women, Sexuality and Policing The most significant development within policing during the First World War across the UK was the deployment of women, justified initially in terms of the exigencies of war, for work that was seen as gender specific: problems associated with women, children and adolescent girls. Over 6,000 women were involved in work that might be termed ‘policing’ (most in a voluntary capacity) under the auspices of two rather different women’s organisations: on the one hand, the National Union of Women Workers of Great Britain and Ireland (NUWW) and, on the other, the Women Police Volunteers (WPV), 57
58 59 60 61
BPP, Paper number 25, Annual Report of HMIC for England and Wales for 1915; Cd. 9012, Annual Report of HMIC for Scotland for 1917. Englander, ‘Police and Public Order’, p. 118; Emsley, English Police, p. 131. Emsley, English Police, p. 134. Brewer, Royal Irish Constabulary, p. 6. C. Ryder, The RUC: A Force under Fire (London: Methuen, 1989), p. 28.
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which restyled itself the Women Police Service (WPS) in 1915. The NUWW was an umbrella association for women involved in voluntary, philanthropic and social work; its activities were organised through a network of local branches in cities and small towns across the UK, which set up local groups of women to act as voluntary ‘patrols’, undertaking preventive work. Women ‘patrols’ were aged twenty-seven to fifty, recruited for their skills of ‘tact and diplomacy’ and were required to contribute at least two hours a week to patrol streets, parks, railways station and other public spaces. Neither uniformed nor sworn in, they dressed in dark coats and were equipped only with an armband, a badge, and card signed by the local chief constable. In contrast, the WPV/ WPS was a centrist, separatist private organisation (despite its name) that had strong links back to the militant suffragette movement (through the involvement of individuals such as Mary Allen), although its leadership included the social purity activist Margaret Damer Dawson. Its aim was the creation of an autonomous body of women police officers under the command of the WPS leadership rather than local chief constables and police authorities. Munitions factories, including those at Woolwich (London), Pembrey (South Wales), and Gretna (Scottish border) were important locations in which large numbers of women trained by the WPV/WPS were employed to undertake wartime policing roles under contracts awarded by the Ministry of Munitions. They escorted female munitions workers to and from lodgings, searched them upon arrival at the factory (including for matches and cigarettes), and supervised meal breaks. Irrespective of the organisation they joined, it was mostly middleclass women who were drawn to policing roles, whether paid or voluntary, their social backgrounds differing from those of male officers who were mainly drawn from respectable working-class backgrounds (in agricultural or industrial manual labour).62 The need for women in policing was framed in relation to another moral panic in the early days of the war – concerning ‘khaki fever’.63 The expression was an evocative reference to the ‘excitement’ of young working-class women 62
63
L. Bland, ‘In the Name of Protection: The Policing of Women in the First World War’, in J. Brophy and C. Smart (eds.) Women in Law (London: Routledge, 1985); J. Carrier, The Campaign for the Employment of Women as Police Officers (Aldershot: Avebury, 1988); A. Woodeson, ‘The First Women Police: A Force for Equality or Infringement,’ Women’s History Review, 2 (1993), pp. 217–32; P. Levine, ‘Walking the Streets in a Way No Decent Woman Should’, Journal of Modern History, 66 (1994), pp. 34–78; L. A. Jackson, Women Police: Gender, Welfare and Surveillance in the Twentieth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006). V. Cree, ‘“Khaki fever” during the First World War: A Historical Case Study of Social Work’s Approach towards Young Women, Sex and Moral Danger’, British Journal of Social Work, 46.7 (2015), pp. 1839–54; A. Woollacott ‘Khaki Fever and Its Control: Gender, Class, Age and Sexual Morality on the British Home Front in the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 29.2 (1994), pp. 325–47.
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and girls who were attracted to soldiers in uniform, which was seen as a public order problem in garrison towns and other areas where troops were billeted or in transit. As the Chief Constable of Moray (on the northeast coast of Scotland) bluntly put it, as he welcomed the idea of ‘women patrols’ in December 1914: Young girls are constantly molesting the soldiers and at the request of the military officers here I have repeatedly had constables patrolling near the drill hall [in Elgin] during the evenings with the view of trying to send these young girls to their homes. Of course these girls could not be called prostitutes but they are very loose women and I am sorry to say that their mothers are in a great way responsible when they allow girls aged between 15 and 18 years to wander about at night and molest people.64
Reports written by Mabel Cowlin, the leader of the NUWW patrols in Liverpool, convey the perceptions of the (mainly) middle-class women who were patrolling in the vicinity of the barracks at Seaforth and Knowsley Park, where the Liverpool Pals were trained: We spoke to several very rough & noisy girls who followed soldiers on their way home . . . if the girls persist in their overtures night after night, the men, though they may be willing to resist them at first, will be certain to respond after time & the resulting effect on the character and tone of the camp will be very bad & difficult to cope with.65
The work of the patrols was seen by its critics as overtly moralistic and Cowlin commented on the ‘difficulties of getting volunteers’ because ‘people in the villages around . . . very much question the need of guarding girls whom they have known so long’.66 Local patrol groups set up clubs for girls in the evenings to act as a diversion, mirroring the lads’ clubs promoted by the JOCs to solve the ‘bad boy’ problem, and offering ‘rational recreation’ including the learning of craft skills, singing, country dancing and music appreciation. Concerns about ‘khaki fever’ did not travel across the Irish sea, although the patrol model did. In February 1915 a patrol committee was set up in Dublin, adapting the NUWW model to suit Irish needs. Co-presidents of the Irish Women Patrols, Anna Haslam and Mary Hayden (Protestant and Catholic appointments respectively), reported in 1917 that Dublin had ‘always contained a large body of troops . . . and Dublin girls did not lose their heads over the soldiers in the same way as it is said English girls did’.67 Their guiding aim 64 65
66 67
NRS, HH31/16 /4 First World War: Women Patrols. Metropolitan Police Archive, Women Police Patrols 1914–18, Liverpool, Miss Cowlin, handwritten, Patrol Report, 7 February 1915. Ibid. Imperial War Museum (IWM), Women and Work collection, EMP 42.5/63, Annual Report of the Irish Women Patrols for 1917, p. 7.
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was ‘to improve the moral and social conditions of the streets and to safeguard young people of both sexes’, and their work has been interpreted as a significant rejection of the sexual double standard – in which women (and not men) were held responsible for sexual impropriety – that was enforced by some of the women involved in policing in England.68 The Irish Patrols prided themselves on working closely with Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), to whom they reported both men and women who engaged in inappropriate sexual behaviour in public space. Such was their success as far as the authorities were concerned that two of the Dublin Patrols were placed on the government pay roll as ‘Policewomen’ attached to the DMP. The Chief Commissioner was allegedly ‘impressed with the tact and judgment they had displayed in dealing with cases which required considerable delicacy in handling’.69 It was in December 1915 that Edith Smith had become the first woman in the UK to be sworn in as a paid and attested police constable with full powers of arrest as part of Grantham Police Force in Lincolnshire (following an experiment the previous year in which members of the WPV, including Mary Allen, had been invited by the military authorities to patrol in the vicinity of the nearby Belton Park camp). The Grantham work was concerned with the sexual regulation of women, including the curtailment of freedom of movement (through the introduction of a curfew using DORA powers), and it proved controversial at the time (leading to splits within the WPV).70 Young women who engaged in ‘unseemly conduct’ were placed on a blacklist and barred from Grantham’s theatres and cinemas. Smith reported that as a result of her first year of work, forty women had been convicted of prostitutionrelated- offences and that ‘fallen women’ had left because ‘the policewoman was such a nuisance’. She also provided information for ‘husbands placing their wives under observation during their absence’, acting as a spy for servicemen worried about adultery (and contributing to the surveillance activities related to separation allowances).71 Sexuality was considered ‘dangerous’ in wartime because of concerns about the prevalence of venereal disease amongst the troops (which threatened the war effort), increases in illegitimate births, and the spread of the ‘social disease’ of prostitution, all of which were seen as signs of national degeneracy. Accounts of atrocities committed against Belgian women, including rape, were used to mobilise the war effort against a brutal other, and the war was depicted
68
69
70
71
Ibid., p. 3; S. Pašeta, ‘“Waging War on the Streets”: The Irish Women Patrol, 1914–22’, Irish Historical Studies, 34 (2014), pp. 250–71; Jackson, Women Police, p. 172. Imperial War Museum (IWM), Women and Work collection, EMP 42.5/63, Annual Report of the Irish Women Patrols for 1917. Bland, ‘In the Name of Protection’; Woodeson, ‘The First Women Police’; Levine, ‘Walking the Streets’. IWM, EMP 43.7, Policewomen’s work in Grantham, First Annual Report, January 1917.
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in gendered terms as the chivalric male defence of innocent women and children.72 In this context, both motherhood and women’s moral continence (including loyalty to husbands) were equated with duty and resilience on the home front, whilst ‘immoral’ women were seen as vectors of pollution within official discourse.73 Medical precepts blurred into moral ones and became even more explicitly gendered through the introduction of Defence of the Realm Regulation 40D in March 1918, which made it an offence for any woman suffering from venereal disease to have sex with a member of the armed forces or to invite a member of the armed forces to do so. Although prosecutions under 40D were relatively small in number, the regulation is widely acknowledged to have been symbolically important, and it was very visibly opposed by feminist organisations (most crucially the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene) as well as religious bodies.74 Liberal MP Hastings Lees-Smith declared in the House of Commons that the measure would never have passed through Parliament if it had been subject to the usual scrutiny required for legislation and that the government had made ‘unfair use’ of its emergency powers.75 Indeed the controversy surrounding 40D is the clearest example of concerted opposition to DORA and to the curtailment of civil liberties that it entailed. Whilst the NUWW does not seem to have been directly involved in the implementation of 40D, the gendering of sexual blame was nonetheless apparent in relation to their demonisation of ‘unruly girls’.76 Concerns about the exploitation and victimisation of vulnerable adolescents were alluded to but were rarely explicitly articulated within the ‘khaki fever’ discourse. Indeed, Mabel Cowlin of the Liverpool patrols argued that effort was needed ‘to protect some of the girls from themselves’, effectively blaming them for any misfortune they befell; this was not far removed from the insistence of Moray’s Chief Constable that girls and their mothers were to blame for the molestation of servicemen. 72
73
74
75 76
N. Gullace, ‘Sexual Violence and Family Honor: British Propaganda and International Law during the First World War’, American Historical Review, 3.1 (1997), pp. 714–47. S. Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999) and S. Grayzel, ‘The Enemy Within: The Problem of British Women’s Sexuality during the First World War’, in N. Dombrowski (ed.) Women and War in the 20th Century (New York: Routledge, 1999); for very similar concerns in the Second World War, see S. O. Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). See, for example Grayzel, ‘Enemy Within’; Grayzel, Women’s Identities; Levine. ‘Walking the Streets’; L. Lammasniemi (2017) ‘Regulation 40D: Punishing Promiscuity on the Home Front during the First World War’, Women’s History Review, 27.4 (2017), pp. 584–96. Hansard, House of Commons Debates, vol. 107, 19 June 1918, Col. 449, Mr Lees-Smith. See, for example, London School of Economics, Women’s Library, 3AMS/B/05/02, correspondence between NUWW Liverpool Patrol Leader Mabel Cowlin and Alison Neilans of the Association of Moral and Social Hygiene, October 1918.
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Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that the early wartime work of the first paid women police officers also involved important child protection work. Scotland’s first paid female police officer, Emily Miller, was appointed by Glasgow City Police in September 1915 (although without powers of arrest), specifically to work in plain-clothes to take statements from female victims of sexual assault and child sexual abuse and to support victims when they were required to give testimony in the courtroom.77 Her background was in rescue and philanthropic work for the Glasgow Vigilance Association, which was also a backer of the city’s Patrol movement and affiliated to the NUWW. There were clear tensions in women’s early policing work – which have been extensively debated by historians – between the protection of women (in the courts and on the streets), and the control of their movements and behaviours.78 Indeed the viewpoints of those involved in policing initiatives are best seen as ranging between feminist and moralist positions and sometimes combining them discordantly together. The war presented opportunities for women to expand their roles into non-traditional occupations and activities but, in so doing, ideas about gender difference were re-inscribed and restated.79
Conclusion While prosecutions for serious ‘crimes’ fell, police work expanded massively as emergency legislation vastly increased the powers of the state. From the perspective of male police officers this led to demoralisation, although the important wartime role that they played finally received recognition when pay and conditions were improved in subsequent years. In the early 1900s, policing had mainly dealt with the urban poor. Now new populations, particularly the middle classes (who saw themselves as ‘law-abiding’), came under police scrutiny through the enforcement of the black-out and lighting regulations. So, too, did those classed as ‘aliens’, though in actuality they were more likely to require police protection from angry mobs than commit offences themselves. Moral panics regarding juvenile delinquency and the effects of ‘khaki fever’ on teenage girls led to the entry of women into policing roles for the first time. The employment of women to undertake police work with women and children was the most radical long-term legacy of the war for the police
77 78
79
Scotsman, 10 September 1915, p. 6. Bland, ‘In the Name of Protection’; Woodeson, ‘The First Women Police’; Levine, ‘Walking the Streets’; Woollacott, ‘Khaki Fever’. M. R. Higonnet and P. L.-R. Higgonet, ‘The Double Helix’, in (eds.) M. R. Higonnet et al. Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 31–50.
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service, whilst it also highlights the significance of gender in constituting the home front experience.80 If the enemy other was depicted in terms of a brutal criminality that entailed the rape and murder of civilian populations on the continent, the defence of female purity and continence became a major focal point of regulatory measures in Britain itself.
80
S. Grayzel and T. M. Proctor ed. Gender & the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
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28 Children
‘Total war’ in Britain during 1914–18 meant total war for everyone, not just men and women, but children too. The phrase describes the way war permeated every aspect of daily life on the home front, and this included both the physical and mental mobilisation of children. Children were not shielded from the war but were encouraged and expected to ‘do their bit’ for the war effort through acts of both physical participation and mental commitment. Their mobilisation was achieved through a variety of state, commercial and voluntary means, and encompassed most aspects of their daily lives from their school experience and youth group activities to their leisure time through reading and play.1 But for many children their most direct experience of the war came through their connection to fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins, neighbours, teachers and friends caught up in the fighting. This connection brought the war into children’s personal lives and influenced how it was understood. Through the exchange of letters, children maintained relationships with absent fathers and brothers and formed a shared interpretation of the war and its impact on their lives. In this sense then we can see how children’s participation and experience of the First World War contributed to the development of a ‘war culture’ in Britain.2 War had practical implications for both how children spent their time and the material conditions of their lives, as well as psychological implications for their mental well-being and personal relationships.3
1 2
3
Rosie Kennedy, The Children’s War: Britain 1914–18 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014). Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 1914–1918: Understanding the Great War, trans. Catherine Temerson (London: Profile Books, 2002), p. 102. The author would like to thank the following people for permission to use their family papers in this chapter: Ann Proctor for the papers of A. C. Stanton, Alida Robinson for the papers of I. Finn and Annette Kuhn for the memoirs of her mother Minnie Cowley. Every effort has been made to trace the current copyright holders for the papers of G. and E. Butling and the memoirs of A. Jacobs and J. H. Armitage and the author would be very grateful for any new information that might help trace those whose identities or contact details are currently unknown.
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Work When thinking about children’s participation in the war effort perhaps the image that most quickly springs to mind is that of the boy soldiers who enlisted under-age, desperate to have a chance of joining the fight. Experiences during the South African War had convinced the army that boys lacked the stamina and strength for campaigning and so although the Army did relax its rules on recruitment in 1914 allowing boys of eighteen to enlist, they were not permitted to serve overseas until nineteen. Despite this stipulation thousands of boys found their way into uniform by lying about their age, often with the connivance of recruiting sergeants keen to swell the ranks. Estimates of their number are understandably tentative but figures of over 250,000 have been suggested.4 Once recruited, these boys were treated as adults and, unless their age came to light, they experienced the war as soldiers. But there were other children, who also stepped into the adult world, this time as workers. In 1914 there was no uniform school leaving age, with children in some areas of the country allowed to leave as early as eleven but in other areas not until twelve or thirteen. There was also the half-time system, in operation primarily in agricultural districts and in the mill towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire, which allowed approximately 70,000 children to attend school for half a day and go to work for the other half.5 The outbreak of war exacerbated this problem with calls for the further relaxation of the school attendance by-laws to allow children to leave school early to work in industries suffering labour shortages. Agriculture was hit hard, and children proved to be a cheap source of labour amongst farmers unwilling to employ women or to increase adult wages. By 1916, 15,753 children, mostly boys, had been exempted from school to become agricultural labourers. Of those children 546 were aged between eleven and twelve.6 As the war went on the problems increased. Overall, those leaving elementary school between the ages of twelve and fourteen to work in agriculture and industry increased from 196,943 in 1915 to 240,556 by 1917.7 By October 1916 approximately 205,000 boys and girls nationally were employed in the manufacture of munitions.8 At Woolwich Arsenal alone there were 10,000 boys, of whom 3,000 were aged between fourteen and sixteen, working shifts of up to twelve hours.9 Like the 4 5
6
7
8 9
Richard Van Emden, Boy Soldiers of the Great War (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), p. 321. Board of Education, Report of the Board of Education, 1917–18 (London: HMSO, 1918) p. 13. Geoffrey Sherington, English Education, Social Change and War 1911–1920 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981), p. 49. Ministry of Reconstruction, Juvenile Employment during the War and After (London: HMSO, 1918), p. 49. Sherington, English Education, Social Change and War 1911–1920, p. 50. The Schoolmaster, 18 March 1916, p. 370.
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boy soldiers, children in full-time paid work shared similar wartime experiences to the adults they worked with, with few, if any, concessions made for their age.
Schools Those children who did remain in school found much of their curriculum and extracurricular activities influenced by the war. Children were mobilised both intellectually and physically as the war encroached on the teaching of school subjects like history, geography, English and citizenship, while schools found ways for children to contribute their spare time and money for the home front war effort. The Board of Education for England and Wales considered schools to be the ideal vehicle for the dissemination of public information and the organisation of local efforts to save, conserve and produce money, food and materials needed for the war effort.10 The War Savings Committee was keen to forge links with local councils and encouraged teachers to organise the distribution of War Savings Certificates to the children in their schools. In London alone it was estimated that children in elementary and secondary schools raised over £500,000.11 Regular circulars urged schools to step up their teaching of practical subjects like gardening and food preparation, highlighting the role schools could play in spreading the message into homes across the country.12 In August 1917 for instance, the Board passed on an appeal from the Ministry of Munitions and the Food Controller, asking for the help of children in the collection of horse chestnuts that had been found to be a good substitute for grain. They wrote to the schools: In present circumstances it is felt that school children could give most valuable assistance in collecting the chestnuts, and by so doing make a definite contribution to national efficiency.13
Children were ideal for this role and could be mobilised to provide a ready supply of free labour to undertake tasks that required no skill but a reasonable amount of time. In contributing their time and energy in this way children were not just making a practical contribution to the war effort, they were also
10
11 12 13
In Scotland the patriotic efforts of teachers and school children were organised by local school boards rather than the Scottish Education Department. Brown, Norman Fraser, ‘“Fall in the Children”: A Regional Study of the Mobilisation of the Children of the 42nd Regimental Area during the Great War.’ Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Dundee, 2015, p. 66. London County Council, ‘Annual Report of the Council – Education, 1915–1919’, p. 8. Board of Education, ‘Circular 944’, (1916), p. 1. Board of Education, ‘Circular 1009’, (1917).
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engaged in good citizenship. Time and again during the war this role was held up to children as being of national importance. The need for conscription had demonstrated that more needed to be done to instil in young people a sense of responsibility to the nation, and the war provided an ideal opportunity to emphasise what was at threat if citizens did not live up to those responsibilities. But it was not just outside the classroom that children were exposed to the war at school. In lessons too the war encroached on the normal routine. Classes on history and geography highlighted Britain’s involvement in the war within the context of its imperial position and as the defender of weaker nations. The geography of Europe and the economic and social history of the combatant nations were explored with renewed interest by both teachers and students as their relevance became daily apparent in the news stories on military action. Patriotism was at the heart of this teaching and the profession was urged to recognise that: The claims and the beauty of patriotism must be kept in mind, the glory of our country sharing gallantly and effectively in a just and needful war must be dwelt on.14
This was not a call to jingoism; instead, teachers were urged to heed the dangers to which their German counterparts had succumbed and avoid the glorification of war for its own sake. It was the responsibility of teachers to ‘try to make war on future war by our teaching as soon as this war is done.’15 Similarly, the Board of Education, in its advice to teachers, made it clear that any new course should be as intellectually balanced as possible so as not to ‘encourage national animosities’.16 Explanatory texts for use in schools like Sir James Yoxall’s Why Britain Went to War – To the Boys and Girls of the British Empire or Albert A Cock’s A Syllabus in War Geography and History, were quickly produced to meet the demand amongst the older classes, while younger children were encouraged to relate to the war through tales of past military heroes and adventurous battles. Minnie Cowley was seven when war broke out. Growing up in Whitton near Richmond in London during the war she remembers that the ideals of patriotism, king and empire were ‘crammed’ into them at school. She recalls the frequent sight of soldiers marching past the playground and the pride she felt when her own father enlisted. At her infant school the teachers would line the children up in the playground and, calling on them to march like soldiers, lead them in singing:
14 15 16
The Schoolmaster, 3 October 1914, p. 485. Ibid. Board of Education, ‘Circular 869’, (1914), p. 3.
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My Daddy’s dressed in khaki, He’s gone away to fight For King and Home and Country For Honour and for Right. We do not want the Germans To get all over here So Dad must go and fight them, We’ll never, never fear. Now give three cheers for Daddy, We would not keep him back, For we are little Britons And love the Union Jack.17
Cowley remembers: How I loved that part of the day! I would march along, all stiff and straight, singing louder than any of the others and imagining I was my Dad. Of course, there were some children whose fathers were not soldiers, and I would tell them they should not sing with us, because their dads were not fighting the Germans, but were cowardy custards.18
Schools faced considerable disruption during the war as buildings were commandeered and teachers left for war service. By mid-1916, 20,000 male elementary teachers, approximately half the pre-war numbers, had enlisted, while women teachers were making frequent appeals for leave of absence to serve in nursing units.19 Retired teachers were called back to work, and the Board of Education made a plea to women teachers to serve their country in the classroom rather than on the battlefield.20 Despite these problems, there is some evidence that children’s attention and interest in their schoolwork actually improved during wartime. School inspectors commented on the great improvements they saw in children’s English composition and attributed this to the greater interest they had in the subjects they were writing on.21
Youth Groups Outside the classroom, children were mobilised for the war effort through their involvement in uniformed youth groups. The Boys’ Brigade, Boys Scouts and Girl Guides were hugely popular during wartime, in part because of the 17
18 19 20
21
M. Cowley, My Daddy Is a Soldier: A Working Class Family in the Lloyd George Era, Local Studies Collection – Richmond upon Thames, p. 10. Ibid., pp. 21–2. Sherington, English Education, Social Change and War 1911–1920, p. 49. S. J. Curtis, History of Education in Great Britain (London: University Tutorial Press, 1967,) p. 339. Board of Education, Board of Education Annual Report 1914–1915, p. 13.
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opportunity they offered their members to play an active role in the homefront war effort. As members of these groups, children between the ages of about 12 and 18 were regularly employed by hospitals, local authorities and central government, while others contributed by collecting, making and preparing everything from clothing to splints and bandages for the British troops. Uniformed youth groups emerged during the late Victorian and Edwardian period in response to perceived shortcomings in the nation’s health, wealth and imperial well-being. Initially targeted at working-class boys, they promised to instil self-discipline and ‘manliness’ in the best traditions of the English public school. Service to empire and self-sacrifice were the watchwords of these movements while groups for girls soon followed with a similar message but very different methods. While boys camped and learnt survival skills, girls were trained in home craft and hygiene – all in preparation for a future life dedicated to service. By the outbreak of war in 1914 there were just over 60,000 boys in the Boys’ Brigade and over 153,000 Boy Scouts.22 Initially the advice to children was to concentrate on what they could do at home, with entreaties to help their mothers at home, do extra tasks without being asked and not complain about any shortages of food. But soon these children, already trained and dressed for the part, were called to service outside the home. Having battled for years against a public perception of militarism, uniformed youth groups were keen to stress that their boys were not undertaking military duties, but, rather, releasing men for the more dangerous work of war. Trained boys, it was suggested, were ideally placed to guard bridges, reservoirs and telegraph lines, to act as messengers and local guides, to set up first aid stations or to offer their services to the families of serving soldiers.23 The speed with which this mobilisation was achieved was impressive, with boys offering their services immediately. One scout from north London, holidaying in Kent when war broke out, epitomised the motto to ‘Be Prepared’, having fortuitously taken his uniform with him on holiday. He was able to volunteer himself at once to the local Red Cross Society and spent his holiday delivering documents and equipping local nursing homes as makeshift hospitals.24 In Leatherhead the 4th Streatham Sea Scout troop was spending the August bank holiday weekend on their annual camp when: Immediately high adventure came to the lads for they were each given a whistle by the local police sergeant and told to guard the railway line at the end of the field.25 22
23 24 25
Springhall, Fraser, and Hoare, Sure and Steadfast – A History of the Boys’ Brigade 1883 to 1983 (London: Collins, 1983) p. 258. And Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society – British Youth Movements, 1883–1940 (London: Croom Helm, 1977), p. 134. The Boy Scout Association, ‘Headquarters Gazette’, August (1914), p. 233. The Boy Scout Association, ‘The Scout’, August (1914). Streatham Sea Scout Association, Golden Jubilee of the 4th Streatham Sea Scout Group. 1913–1963 (London: Boy Scout Association, 1963), p. 1.
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In recognition of their potential contribution to the war effort the Scout uniform was formally recognised by the government as the uniform of a public service, non-military body and the Scout Association rewarded war work with a War Service Badge. While their official role was to be entirely non-military and came with a stern admonition from Scout Headquarters that no Scout or Scout officer in uniform should on any account carry arms, it did not stop their leader Robert Baden-Powell from hinting at a different future. Already, German boys of sixteen were being accepted by their army, and Baden-Powell felt sure Britain was soon to follow: I want all Scouts to Be Prepared for this, and to have our ‘Bantam Battalion’ ready, so that the moment the door is opened we can step in with a corps already trained for service.26
By 1915 the Scout Defence Corps was up and running, training boys of sixteen to eighteen in rifle shooting, judging distance, signalling, pioneering, entrenching, and drilling, all in accordance with infantry training methods. These boys, it was felt, would be of great use in the event of an invasion and could be deployed to aid the relief effort and reassure the community. Always mindful of the criticism that he was proposing children for unnecessarily dangerous roles, Baden-Powell published guidance on ‘What Scouts Could Be Shot For’, claiming that their duties: if essentially non-combatant and designed to help their fellowcountrymen rather than to fight the enemy, do not render Scouts liable to capture or summary punishment at the hands of the enemy. Their uniform would be a protection to them like that of police.27
The boundaries between what was, and what wasn’t, acceptable for boys to do in uniform during wartime appear confusing, and for the children themselves guidance such as this sometimes fell on deaf ears. In Westgate, near Margate, boys from the 1st Chiswick Scout troop stayed on after their camp had ended to support the local Seaplane Station. Here they patrolled the camp at evenings and weekends, wearing full infantry fighting equipment – rifle, bayonet and 150 rounds of ammunition. Jack Hewson remembers knowing what they were doing was wrong but ‘under similar circumstances would do the same again’.28 Girls in Britain were not slow to see the appeal of uniformed youth groups, although the Girl Guide leadership quickly led the girls away from the outdoor
26 27 28
The Boy Scout Association, ‘Headquarters Gazette’, October 1914, p. 290. Ibid., p. 291. Alwyn Dawson, The Story of the 1st Chiswick – Early Years 1908–1939 (Ipswich: The author, 1978), p. 18.
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Figure 28.1 Girl Guides with a stretcher and other equipment training to help after an air raid. A Ministry of Information official photograph. Imperial War Museum Q 27922.
pursuits and survival skills their brothers were learning. Instead, girls between twelve and sixteen were offered instruction in hospital nursing, cooking and ambulance work as well as moral instruction in religion, chivalry, patriotism and courage [see Fig. 28.1]. The constant emphasis throughout early Guide literature on the idea of womanliness, closely associated with that of motherhood, was a response to the struggle for women’s suffrage.29 War, however, provided new opportunities for girls and women, and allowed the Girl Guide movement to shed some of its focus on respectability and motherhood and concentrate instead on providing better-trained women to serve in auxiliary capacities. Initially girls might concentrate on their traditional skills, cheering those who were obliged to part, visiting their homes and offering to care for their children or help look after the housework. But soon they were being encouraged to offer their services to local army camps to help cook and clean, distribute books and magazines, and knit and make clothes.
29
Tammy Proctor, ‘On My Honour – Guides and Scouts in Interwar Britain’, Transactions of the American Philosophocal Society, 92, 2 (2002), p. 25.
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In October 1915, Robert Baden-Powell wrote to Guides entreating them to turn their clubrooms into makeshift hospitals and to be prepared for casualties: Have you got your hostels ready for taking in those injured or rendered homeless by bombardment? Have you your stretchers and bandages ready? Have you learnt to bind up wounds and put out fires? Have you learnt to keep your head and to be plucky in a panic? Have you determined to think nothing of your own safety and to sacrifice it if needs be in order to save others, . . .?30
All of this was to be done in a respectable and womanly way. Guides were chastised for joining public recruiting processions and giving public concerts. Instead, they were urged to work quietly, behind the scenes and not attract attention to themselves. Despite this the significant opportunities the war had offered to demonstrate the usefulness of appropriately trained women was not lost on the movement, and it was hoped these opportunities would continue into the future. By 1916 some 50,000 girls had enrolled as Guides, and 2,450 Brownies had joined the junior branch (begun in 1915 to cater for girls between eight and eleven). They worked both publicly, as messengers and orderlies in hospitals and government offices, and privately, collecting saving and making things for the war effort. In that time, they had raised £2,000 for recreation huts for soldiers in France and gained 3,753 War Service Badges between them.31 By 1919 membership had more than doubled to 120,000, as participation offered girls an element of personal freedom and independence not always available to them otherwise.32
Books and Toys Just as the war entered children’s lives through their lessons at school and in the activities of their uniformed youth groups, so too did it enter the world of the imagination through the stories they read and the games they played. Here we see a complex meeting point between the dissemination of war-themed content for children produced by adults, alongside the way those themes were taken up by children themselves to inform their understanding of the war and influence their expression of it through play. The fact that children’s leisure pursuits were influenced by the war is unsurprising as they were surrounded by it in their everyday lives, and many had family members separated from them by the conflict. The encroachment of war into this area of children’s lives is symptomatic of ‘total war’ and evidence of the ‘mobilisation’ of their 30 31 32
Girl Guide Association, ‘Girl Guide Gazette’, October (1915). Girl Guide Association, ‘Annual Report’ (London, 1916) pp. 6–7 Proctor, ‘On My Honour – Guides and Scouts in Interwar Britain’, p. 72.
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imaginations. What is much harder to understand is the relationship between the particular form or theme of the products produced for children and the way these were adopted by children themselves in the development of their understanding of war. War, as a theme for children’s literature and toys, was of course nothing new, and by 1914 Britain had a well-developed tradition of military inspired stories and juvenile ephemera. Aimed primarily at boys, the appeal of this subject matter for authors, toymakers and consumers lay in the excitement suggested by military adventure in exotic foreign settings. By the turn of the century, hundreds of different designs of toy soldiers were being produced, modelled on the different regiments of the British Army as well as other imperial and foreign troops. Children’s literature was similarly suffused with tales of heroic military adventure by the likes of G. A Henty and R. M. Ballantyne. During the war itself the imperial setting of much of this nineteenthcentury boys’ adventure fiction was transposed onto the western front, and exciting wartime tales were offered to boys through a range of media. Numerous boys’ magazines like The Boys’ Own Paper and The Captain carried regular war-themed serials and were available at relatively low cost. At the other end of the scale were the more expensive volumes of fiction marketed at middle- and upper-class boys. These tales were unambiguous about the cause of the war or who the enemy were. The Germans were universally derided, while Britain and its allies were held up as the very best examples of modern manhood. Warfare itself was presented as a great adventure and the heroes depicted (often under-age boys who have lied about their age to enlist) are keen to see as much action as they can. A typical scene depicted in Frederick Sadlier Brereton’s Under Haig in Flanders (1918) illustrates the artistic licence authors employed when writing about some of the bloodiest battles of the war itself. Set on the battlefields of Vimy, Messines and Ypres, here our hero has, as usual, volunteered to undertake a dangerous raid into enemy territory, A spree indeed! It was a desperate and most adventurous undertaking. Not that Roger or Bill or the Sergeant thought of it in that way. They ate their supper with gusto, sat chatting for a while and turned in to sleep like children. Then, an hour before dawn, a sentry wakened them, and, having drunk a steaming cup of cocoa apiece, for comforts are not by any means non-existent in the trenches, the three made ready for a journey across no-man’s land into the country of the enemy.33
Authors writing for girls were equally keen to offer their readers exciting heroines who were keen to get stuck in. Usually written by women, wartime 33
Capt. F. S. Brereton, Under Haig in Flanders – A Story of Vimy, Messines and Ypres (London: Blackie and Son Ltd., 1918), p. 57.
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Figure 28.2 A Transport Girl in France, by Bessie Marchant, published by Blackie and Son, Ltd, London, 1918. British Library 12801. cc. 1.
fiction aimed at girls depicts women at work on the land, in factories and as army and ambulance drivers. Although hardly ground-breaking in their depiction of female characters, girls’ wartime fiction does at least hint at some of the new roles for women opening up as a result of the war. Female characters in novels written by women are always capable, energetic and enthusiastic and, while most retain their ‘womanly charms’, some even go so far as to question the slow pace of change, as Gwen does in Bessie Marchant’s A Transport Girl in France (1919) [see Fig. 28.2]. When her request for a transfer in order to ‘free another man for the front’ is refused she laments to a friend, My dear Daisy, the war may have changed us in a few things, but in downright bedrock essentials we are just where we were – just as stodgy and stick-in-the-mud as ever. No wonder the Germans used to beat us in trade. No wonder we find them so hard to beat at warfare.34
Literature for younger children was similarly packed with war-related themes. Picture books, illustrated alphabet and counting books, as well as nursery 34
Bessie Marchant, A Transport Girl in France (London: Blackie and Son Ltd., 1918), p. 81.
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rhymes, all offered the very youngest an opportunity to engage with the language and imagery of warfare.35 Perhaps concerned that some customers might recoil at the thought of such material for young children, George R. Sims’s forward in Nina MacDonald’s War-Time Nursery Rhymes argues that, as children are already aware of the war through the experience of their fathers and brothers, there can be: no possible objection to dealing, from the nursery rhyme point of view, with certain conditions brought about by the war. It is good that certain facts of the war should be impressed upon the mind of childhood, and there is no better means of impressing them than by the nursery rhyme. The facts dealt with in nursery rhyme remain with us from our childhood to our old age.36
Here nothing is kept from the children. Amongst the fifty-eight nursery rhymes adapted to the war ‘The House That Jack Built’ optimises the idea: This is the house that Jack built. This is the bomb That fell on the house that Jack built. This is the Hun That dropped the bomb, That fell on the house that Jack built. This is the gun, That killed the Hun, That dropped the bomb, That fell on the house that Jack built. This is the man in Navy-blue, That fired the gun, That killed the Hun, That dropped the bomb, That fell on the house that Jack built. . .37
Not all books were quite so gruesome, and some children were certainly comforted by recognising their situation in the picture books they were offered. James Thirsk, who grew up in Beverley near Hull during the war, remembers one which held a special place in his memory of childhood. Charlotte Schaller’s beautifully illustrated At War! tells the story of three French siblings whose father has gone to war. Bobby and his friends use their
35 36 37
Kennedy, The Children’s War, pp. 77–80. Nina MacDonald, War-Time Nursery Rhymes (London: G. Routledge and Sons, 1918), p. 6. Ibid., p. 13.
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toys to re-enact the war in their playroom, while his sisters, Zezette and Jaqueline, care for the wounded toys in their hospital. Thirsk remembers: I knew this book before I was able to read the text and Jean [elder sister] would have told me the story. . .How we came to have this book I do not know; Dad may have bought it in a bookshop in London on his way home from France, on leave. It was for us a treasure worth more than gold and it remains for Jean and me one of the happiest memories of our childhood. It was, after all, the story of three children who, like us, had a father fighting at the Front.38
Seeing their experience echoed in their story books gave Thirsk and his sister comfort during the uncertain years of war. As children could not be shielded from the domestic effects of separation, or the worry of their parents, the fact that the war entered their stories in this way is perhaps not surprising. It had become a constant presence in their lives and a focus of their imagination. To meet those imaginative needs, commercially produced children’s toys too quickly took up the themes of war. As European war loomed on the horizon in 1914 the uniforms of the toy soldiers began to reflect the building tension in the Balkans. War was good for business and toy manufacturers were quick to identify the developing trend: Nine out of every ten boys until they are twelve years of age at least want to be soldiers, and the desire is much greater if there is a war in progress in some part of the world. The Balkan War caused an increase in demand for play soldiers and the market was fairly swamped with orders for these.39
With the outbreak of war, toy soldiers were joined by a host of other war themed products aimed at both boys and girls produced by manufacturers keen to cash-in on the prevailing ‘war-fever’. Products ranged from the cheaper badges, pins and paper novelties at one end of the scale to complex and expensive replica weaponry and uniforms at the other. Families could gather together around the table to play any number of board games with titles like ‘Recruiting for Kitchener’s Army’, ‘Europe in Arms’, or ‘The Dash to Berlin’ which was pitched as ‘the new and breathless game for winter evenings’ All the excitement with none of the danger – that just describes this very latest British Table game which absolutely grips its players’ interest from start to finish. You have the gallant Allies sometimes advancing, sometimes retreating, holding their own, losing and winning, but gradually pressing onwards as in the great game of war itself.40
38
39 40
James Thirsk, A Beverley Child’s Great War (Beverley: Highgate Publications Ltd., 2000), p. 25. The Toy and Fancy Goods Trader, February 1914. Games and Toys, November 1914.
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If children wanted a more physical game, role-play could be enhanced with toy guns of all descriptions. Models included the Warspite Pea Repeater as well as the larger Scout, Drake, Celt or Revenge, which fired explosive caps for good measure. Double-barrelled guns like the Zulu or the Ajax competed with repeating pea pistols capable of firing twenty shots in rapid succession. So popular were war-themed toys that in the run-up to the first Christmas of the war The Daily Mirror was confidently asserting that nearly all children’s gifts this year would be war toys: ‘Dolls will be left in the cold, for boys and girls alike are demanding soldiers and sailors, cannon, forts and warships.’41 While there was some recognition that girls, as well as boys, might be excited by war-themed play, on the whole the products on offer were sharply divided along gendered lines. Boys featured heavily in the marketing of replica weaponry and toy soldiers while girls were offered dolls and teddies dressed in all manner of uniforms reflecting the different armies of Britain and its allies; some were even depicted in female form like Harwin and Co.’s range of dolls presented as ‘The Girl Allies’.42 Generally speaking, however, toys representing wartime women played it safe: there were dolls dressed as land girls and munitionettes, but by far the most common were the Red Cross nurse dolls. These came in all shapes and sizes, cuddly, decorative and miniature. Parents could purchase toy hospitals to be staffed by the dolls and wounded soldier figures to be ministered to. Nursing also represented the most popular choice of dressing-up costume for girls, perhaps hardly surprising as it was one of the most visible ways in which women were contributing to the war effort and was unlikely to offend any customers who were concerned about the apparent break-down in traditional gender roles evidenced by women in industry. Of course, buying boys and girls toys that suggest specific forms of play or gender roles does not mean that is how they were used by children. Here we face the very difficult task of thinking about the relationship between forms of popular culture and private imaginings, in this case for a group who have left very little contemporary evidence from which to piece together that relationship.43 What seems likely, however, is that brothers and sisters found amusement in each other’s toys and created their own games with the props they had available. Even the Daily Mirror was ready to acknowledge this, here praising a new toy to the market, the ‘Submarine Firing Torpedo’: What a toy to give the children at Xmas! A battle toy that works and gives them something to do, not a mere inanimate object. Every child loves
41 42 43
Daily Mirror, 5 November 1914, p. 2 Games and Toys, November 1916. Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes – British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 233–59.
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‘something that works’. How merrily the battle rages as torpedo after torpedo does its deadly work amongst the Noah’s Ark occupants. Listen to the happy laughter of little sister and big brother as they vie with each other in ever-increasing accuracy of aim at Admiral Noah’s good old flagship ‘The Ark’.44
There was no shortage then of toys, or suggestions for play, which encouraged the re-enactment of brutal warfare. Games which mimicked the destruction of infrastructure, men and machines were offered to children throughout the war by toymakers and parents who wanted to represent the on-going conflict to children. Men in uniform were depicted as heroes and the technological advances of warfare were celebrated as innovative developments. The righteousness of Britain’s role in the war was unquestioned; indeed, it was something to be proud of. Through commercially produced toys and games that pride was recognised and offered to children as a source of amusement. It was only towards the end of the war that we begin to see that mood change as a reluctance to see children enjoy war in this way began to creep in. By early 1917 the appetite for war toys appeared to be on the wane.45 Voices in the press were also beginning to question some of the more ‘ghastly’ hospital toys on the market, The Daily Mail describing one miniature hospital ward complete with injured patients: There were some wounded men in beds, while others were ‘up’ – one was fitted with crutches and had a bandaged foot, while another ‘hospital blue’ soldier with his legs taken off at the knees was seated in a wheelchair.46
The suggestion that these hospitals were being bought for little girls whose fathers had been injured left the Mail’s reporter feeling uncomfortable. Although the sight of injured servicemen was familiar to civilians by 1917, the reaction of the Mail’s reporter was to urge restraint in the purchase of such items: We do not want any presents for any one which emphasise the gloomy side of war and all the ghastliness of it. Those are bad enough, and close enough, for most people in reality – it is merely pandering to morbidity and unhealthy feelings to make or to buy things which cause unnecessary suffering.47
44 45
46 47
Daily Mirror, 6 December 1916, p. 8. Rosie Kennedy, ‘“How Merrily the Battle Rages”: Props for Make-Believe in the Edwardian Nursery’, in Lissa Paul, Rosemary Johnston and Emma Short (eds.) Children’s Literature and Culture of the First World War (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 235–6. Daily Mail, 8 December 1917, p. 2. Ibid.
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Whether the ‘unnecessary suffering’ was being felt by children or their warweary parents is not clear, but the suggestion seems to be that it was not the war as a theme which was the problem, rather the depiction of its consequences that needed rethinking. Children of course did not necessarily need any commercially produced toys to play war games. Imaginary battles could be fought by opposing armies with no props at all, or with sticks and stones found lying around. In Tansley, Derbyshire, thirteen-year-old J. Leonard Smith played a game inspired by the war with his school friends on an old pile of rubble: We called this ‘Hill Sixty’, this being the name given in war dispatches to a strategically placed hill on ‘the Front’. This hill had been fought over, taken and re-taken time and again by the German and Allied Forces, with enormous loss of life on both sides. So, being boys, we too must have our Hill Sixty, and many were the tussles to dislodge the enemy – members of an opposing house – from their supremacy on top of that heap of rubble.48
The incorporation of this real battle into the children’s game indicates the regular connections children were making between their imaginative play and the world around them. Familiar with the war from school, youth groups and family connections children incorporated it into their play and acted out its developments with their friends. This form of understanding highlights the extent of children’s mobilisation – the way in which the war became an integral element of their experience of childhood. Children knew why Britain was fighting and who the enemy were, they understood the physical skills and character traits necessary to be a good soldier, and they were keen to inhabit that role through play.
Family Connections For thousands of children in Britain their experience of the First World War was shaped by the involvement of a close family member, often a father, but brothers, cousins and uncles were all missed. For these children general exposure to the war at school or in the street was compounded by the particular effect it had on their family dynamics and intimate relationships. For some war came as a great relief, if it took an overbearing or violent father away from home; for others the separation was a pain to be borne by the whole family, compounded by the constant worry for their men’s safety between postcards and letters home. And it was through these letters and postcards that children and their absent male relatives strove to maintain their relationships as short periods of leave could be few and far between. Instead, children and 48
Rev. J. Leonard Smith, A Tansley Boyhood (Loughborough: Teamprint, 1996), p. 45.
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their fathers wrote to each other, attempting to bridge the gap between them in both distance and experience. Fathers wrote to their children of the things they would understand: their living conditions, fellow soldiers, surroundings and food. In this way they sought to create an image of themselves to which their children could relate. The significance for men, particularly those with small children, of situating themselves in scenes their children could picture and would be comfortable with is clear from examples like this extract from a letter Arthur Stanton sent to his children, four-year-old Peggy and three-year-old Hugh. Stanton was called up in late 1916 and began service as an air mechanic in the 13th Kite Balloon Section of the Royal Flying Corps in February 1917. From the western front Stanton drew a picture of a tent and wrote to his children in north London: We got some pretty plants and put them round the tent to make it nice and like home. I expect the plants belonged to some little girl like you Peggy, once, but she had to leave them and go away. In the place here there are three little kittens, grey with long hair, fluffy ones, they have a good time. . . . The other day I saw a soldier who had a monkey for a pet, the monkey sat on the ground and squeaked when I gave him one of the raisins which mother sent me out, he was so pleased to show all his teeth. You must try and be good children and kind to mother, and when I come home we shall all have a big treat together.49
Peggy and Hugh were too young to write back themselves but would illustrate letters penned on their behalf by their mother. Older children would write to their fathers reminding men of the homes they had left behind. Their letters are full of the intimate domestic details of childhood, friendships, schoolwork, visits and food. Thirteen-year-old George Butling and his siblings, Eric 11, Grace 7 and Ben 2, wrote regularly to their father serving in France with the Army Service Corps. The older boys talked of school, George excitedly telling his father he had been granted extra days’ holiday for coming top of the class at Christmas 1916: We are to have as many holidays as we are top in, and we can choose which day we like, so when you come home on leave I shall have my odd days, so let me know in time so that I can apply for them.50
The younger Grace wrote to her dad about the Christmas grotto in Liverpool City Centre, complete with a tank and trenches with cardboard soldiers peeping out.
49 50
A. C. Stanton Papers, Imperial War Museum, London. G. and E. Butling Papers, Imperial War Museum, London.
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As the war dragged on and shared experiences became harder to recall some men began to write to children about the war itself. Most of these letters were written to older children, who, as we have already seen, were familiar with the language of weaponry and battles from school and adventure fiction. Writing to his daughter at home in England, British-born Canadian, Captain Ivan Finn of the 10th Battalion Canadian Expeditionary Force, described his conditions: My darling Margaret Father sends his love to you. I cannot write very much because there is such a fearful noise from our guns. I hope that I shall see you soon again and that the war will end quickly. A lot of farms are burning up and the sun is very bright and warm. I live in a hole and feel very dirty for I have been unable to wash since I left England. The other day I saw a battle in front where the poison gases were used. It looked like a horrible green yellow curtain hanging from the sky. Now my darling I will end. God bless you and keep you always. Your loving father, Ivan.51
This letter shows that some fathers did not try to hide the dangers they were facing from their children. The reality of the casualty figures and the visible presence of death and mourning across the UK meant that, even if it had been desired, children could not have been shielded from knowledge about the large-scale human cost of war. In homes across the country, families were reeling from the loss of husbands, fathers and sons, and children felt that pain too. For Arthur Jacobs the memory of his school fellows’ pain is eloquently described in his unpublished autobiography: Children in Mr Hill’s class (to which I was soon promoted en route for the scholarship class) brought their domestic burdens to school to be shared. Fathers and brothers were ‘missing’ – fathers and brothers were dead. Some of the children seemed stunned and uncomprehending; others – sensitive and afraid – were told to put their heads on their arms and ‘rest’. Sometimes their sobbings became unbearable and a prelude to the despairing youngsters being sent home – to what additional misery?52
Others had first-hand knowledge of the trauma visited on their homes. Joseph Armitage’s brother had joined the Army in January 1915 but was killed at Gallipoli in June that year: I shall always remember the morning that the long buff coloured envelope came by the early post. Mother sat down and opened it then her face seemed to freeze like a mask. I remember asking her what the letter was 51 52
I. Finn Papers, Imperial War Museum, London. Arthur Jacobs, Just Take a Look at These, Burnett Archive of Working Class Autobiographies, Brunel University, London.
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about, after a while she said in a strange quiet voice – ‘George is dead, he’s been killed’. She said nothing else for what seemed like hours, she just sat there at the end of the long white deal table staring straight in front of her.53
Over 350,000 children lost their fathers during the First World War, and with a total of over 720,000 British servicemen killed many thousands more would, like Armitage, have lost brothers, cousins, uncles, friends and neighbours.54 But even for those children whose fathers returned, war could have a lasting influence. When these men came back it was to families that had survived without them for several years. Relationships needed to be rebuilt, roles redefined, and feelings reaffirmed. Some men found it hard to readjust and it was often families who bore the brunt of that process. Children then were not spared from the uncertainty or upheaval of war or its effects. Indeed, they were encouraged to recognise its importance to their lives and to contribute to its successful prosecution. The large-scale participation of children in the home-front war effort required both their physical and mental mobilisation. This was achieved deliberately, and via adult mediation, through their involvement with war work organised by schools and youth groups and through their education, both formally delivered through the curriculum and also absorbed through the books they read and the manufactured toys with which they played. But children also mobilised themselves. Invented games and imaginative connections were made by children alone, and with each other, which contributed towards their understanding of the war and defined their relationship to it. Considering children’s experiences therefore offers us a unique insight into the British home-front experience.
53
54
J. H. Armitage, The Twenty Three Years: Or the Late Way of Life and of Living., Burnett Archive of Working-Class Autobiographies – Brunel University, London. Jay Winter, The Great War and the British People (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) p. 274. Actual figure 355, 211, p. 71.
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29 The ‘Home Front’ as War Front .
I Shortly after a deadly aerial attack on Great Britain in 1917, Ethel Bilbrough, a forty-seven-year-old woman living in Kent, recorded her reactions in her diary: ‘the cowardly wickedness of such raids is almost incredible; to think of defenceless innocent women and children, and old men and boys being ruthlessly murdered and mutilated by these devils in the air is unspeakably horrible. But as someone said the other day, “There are no civilians now, we are all soldiers.”’1 This somewhat startling assertion – that civilians had somehow ceased to exist and that instead all inhabitants had acquired the status of military participants – would have been unimaginable without the transformative qualities of the First World War. The extent to which air power, in particular, as well as a range of other innovations, could shape Britain’s so-called home front into a war zone remains a crucial and often underestimated aspect of this war. Given the geographic distance from the areas in which the United Kingdom’s troops were deployed from the western front of Belgium and northern France to the imperial theatres of Africa and the Ottoman Empire, it might be relatively easy to assume that those living through the war years in key locales such as Cardiff, Dublin, Glasgow or London fully escaped the privations suffered by inhabitants of Brussels, Berlin, Petrograd or Vienna. Britons were, after all, spared savage invasion and the resulting devastation of occupation as well as forced internal displacement and migration. They were the welcoming host and benevolent succourer of refugees from Belgium, according to the press. Nor were they subject to the intense loss of access to food stuffs and fuel experienced by those in the Central Powers, including the less well-studied famine-stricken areas of the Ottoman and Russian empires. Still, other aspects of this first modern total war deeply affected British men, women, and children at home. Civil unrest, food shortages and protests, spontaneous violence in response to the war, and especially wartime 1
Ethel Bilbrough, Diary, 4 November 1917. Document. 630; Dept. of Documents, Imperial War Museum. Emphasis in original.
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technological innovations such as aerial attacks marked and transformed the lives of British inhabitants during this conflict. This chapter therefore argues that there were multiple ways in which the First World War came home.
II The very moniker ‘home front’ (itself a term that only came into popular use as a result of this war) suggests not only the importance of the labour undertaken at home but also of the marshalling and deploying of resources necessary to the war effort. Given the attention paid to how crucial aid was to soldiers’ families and how vital the sense of shared sacrifice became to domestic war efforts, the story of economic deprivation for British working-class homes – many headed by women for the duration – merits some exploration. One source for doing so, and thus for understanding some of the challenges faced by working families at the outbreak, can be found in a vivid post-war account of life in Britain during the First World War that deserves to be better known – feminist activist Sylvia Pankhurst’s The Home Front: A Mirror to Life in England during the First World War. First published in 1932, the memoir covers Pankhurst’s experiences from the outbreak of war in 1914 through to 1916, and while its retrospective filter is evident, its basis in writing done at the time is also apparent.2 Most important, and in contrast to many contemporaneous accounts, its version of home is centred on working-class women and their children, on the east end of London and on the multiple levels of violence inflicted both externally and internally. Like Pankhurst’s memoir of being a suffragette, it blends the personal and the societal, and is unstinting in its attacks on the real enemy of non-combatants, especially women at home – war itself. Given her political leanings, and her wartime work focused on alleviating the hardships of working-class wives and mothers, Pankhurst paid keen attention to the suffering that the war brought to these women. Her first chapters recount the now mostly forgotten economic upheaval of the first phase of the war, and the harrowing situation of working mothers of London’s east end. Many were waiting for the promised aid to offset economic dislocations caused by the entry of their menfolk into military labour, notably the ‘separation allowances’ or funds paid directly to military dependents to offset them but which were slow to come. Although separation allowances had emerged precisely to encourage enlistment by promising to avoid material hardship for families left behind, the start
2
E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Home Front: A Mirror to Life in England during the First World War (first published 1932. London: Cresset, 1987).
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of the war found the policy not yet fully developed for the large numbers of men being recruited into Kitchener’s army. For example, the issue of whether or not to support ‘illegitimate’ dependents was still being debated in the first weeks and months of the war and was still restricted to the policy established by the service charity, the Soldiers and Sailors Families Association (SSFA), during the South African War – granting aid to those dependents where a ‘regular’ connection not merely a ‘casual’ one existed. The state was likewise figuring out whether or not parents of soldiers and sailors were entitled to aid, and under what circumstances.3 Pankhurst vividly portrayed the grievances of such new military families, often in the words of those most affected. Here is the complaint of Mrs Murray, a woman in Canning Town, who sought Pankhurst’s help because she had sent her marriage certificate to the War Office as proof that she deserved her allowance, and they had sent it on to her husband at a training camp. Since he had not yet been paid, he could not afford to send it back to her so that she could then use it to prove that she merited the money: ‘I think it is a shame that the Government should be allowed to do such things just because you are poor. . . When they take your man, you might as well say they have took all you possess; and they don’t care so long as they have him, what become of them left behind. . . We have a right to have what our husbands slave for, and get treated like dogs to earn.’4 Thus, as Pankhurst’s recording of such grievances helps us to appreciate, while the system of separation allowances by which military families received aid operated relatively well during the South African War under the auspices of the SSFA rather than a state-run body, the entire apparatus found itself overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of mobilised men in 1914–15. Pankhurst helps us to contextualise reactions to more external threats as well as providing insight into women’s wartime experiences. And she also sheds light on the emerging anxiety that failing to provide aid could lead to potential unrest, showing how morale became a civilian as much as a military issue. Recent work on Scotland by Annmarie Hughes and Jeff Meek confirms that those families dependent on separation allowances suffered during the first two years of the war because of the inability of the system to keep up with demand. Furthermore, they demonstrate that ‘separation allowances did not
3
4
See Susan R. Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), pp. 91–4; Susan Pedersen, Family Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) and ‘Gender, Welfare and Citizenship in Britain during the Great War’, American Historical Review, 95:4 (1990), pp. 983–1006. Pankhurst, Home Front, p. 26.
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keep pace with inflation until at least 1917’.5 The outbreak of the war similarly caused major upheavals in Ireland for the dependents of regular servicemen as well as reservists, in addition to the new recruits for Kitchener’s armies.6 Paul Huddie finds that Dublin’s SSFA, an entirely voluntary organisation, saw ‘its volunteer workforce expand from 7,000 to 50,000 within the first year of the war and the numbers of people it aided swell to over 1,300,000 and its expenditure rise to over £1,000,000, essentially in the last five months of 1914 alone’.7 Not having the funds that were needed and promised became one issue for soldiers’ families, while increases in the cost of living produced other hardships. As a result, the food queue may be one of those vivid spaces that defines this war transnationally: although more commonly associated with the cities of the Central Powers, it became a feature in the United Kingdom as well. As historians like Karen Hunt have explored, over the course of the First World War, a domestic and largely feminine matter – the feeding of families – increasingly became a public and state priority at both local and national levels. The wartime crisis enabled some ordinary women, although not full citizens, to enter further into the public sphere by mobilising their domestic ‘expertise’ in the national interest. Women shaped a new local politics in relationship to food and by politicising their identity as ‘housewives’.8 For instance, the 1915 rent strike in Glasgow was orchestrated by and for working-class women defining themselves as wives and mothers, who reacted to landlords raising rents when labourers arrived to take on jobs in expanding war-related industries in the city. The prior scarcity of housing and the city’s history of overcrowding were coupled with the fact that the families of servicemen now formed a key constituent group of those unable to pay higher rents and so facing potential eviction. Tensions grew extremely high. Relying on the backing of the local Independent Labour Party, women positioned themselves at the forefront of street and neighbourhood action. Photographs 5
6
7 8
Annmarie Hughes and Jeff Meek, ‘State Regulation, Family Breakdown, and Lone Motherhood: The Hidden Costs of World War I in Scotland,’ Journal of Family History, 39:4 (2014), pp. 364–87, see 366 for quote. Paul Huddie, ‘The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association in Dublin in 1914,’ Queen’s University Belfast Working Paper (2015); Catriona Pennell, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Huddie, ‘Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association in Dublin,’ [19]. Karen Hunt, ‘The Politics of Food and Women’s Neighborhood Activism in First World War Britain’, International Labor and Working-Class History, 77 (2010), pp. 8–26; ‘A Heroine at Home: The Housewife on the WWI Home Front,’ in Maggie Andrews and Janis Lomas (eds.) The Home Front in Britain: Images, Myths and Forgotten Experiences since 1914 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); and ‘Gender and Everyday Life’, in Susan R. Grayzel and Tammy M. Proctor (eds.) Gender and the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
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from the time show women carrying babies in their arms and children bearing signs that proclaimed: ‘My father is fighting in France. We are fighting the Huns at home’. They forced the government’s hand by forming pickets and disrupting evictions. In a multi-pronged set of actions, they also used the courts to seek redress against the landlords.9 Coverage in The Times couched the actions as being taken by ‘soldiers’ families’, a description likely to arouse sympathy, and then described the 800 women and children taking to the streets as being of ‘the respectable working-class type’.10 The movement began to expand beyond Glasgow and came to national attention as newspapers reported the spread of rent strikes to Northampton, prompting the government to take action.11 By the end of December 1915, parliament had passed the Rent Restriction Act covering the entire nation and alleviating the crisis. The crisis prompts two observations about the war at home. First, it offers evidence of the genuine inability of working-class families to maintain their standards of living, including access to shelter and resources like food and fuel. Second, it demonstrates the grudging willingness of the state to redress the war’s impact on them. The brunt of government intervention and of its policies to respond to the question of food occurred locally, especially in neighbourhoods. While complaints about cost of living increases and about access to food started with the outset of the war, it took two years for the government to act and to require local authorities to set up Food Control Committees under the leadership of a Food Controller operating within the Ministry of Food. When such actions to monitor and eventually ration the food supply entered daily life, they did so by mobilising the local population. As the Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire proclaimed in a letter published in all local newspapers in the county in early May 1917, this was now ‘a war of the people, a war in which we can all, old and young, man and woman, play our part or take our share . . . [for] the real food controller is the mistress of the house, whether it is a large one or a small one – she it is who can and ought to stop waste, she it is who can and ought to limit the rations’.12 This added to the responsibilities of women at home, but also created space for a new role for women that blended the public and private, the war and the home. For such appeals still did not address the fundamental 9
10 11
12
James J. Smyth, ‘Rents, Peace, Votes: Working-Class Women and Political Activity in the First World War’ in Esther Breitenbach and Eleanor Gordon (eds.) Out of Bounds: Women in Scottish Society 1800–1945 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992) and ‘Centenary of Glasgow Women’s Rent Strikes’, http://womenshistoryscotland.org/ 2015/12/24/centenary-of-glasgow-womens-rent-strikes/. ‘Glasgow Rent Strike’, The Times, 8 October 1915. See the section on ‘High Rents in Northampton’ in the article ‘Glasgow Rent Strike’, Times, 8 October 1915. Letter on ‘The Food Crisis’, Staffordshire Advertiser, 5 May 1917. Quoted in Karen Hunt, Staffordshire’s War (Stroud: Amberley, 2017), p. 83.
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imbalances of access to resources. As a result, ad hoc groups dissatisfied with official efforts formed ‘Food Vigilance Committees’ in order to communicate (again) mainly women’s frustration with the inability to provide for their families. The year 1917 looms large in the chronology of this war as a crisis point throughout war-torn Europe, as lack of food and fuel led to protests and strikes; those led by women workers in Petrograd ultimately contributed to the outbreak of revolution. A short-lived violent uprising in Ireland in April 1916 had quickly been suppressed and may offer the closest counterpart to the kinds of actions that began in 1917, but its circumstances were, to an extent, connected to both the war and much more complicated, long-term roots.13 Yet other parts of the British Isles were not immune to the expression of gender- and class-based grievances (and their danger to morale and the war effort). For instance, women took to the streets of London in the summer of 1917 to call for access to resources that would put an end to food queues. By June 1917, a Lewisham Food Vigilance Committee was circulating leaflets to women consumers: ‘Why should you stand in queues for your children? The Rich and Well-to-do do not do it! If you are tired of struggling for Food, sign this leaflet’.14 The dangers of not responding with a more equitable system were clear: the potential collapse of morale at home. By 1918, war artist C. W. R. Nevinson utilised the colour palate of his frontline paintings to depict a different kind of war zone. In his painting The Food Queue, originally entitled Squalor, beleaguered civilians, largely women, somewhere in an urban centre wait for what they need to feed themselves and their families. Far less well known than his celebrated paintings of the western front, this picture offers a vivid reminder of the shared experience of war across the borders between the fronts.15
13
14
15
The constraints of this essay make it difficult to do justice to the Easter Rising, Ireland’s First World War, and its complex history, but it remains an important example of armed violence in the so-called home front. For more on this, see Adrian Gregory and Senia Paseta (eds.), Ireland and the Great War: A War to Unite Us All? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), and John Horne and Edward Madigan (eds.) Towards Commemoration: Ireland in War and Revolution, 1912–1923 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2013). And for women in particular, see Lucy McDiarmid, At Home in the Revolution: What Women Said and Did in 1916 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2015); Senia Paseta, Irish Nationalist Women 1900–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) and Margaret Ward, Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism (London: Pluto, 1996). This paragraph and those above are indebted to Hunt ‘The Politics of Food and Women’s Neighborhood Activism’ for quote, p. 15. See also Hunt, Staffordshire’s War, pp. 82–8. C. W. R. Nevinson, The Food Queue (1918) IWM ART 840.
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III Civilian spaces and bodies have always been among the victims of warfare. However, during the First World War new forms of technology helped turn the British domestic sphere, long assumed to be immune to direct action, into a literal battle zone. The effect of using air power against civilian targets and populations profoundly troubled contemporary commentators. Public accounts of such attacks consistently condemned these as criminal acts committed by a barbaric enemy, and they did so by emphasising the unacceptable damage done to young and female victims. This was especially the case in England, where naval attacks on the coast in 1914, Zeppelin raids that intensified in 1915, and even more deadly aeroplane raids by the summer of 1917 all brought damage and death to young and old, men and women, on British soil. The naval raids on Scarborough, Whitby and Hartlepool in 1914 quickly found their way into recruiting posters that depicted wrecked homes and asked the ‘men of Britain’ if they would stand for this. Headlines in The Times, proclaiming ‘The German Air Attempts to Create Panic in England’, delivered a clear message about the enemy’s intent and how it could be repelled: by not panicking.16 The cultivated public response to these first attacks on British soil was to use them as a motivation for supporting the war. These and subsequent raids also played a prominent role in Pankhurst’s Home Front as she highlighted the more novel damages this war inflicted. Shortly after the naval raids of mid-December 1914, Pankhurst wrote of wanting to learn more about the damage done to the Yorkshire coast, so she and a companion headed to Scarborough. There they stayed with the wife of a local fisherman, who shared her version of the raid: ‘It was terrible, the noise so loud, so fearfully loud [I] thought [I] must go mad’. And her daughter added that it ‘terrified her inexpressibly. . . People would not sleep now; many would not even go to bed. Everyone had a bundle made up in readiness for flight’.17 Once again, Pankhurst was interested in recounting the voices left out of the popular news, which focused on stoicism and resolve in the face of attacks on domestic life. When aerial attacks on London first occurred in the spring of 1915, they evoked an even stronger response [see Fig. 29.1]. In many ways, the late May 1915 Zeppelin raid on London provided the British public with quintessential victims that vividly illustrated how war was changing. On the night of the raid,
16
17
‘The German Aim’, The Times, 17 December 1914. The discussion in this section is adapted from Susan R. Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). For more context and analysis of the First World War’s air raids, see pp. 20–92. Pankhurst, Home Front, p. 115.
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Figure 29.1 The Zeppelin raids: the vow of vengeance, autolithograph for The Daily Chronicle by Frank Brangwyn, 1916. Private Collection: photo Abbott and Holder.
Elsie Legett and her sister Elizabeth were asleep in bed with three other siblings; a bomb fell directly upon them; their father tried to rescue all the children, and failed, receiving severe burns in the process. Elsie Legett was three years old when she died that night; Elizabeth was eleven when she subsequently died from the injuries she sustained. As a headline in one of the large daily newspapers put it, this was the ‘tragedy of the Zeppelins’.18 Air raids also featured in Pankhurst’s The Home Front, and her perspective helps us to see the disruption to normality and its introduction of the sounds
18
‘Death of a Child’, The Times, 2 June 1915 and ‘Death of Another Child Victim’, The Times, 10 June 1915. ‘Tragedy of the Zeppelins’, The Daily Chronicle, 3 June 1915.
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of war into daily life. Her first air raid came in a burst of noise: ‘I was writing at home one evening. On the silence arose an ominous grinding . . . growing in volume . . . throbbing, pulsating . . . filling the air with its sound . . . Then huge reports smote the ear, shattering, deafening, and the roar of falling masonry.’ Pankhurst rallied others in the house by telling them, ‘No use to worry; only a few houses will be struck among the thousands.’ Her own recollections differed from her public statements: ‘the thought of the bombs crashing down on the densely populated city was appalling – yet for our household I had no least shade of apprehension and for myself Life had no great claim. I was only a member of the salvage corps, saving and succouring as I might amid this wreckage.’ As the raid continued, Pankhurst’s account repeated itself, focusing on the noise: ‘More crashes silenced us . . . More Crashes . . . More crashes.. Again more crashes and each more monstrous. What a burst of sound, tremendous; the very earth shook with it! More crashes . . . again, again, again . . . At last it was over.’ And what followed: ‘anti-German rioting broke out again. Panic ran rampant’.19 As scholars like Nicoletta Gullace have pointed out, the sinking of the Lusitania in May sparked intense violence of this sort, but that tragedy can be seen as intensifying existing feelings about aerial attacks on British soil.20 Other factors also help explain the outbreak of violence that spring, including the release of the Bryce report on German atrocities in Belgium, and ongoing if selective economic hardship. What is striking is that The Home Front’s version of these types of xenophobic riots in London resemble more traditional food riots – with looters grabbing bread. This is certainly not the portrait of stoicism and calm emphasised in the newspaper accounts of early air raids. While recounting these outbreaks of violence, Pankhurst made few judgments about the varying reactions of those who lived through the attacks and erupted into spontaneous action. She saved her scorn for the air raid tourists, those ‘well-dressed people in motors, journalists, photographers, high military officials’ who came to the east end to see ‘the devastation wrought by last night’s air raid’. They seemed disappointed not to see more damage, yet if they had only looked a little closer, Pankhurst reminded her readers, they could have seen ‘miserable dwellings, far from fit for human families, poorly-dressed women of working sort, with sad, worn faces; and others, sunk lower, just covered, no more in horrid rags. . .half-clad neglected little children – sadder these even than the havoc wrought by German bombs’.21 The parallels that Pankhurst evoked, associating the long-term killing effects of deprivation and poverty with the new menace of aerial attack 19 20
21
Pankhurst, Home Front, pp. 191–2. Nicoletta F. Gullace, ‘Friends, Enemies and Aliens: Fictive Communities and the Lusitania Riots of 1915’, Journal of Social History, 39:2 (2005), pp. 345–67. Pankhurst, Home Front, p. 193
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continue throughout her account of life on the home front. If a mirror is being held up to Britain, it seems meant to reflect that war has made things worse for the poor and working poor (unsurprisingly perhaps). That this is a ‘front’ of women and children is brought home visually as well as verbally by the book’s illustrations, which include one depicting a line of young women heading to take shelter. In another, we see who is in need of aid in an interior portrait of ‘the mother’s arms’. One of Pankhurst’s proudest wartime accomplishments was the transformation of a space that held a local pub into the Mothers’ Arms day nursery, a mother and infant welfare clinic to meet overwhelming need for both in the east end. The placement of the photograph near the discussion of home-front suffering seems designed to provoke associations between the damage caused by new forms of war and the most vulnerable victims.22 The government certainly tried to turn that sense of vulnerability into calls for action in response to air power. We can see this in a recruiting poster that featured Zeppelin attacks. It highlights the vulnerability of London specifically – with the airship passing the iconic sites of Big Ben and St Paul’s Cathedral – and suggests that it is ‘far better to face the bullets’ than the bombs and destruction it will unleash.23 That was not an option for many typical victims of air raids – women and children. And as photographs taken at the time reveal, the actual damage could be much more prosaic but still startling in its demonstration of how ordinary homes and streets could be laid waste by modern war. With the introduction in 1917 of German heavy bombers known as Gothas, attacks on civilian lives and spaces intensified. Several aspects made the air raids of 1917 more traumatic than earlier attacks: their occurrence in daylight, their geographic range, and the nature of the targets that were hit. One of the first of these major daylight raids struck the port city of Folkestone on 26 May, an event that prompted public outcry. The sermon from the archbishop of Canterbury at the memorial service that week praised the fortitude and resolve of the non-combatants at home: War involves peril, and we are prepared to face peril bravely and quietly. . . This war has dwarfed even the darkest expectations as to its scale, its prolongation, its horrors and the manner in which our foe has waged it [including] the horror of the blood-stained streets of Folkestone, where our own men, women and children were killed.24
The words used here were significant as they suggested that Britons at home were quiet and brave, not rioting and not attacking ‘foreign establishments’. The contradictions between wartime media and post-war accounts suggest the power of the former to overshadow the latter. 22 23 24
Pankhurst, Home Front, photographs between pp. 216–17 and pp. 192–3. ‘It is far better to face the bullets’, IWM PST 12052. As cited in The Weekly Dispatch, 3 June 1917.
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On 13 June 1917, Londoners experienced the deadliest attack of the war, again upsetting because it occurred during the middle of the day and more so because it included a direct hit on an infants’ school in Poplar, in London’s east end. As The Times recounted: The raid on London yesterday morning. . . killed and maimed. . . with wanton, undiscriminating ferocity. It slew women and children as well as men. It wrecked buildings of no greater military value than a warehouse here, a tobacconist’s shop there, and a school not far away. It made London quiver, not with fear, but with sorrow and anger.25
Indeed, the very portrayal of sorrow was meant to rouse the indignation if not outright disgust of London’s civilians. Reports of the inquest held for the ‘child victims’ of the raid appeared in The Times, recounting how one father explained that he identified the body of his five-year-old son [whose head had been blown from his body], ‘by a particular button which his mother sewed on to the wristband of his shirt on the previous evening’. As the coroner when delivering the verdict of the inquest explained, ‘in all countries there is considerable amount of trouble which women and children have to suffer. . . But we have never had anything of this kind before’. Local Labour MP Will Crooks extolled the courage of two teachers who tended their wounded students despite their own injuries: ‘no bravery displayed on the battlefield could be greater’. And the borough’s mayor made the connection between this corner of London and the battlefield even more explicit, declaring of the schoolchildren of Poplar that ‘these boys and girls have died as truly for their country and for everything worth dying for as any of our men at the front or on the high seas’ [see Fig. 29.2].26 Like the stoicism urged upon women when sending men off to fight, the reactions of those at home regardless of age, class, or gender were meant to reflect the calm acceptance of trained combatants. Air power might bring war home to men and women alike, but, at least in public, any sign of feminised distress was meant to be invisible. Perhaps, it was not surprising that in 1917 Ethel Bilbrough could record with approval the words that there were no longer any civilians.27 The changing nature of war and the redrawing of borders between battle and home emerge especially vividly in the letters of Edie Bennett, a wife and the mother of a young daughter living in Walthamstow and writing to her soldier husband Edwin, known as Welsh, in the summer and autumn of 1917. Edie Bennett began a letter on 7 July by stating that ‘I am not writing much as I feel so terribly shaken up . . . Well darling such a sight I’ve never seen & hope 25 26 27
‘Story of the Raid’, The Times, 14 June 1917. ‘Child Victims of the Enemy’, The Times, 16 June 1917. Bilbrough, Diary. See footnote 1.
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Figure 29.2 Girls suffering from ‘air-raid shock’ cultivating their own gardens at the Kitchener Heritage home of the Llangattock School of Arts and Crafts for airraid shocked children and educative convalescence for disabled soldiers. Photograph by Horace Nicholls. Imperial War Museum Q 30542.
not to again talk about a swarm of birds wasn’t in it they were all over us in less than 10 min. & no warning was given whatever & I never thought Ruby & I would be alive now . . . Oh Welsh this life is shocking & the damage done is outrageous . . . I thought to myself while it was on I shall die alone after all but still God was good to me & spared us both.’ Bennett signed the letter from your ‘Unhappy Wife & Baby’.28 A few days later, she had not recovered: God knows how long we shall be on this earth, if only I could see you once more before we are parted for ever yes for ever. Im sure, dear little Ruby & I will be taken from you in one of these terrible raids which are getting worse every time. . . I assure you I am quite prepared & ready to meet our Supreme Father when he calls dear Ruby & I so dont think I have any fear, but should like once more to see you. Oh this wicked war will it ever end. . .29 28
29
Edie Bennett to Edwin S. Bennett, 7 July 1917, E. S. Bennett Collection 96/3/1. Dept. of Documents, IWM. Edie Bennett to Edwin S. Bennett, 9 July 1917, E. S. Bennett Collection 96/3/1. Dept. of Documents, IWM.
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A short while afterwards, she wrote: ‘life seems just one misery night & day & for ever in fear, but there I suppose we must try & keep smileing for your dear sake’.30 Edie Bennett had absorbed the message that she ought to remain calm, cheerful, and resolute for the sake of her soldier-husband, but the letters conveyed all too well the terror she felt huddling with her baby beneath the bombs. It is important to contextualise this wrenching set of letters by keeping in mind that it was not until after the events recounted here that the British government decided to issue warnings of air raids. It had not done so, because it had not wanted to alarm the population or to cause work stoppages from false alarms, but gradually it came to accept that it had no choice.31 Of course, accounts of attacks on the home could not be kept from those serving on more traditional front lines, and some members of the armed forces expressed their concern and anger. Writing on 16 July 1917 to his family in Hackney, Jim Sams recorded hearing that you have been haveing a hot time in London with air raids. We heard you had one last Sat week and what they had done a lot of damage. . .and that they drop some near St Pauls, but did not know for sure, so you can bet I was get worry untill i had a letter from Mabel which I got the same time as yours, she told me what they passed over her place she said they loke like a swarm of birds in the sky. . . I think it is about time something was done to try and put a stop to them getting over.32
When he wrote home less than a month later, he expressed his frustration more clearly: ‘i don’t wonder but you haveing no nerves left, it get on my nerves to think that the men are giveing there lives to protect the women and children. while them at home do nothing to stop them d—d things from coming over, it’s very nice to read that after 3 years war we have not enough aircraft to defend them, it make me sick to think of it’.33 As larger German aeroplanes (known as Giants) continued raids on England through the autumn of 1917, and although they switched mainly to night attacks, the anxiety and frustration continued. In his letters, Jim Sams seemed angrier than ever: ‘My pal had a letter from his brother he was on leave from the front and he was in London while the raids was on, he said what he was d—d glad to get back here again, so i can guess what it was like. . . its very nice for the men out here to know that they have give up everything to come out here to guard there wifes and little ones, and that they are slowly being 30
31 32
33
Edie Bennett to Edwin S. Bennett, 12 July 1917, E. S. Bennett Collection 96/3/1. Dept. of Documents, IWM. See Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire for fuller discussions. Jim Sams, Letter to parents, 16 July 1917. Sams Collection 02/55/1, Dept. of Documents, IWM. All spelling has been left in its original form in this letter. Jim Sams, Letter to parents, 5–6 August 1917, Sams Collection 02/55/1, Dept. of Documents, IWM. All spelling has been left in its original form in this letter.
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done to death by them German Dogs’.34 Sams expressed both class resentment and the frustration of men in uniform at being unable to stop the enemy from attacking their families and homes. If the state could not keep ‘wives and children’ safe at distances from the battlefield, one might consider that the greatest danger the raids posed was not to life and limb but to morale – and, as Sams’s letters suggest, to the morale of both combatants and non-combatants. Moreover, fears that air raids could involve another innovative feature of this war, poison gas, did not fully recede either, despite the lack of evidence of chemical weapons being specifically directed against civilian populations.35 In October 1917, the jury at the inquest of 10-week-old Lillian Alice Trower declared that the baby girl’s death was ‘caused by irritant gases caused by bombs dropped from enemy aircraft at Shoreditch during the night of 1 October 1917’.36 The possibility of the use of chemical arms in Britain and the fear that inhabitants might believe such weapons now to be in place had led to the decision to call in New Scotland Yard to investigate Lillian Trower’s death. Scotland Yard concluded that the infant most likely suffocated from breathing air contaminated by leaks from gas mains. That these mains were ruptured during the aerial raid made Trower an indirect victim of air power but not of chemical weapons as such.37 In public, media accounts continued to emphasise the vulnerability of air raid victims, singling out those who were young and/or female. Yet such depictions of female reactions to raids were also used to highlight civilian courage and the refusal to panic, even while insisting on the gendered nature of the victims. Francis Lloyd, the officer overseeing the defence of London, publicly wrote in February 1918 that London had witnessed ‘so much courage and so much of the best qualities . . . shown by those who can do nothing but sit and suffer and hope to escape’.38 And, in the face of a very slowly evolving official response, women also mobilised to provide aid. One British volunteer – Lady Burford Hancock who staffed a First Aid Post in the Earls Court underground station in London
34
35
36 37 38
Jim Sams, Letter to parents, mid-October [undated] 1917. Sams Collection 02/55/1, Dept. of Documents, IWM. Sams noted in a letter of 23 October that he had one of his letters to his brother Tom returned to him because it contained ‘some remarks that should not be there, i expect it is about the air raids . . .’ All spelling has been left in its original form in this letter. French civilians near the battle zones for example received gas masks as early as 1915, even if not directly targeted. See the discussion of this in Olivier Lepick, ‘Des gaz et des homes: populations civile, militaire et opinions publiques face à l’arme chimique pendant et dans l’immédiat après Grande Guerre’ in Gaz! Gaz! Gaz!: La Guerre Chimique 1914–18 (Péronne: Historial de la Grande Guerre, 2010). ‘Air Raid Casualty Inquest’, 4 October 1917, The National Archives (TNA), HO 45/10883. New Scotland Yard Report, 3 November 1917, TNA, HO 45/10883. Preface dated 8 February 1918 to Records of the Raids (1918), p. 3.
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during the more intense raids of 1917–18 – thoughtfully commented on both her work and the reactions of those for whom she cared. On her very first night on duty, 26 September 1917, she noted the platform ‘fully crowded [with] terrified looking women clutching their babies’, and found tending minor wounds soothing. When the ‘all clear’ sounded that night, a woman told her ‘ “how brave you are I wish I were as brave” which made me feel as if we were on the battlefield’. Below ground and on duty, she wanted to embody the values signalled by her uniform: ‘I often feel a fraud but I have to live up to the confidence my uniform inspires.’39 This sense of ordinary women carrying on through fear was a virtue that those planning for civil defence, an enterprise that would dominate preparations for the next war, would seek to harness. The post-war legacy was obvious: states had to do something to safeguard civilian life – to acknowledge that home and front could be intertwined. Another painting of 1918 helps us to understand how the First World War ushered in a new sense of war being waged at home. Walter Bayes titled his painting, The Underworld: Taking Cover in a Tube Station during a London Air Raid, and, aside from some details of clothing and the images behind the figures, one might be excused for misdating it, so vividly does it remind contemporary viewers of the Second World War. Bayes depicted women and children, including babies, some leaning against the wall, and some lying down on the platform itself, all poised in a state of anxious waiting, underground in the capital city of the United Kingdom, facing the harrowing weapons of modern war.40
IV Propaganda sought to transform attacks on non-combatants and domestic life in the British Isles into fodder to strengthen the resolve of the nation to hold out against the enemy and to rally behind the war effort. Yet the danger that attacks on the home could undermine both civilian and combatant morale remained. A careful balancing act in wartime representations ensued, and, to an extent, often masked the genuine suffering of civilians behind the line. Those in the British Isles never had to face the prospect of some of the other terrifying new weaponry of modern warfare: poison gas and more powerful artillery shells. All civilian deaths from the expansion of the war zone were dwarfed by the immense casualties among British combatants, so that what remains significant is not the direct loss of life but the resulting cultural and even psychological impact of this violation of domestic space. 39
40
Lady Burford Hancock, Diary entry 26 September 1917, Papers of Burford Hancock 92/ 22/1. Dept. of Documents, IWM. Walter Bayes, The Underworld: Taking Cover in a Tube Station during a London Air Raid, (1918); IWM ART 935.
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One of the lessons of this war for the United Kingdom was that modern, total war would bring civilians into the places we call battle zones and could mingle home and front. The fortitude which it demanded was made most evident and was most extolled when facing bombardment, but it was also evoked in efforts to respond to those facing the stresses and economic dislocations of war – shortages of food and fuel at home. Resources helped win this war, and how they were managed in the home, in the street, in the local market, in the neighbourhood as well as in the region by primarily (if not exclusively) women is a story about which we still need to know more. With the involvement of civilian populations in a war brought home came new expectations: namely, that all members of the civilian population might now need to exhibit the endurance of trained combatants. Such expectations came to produce vivid policy shifts – the creation of government measures to prepare civilians for the war to come in the form of ‘air raids precautions’. From the first meetings of the Committee of Imperial Defence’s SubCommittee on Air Raids Precautions in 1924, it was clear that those involved in the serious planning for the next war envisaged what civilians had to be taught: ‘they must realize they are living within the zones of active operations, and therefore must expect to suffer casualties, [and] that the enemy people is being subjected to similar but harsher treatment than they themselves are called upon to support; and that victory will fall to the nation with the greater powers of endurance’.41 This was among the most significant lessons of the war that came home to Britain.
41
Maurice Hankey quoted in ARP No. 8, Appendix to Minutes of 2 July 1924, CAB 46/3.
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Conclusion
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30 The United Kingdom in 1919
When David Lloyd George bought a St Bernard puppy, Punch showed his new pet about to rescue him from an avalanche of papers dealing with pressing political issues [see Fig. 30.1]. Some were international – the crises in Poland and in Mesopotamia and the menace of Bolshevism – but most were domestic – the coal dispute, soaring prices, strikes, direct action and the cost of living. Lloyd George was scratching his head, and he had reason to feel overwhelmed by his post-war problems. The negotiations at Versailles were difficult, but the challenges at home were considerable: demobilisation of troops and the war economy, social tensions caused by inflation and militant trade unions, political difficulties with the war debt, the implications of a wider franchise, and ending the war of independence in Ireland.
The Coupon Election, December 1918 Lloyd George remained in power to grapple with these issues as a result of the ‘coupon’ election of 14 December 1918, fought on the new franchise of the Representation of the People’s Act. It introduced universal suffrage for men over the age of twenty-one (and any man who turned nineteen during war service) and for women over the age of thirty, provided they or their husbands occupied property with a rateable value of more than £5. In 1912, the electorate was 7.7 million; now, the male electorate increased by 5.6 million to 12.9 million with the addition of 8.4 million women voters. Herbert Asquith, the Liberal prime minister before the war, opposed the extension of votes to women, but the role of women on the home front led to a change of mind in 1917: ‘How could we have carried on the War without them? . . . I, for my part, feel it impossible, consistently either with justice or with expediency, to withhold from women the power and the right of making their voice directly heard’.1 Women’s engagement in the war effort undermined the rationale of Α. V. Dicey that women were ‘by nature incapable of 1
Robert Blackburn, ‘Laying the Foundations of the Modern Voting System: the Representation of the People Act, 1918’, Parliamentary History, 30 (2011), 44, quoting Hansard, Commons Debates, 5th ser., 92, Col. 469: 28 March 1917.
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Figure 30.1 Snowed under: the St Bernard pup (to his master): ‘This situation appeals to my hereditary instincts. Shall I come to the rescue?’ Punch, or the London Charivari, 15 September 1920.
taking part either in the defence of the country against foreign enemies or in the maintenance of law and order at home’.2 Women’s involvement in the war effort and the suspension of the militant suffragette campaign meant that Asquith accepted that extending the franchise to women no longer entailed ‘yielding to violence’.3 The age limit for women ensured they did not form the majority of the electorate. Lord Robert Cecil pointed out in November 1918 that ‘It is for this reason only, and it had nothing to do with their qualifications at all. No one would seriously suggest that a woman of twenty-five is less capable of giving a vote than a woman of thirty-five’.4 The women’s movement abandoned its pre-war opposition to a limited extension of the franchise alongside a large 2
3 4
Quoted in Martin Pugh, ‘Politicians and the Women’s Vote, 1914–18’, History, 59 (1974), p. 368. Hansard, Commons Debates, 5th ser., 92, Col. 470, 28 March 1917. Hansard, Commons Debates, 5th ser., 110, Col. 2191, 6 November 1918; Pugh, ‘Politicians and the Women’s Vote’, 366.
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extension of the male franchise.5 Of course, extending the vote to women from all classes was a counter to the extension of votes to working men, for many women would support the Conservative and Liberal parties, whereas newly enfranchised working men might vote for the Labour party. In May 1917, George Cave, the Conservative Home Secretary, presented the extension of the franchise as a sign of national solidarity: ‘War by all classes of our countrymen has brought us nearer together. . . It has made it, I think, impossible that ever again . . . there should be a revival of the old class feeling’.6 The coalition government aimed to fight the election on the basis of national unity and social reform, with official coalition candidates awarded a ‘coupon’ by the leaders of the Conservatives and Liberals.7 The greater difficulty was agreeing on a joint manifesto, given bitter divisions before 1914 on Ireland, tariff reform, social policy and land taxation. Lloyd George and Christopher Addison, the Minister of Reconstruction from 1917 until January 1919, wanted a programme of social reform focused on housing, education and health that would contain the threat from the left and show that the government could deal equitably with all classes. The Conservatives accepted most of this policy, and the manifesto stated that the aim was a ‘policy devised in the interests of no particular class or section, but, so far as our light serves us, for the furtherance of the general good’, and particularly ‘the great mass of the people who live by manual toil. The steadfast spirit of our workers . . . has left an imperishable mark on the heart and conscience of the nation.’ The manifesto offered industrial training, small holdings, agricultural improvement, housing, education, control of the drink trade, and better working conditions. It was a statement of national unity, social reform and patriotism. ‘The unity of the nation which has the patriotism, and the forbearance of our people. The unity of the nation which has been the great secret of our strength in war must not be relaxed if the many anxious problems which the war has bequeathed to us are to be handled with the insight, courage, and promptitude which the times demand’. The aim was a ‘land fit for heroes’, but could social reform be delivered, and could the coalition create consensus now that the external threat was removed? The manifesto had to resolve three areas of disagreement. The future of the endowments of the Church of Wales after disestablishment had little traction outside Wales. A more serious issue was free trade and tariff reform, although the introduction of war-time duties by the Liberal government in 1915 took some heat out of the debate. A compromise could be reached on free trade as a general policy, with duties to protect British industries from unfair 5 6 7
Pugh, ‘Politicians and the Women’s Vote’, 364. Hansard, Commons Debates, 5th ser., 93, Col. 2135: 22 May 1917. Kenneth O. Morgan, Consensus and Disunity: The Lloyd George Coalition Government 1918–1922 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 31–4.
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competition. The manifesto took a middle line that ‘fresh taxes ought not to be imposed on food or upon the raw materials of our industry’ but that ‘preference will be given to our Colonies . . . One of the lessons which has been most clearly taught us by the war is the danger to the nation of being dependent upon other countries for vital supplies . . . It is the intention therefore of the Government to preserve and maintain where necessary these key industries in the way which experience and examination may prove to be best adapted for the purpose’. The manifesto was cautious in setting out a wider economic policy, for ‘Until the country has returned to normal industrial conditions it would be premature to prescribe a fiscal policy intended for permanence’. It did offer ‘to reduce the war debt in such a manner as may inflict the least injury to industry and credit’ – a vague response to a major problem for which the Labour party was proposing the radical solution of a ‘capital levy’. Meanwhile, Lloyd George abandoned taxation of land values. The manifesto also took a middle line between immediately removing wartime controls over the economy and longer-term concern for ‘the development and control in the best interest of the State of the economical production of power and light, of the railways and the means of communication’. These issues were contentious: was the answer a swift return to competitive markets, a retention of controls and rationalisation of business ownership, or nationalisation? The third issue was Ireland. Before the war, Conservatives supported the intransigence of Ulster both for its own sake and as a way of blocking other Liberal policies. The war led the Conservative and coalition Liberals to agree that home rule was the ultimate aim, without ‘coercion’ of the Protestants in Ulster and on condition that the ‘lawless’ behaviour of the republicans was suppressed before the issue was resolved on constitutional lines: we regard it as one of the first obligations of British statesmanship to explore all practical paths towards the settlement of this grave and difficult question on the basis of self-government. But there are two paths which are closed – the one leading to a complete severance of Ireland from the British Empire, and the other to the forcible submission of the six counties of Ulster to a Home Rule Parliament against their will.8
Finding a third, acceptable, path would not be easy. The coupon was issued to 364 Conservatives and only 159 coalition Liberals. Liberal candidates who remained loyal to Asquith were marginalised. Lloyd George’s strategy in 1918 was to win the election with the support of the Conservatives who kept him in power and a group of Liberals loyal to him – and to defeat the Labour party. Although the coupon was awarded to eighteen members of the National Democratic Party – a breakaway group of Labour 8
Morgan, Consensus and Disunity, pp. 34–6; Manifesto of Lloyd George and Bonar Law available at www.conservativemanifesto.com/1918/1918-conservative-manifesto.shtml
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MPs – only nine were elected. Most Labour MPs withdrew from the coalition at the end of the war, rejecting national unity as defined by Bonar Law and Lloyd George.9 The extension of the male franchise and growth of union membership were likely to boost support for Labour. In 1915, 68.1 per cent of adult males in England and Wales were enfranchised; in 1918, the figure was 94.9 per cent – but the coupon placed Labour’s candidates outside the definition of national unity and consensus.10 The Labour manifesto called for ‘a Peace of International Cooperation’, an end to secret diplomacy, the creation of an International Labour Charter, the extension of liberty and democracy in Europe, and restoration of the Workers’ International. The same principles of democratic rights should apply to Britain’s subject peoples in Ireland and India, by offering self-determination in the ‘British Commonwealth of Free Nations’. Victory ‘shall not be wasted in the interests of riches and reaction’ – a policy that meant land for the workers; at least a million houses built by the state at fair rents; a comprehensive public health programme without ‘servile and inquisitorial features’; and free public education. Labour was committed to free trade and argued that unfair competition should be prevented by international labour legislation rather than tariffs. Labour opposed indirect taxation and proposed paying the war debt by ‘conscription of wealth’. The manifesto demanded ‘immediate nationalisation and democratic control of vital public services’, a national minimum wage, the right to work or maintenance, and better compensation for accidents. It positioned Labour as the ‘Women’s Party’ by insisting on equal pay, reasonable food prices and democratic food organisation.11 In all, 478 MPs with coupons were elected, mostly Conservatives who benefited from a split in the vote between Liberal and Labour in the firstpast-the post electoral system which survived consideration of proportional representation in 1918 [see Table 30.1].12 It was more than a triumph of jingoism, for Lloyd George stressed domestic reconstruction. In general the campaign was low-key, with many men still absent and electors bemused by the lack of traditional party labels. The turnout was low, at 57 per cent.13 Labour and the Independent Labour Party won some seats, but they suffered from their association with pacificism and Bolshevism most of those elected came from pro-war trade unionists. Asquithian Liberals were virtually wiped
9 10
11
12
13
Morgan, Consensus and Disunity, pp. 37–8. H. C. G. Matthews, R. I. McKibbin and J. A. Kay, ‘The Franchise Factor in the Rise of the Labour Party’, English Historical Review, 91 (1976), pp. 726–7, 730–1, 736. Labour Party General Election Manifesto at www.labourmanifesto.com/1918/1918labour-manifesto.shtml Trevor Wilson, The Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1914–1935 (London: Collins, 1966), pp. 29–30, 36–9. Morgan, Consensus and Disunity, pp. 39–41; Wilson, Downfall, pp. 39–40.
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Table 30.1. Results of the coupon election, December 1918 Seats
Per centage of vote
Coalition Conservative Liberal National Democratic Labour Independent Total
382 127 9 4 1 523
38.6 12.6 1.5 0.4 0.1 53.2
Non-coalition Labour ILP Liberal Sinn Fein Irish Parliamentary Other Total
57 2 36 73 7 11 184
20.8 1.1 13.0 4.6 2.2 6.2 46.8
Source: John Turner, British Politics and the Great War: Coalition and Conflict, 1915–1918 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), Table 1, pp. 402–3
out. Sinn Fein won a large number of seats in Ireland, on a platform of withdrawal from Westminster and creation of their own Dail in Dublin. The coalition had a huge majority [see Table 30.1]. The leading historian of the coalition government sees the coupon election as ‘a mandate for peace, reconstruction and reform . . . It had been called to confirm the wartime consensus and to direct the wartime collectivism to new social ends . . . The new Coalition faced a unique opportunity to replace the political vacuum with an imaginative, questing programme that the vast majority of the nation appeared to endorse’. This optimistic assessment soon faced reality: could the ‘class collaboration of war-time’ hold, and the election promises of social reform be delivered?14
Revolution or Stabilisation? In 1919, the coalition government faced a country that, in some imaginations, teetered on the brink of revolution. The events in Russia in 1917, and the uprisings in Munich and Berlin in 1919, provided a warning. In January 1919, a ‘joint committee’ representing the official and unofficial trade union 14
Morgan, Consensus and Disunity, pp. 42–5.
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movement in Glasgow issued a ‘call to arms’ for a forty-hour working week to absorb the unemployed. A general strike was called for 27 January – the beginning of Red Clydeside which right-wing contemporaries feared and later left-wing historians hailed as a revolutionary threat. More plausibly, the events on Clydeside were about craft sectionalism as skilled workers tried to restore their pre-war status. The emergence of a powerful Labour party on Clydeside was the result of other issues such as housing and the benefits of state regulation. Rather than seeing the government as a force of repression or ‘dilution’ of skills, workers engaged with bureaucrats anxious to balance the claims of labour and capital, and a large part of the labour movement shifted to ‘moderate socialist reconstruction’.15 Labour unrest was also apparent on the coalfields. Miners’ wages rose rapidly in the war, and in February 1919, they demanded a 30 per cent wage increase, a six-hour day and nationalisation, with the threat of a national strike. In July 1919, the police in London and Liverpool went on strike, and a national railway strike took place from 27 September to 5 October 1919. In 1919, 34,969,000 working days were lost in the United Kingdom and in 1921, the level soared to 85,872,000 as employers tried to roll back post-war gains.16 Meanwhile, violence erupted over particular grievances. In May and June, race riots in Liverpool and the ports of South Wales were directed against black sailors on the basis that ‘we went out to France, and when we came back we find these foreigners have got our jobs, our businesses and our houses, and we can’t get rid of them’. A Reparation Committee sent about 200 black residents ‘home’, even when they had a legal right to remain.17 The day of national mourning on 19 July 1919 was also marred by riots in Luton that led to the burning of the town hall – a response to an inept local council rather than a sign of a breakdown of post-war stability.18
15
16
17
18
James Hinton, The First Shop Stewards’ Movement (London: Allen and Unwin, 1963); Iain McLean, Legend of Red Clydeside (Edinburgh: J Donald, 1983); Alastair Reid, ‘Dilution, Trade Unionism and the State’, in S. Tolliday and J. Zeitlin (eds.) Shop Floor Bargaining and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 46–74, and Reid, ‘Glasgow Socialism’, Social History 11 (1986), pp. 89–97; J. Melling, ‘Whatever Happened to Red Clydeside? Industrial Conflict and the Politics of Skill in the First World War’, International Review of Social History, 35 (1990), pp. 3–32; G. Rubin, War, Law and Labour: The Munitions Acts, State Regulation and the Unions, 1915–21 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Strike data www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/workplacedis putesandworkingconditions/datasets/labourdisputeslabourdisputesannualestimates Neil Evans, ‘The South Wales Race Riots of 1919’, Llafur 3 (1980), pp. 5–29; Michael Rose, ‘Sex, “Race” and Riot in Liverpool, 1919’, Immigrants and Minorities 19 (2000), pp. 53–70. ‘The Luton peace riot’ at www.bedsarchives.bedford.gov.uk/CommunityArchives/Luton/ LutonIntroduction/TheLutonPeaceRiot-SaturdayNight.aspx
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More significant was the unveiling of the cenotaph on Peace Day, 19 July 1919. In Jay Winter’s words, ‘It says so much because it says so little. It is a form on which anyone could inscribe his or her own thoughts, reveries, sadnesses. It [made] all of official London into an imagined cemetery.’19 The temporary construction was made permanent in Portland stone. What is striking was ‘the disappearance of the ex-soldier as an issue in British politics. Remarkably quickly, perhaps faster than in any other country, the existing social system absorbed and politically neutered ex-solders as ex-soldiers.’20 This was not the result of more generous state support for widows and dependents or for wounded veterans, which was lower as a proportion of state spending than in Germany. Rather, charities continued to provide support which contributed to social reconciliation.21 The major exception to restoration was Ireland where the fraught politics of home rule led to the Anglo-Irish war. The coalition manifesto admitted that Ireland was ‘rent by contending forces’: what could the government do to reach a settlement?
The Irish War of Independence The coupon election transformed Irish representation in Westminster. In 1914, the largest Irish party was the Irish Parliamentary Party led by John Redmond who died in March 1918; in the coupon election his party was reduced to seven seats and Sinn Fein, under the leadership of Éaman de Valera, secured seventy-three seats. Despite holding the balance of power in Westminster before the war, Redmond’s constitutional nationalism was overwhelmed by Ulster’s intransigence and was further undermined in the war. Ireland provided many recruits, above all from unionists but also from constitutional nationalists. Redmond positioned the Irish Parliamentary Party as a supporter of the war to show that home rule was compatible with loyalty to crown and empire. In his view, the war could bring all Irishmen together. Redmond miscalculated and the more extreme nationalists gained influence. After all, constitutionalism only led to postponement of Home Rule.22 The Easter Rising in 1916, with its talk of redemptive blood sacrifice and mystic Catholicism, provoked the British authorities to reprisals and
19
20
21
22
Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 104. Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 482. Deborah Cohen, The War Comes Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–39 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 7. Roy Foster, Modern Ireland 1600–1972 (London: Allen Lane, 1988), pp. 471–6.
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executions that gave the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) the moral repulsion they wanted. In May 1917, Lloyd George offered a speedy bill to apply the Home Rule Act, with the temporary exclusion of Ulster – and, when this failed, he set up a Convention which met from July 1917 to April 1918 to produce a scheme of Irish self-government. The Ulster Unionists were unwilling to countenance any relationship with the rest of Ireland that acted against Britain at a time of adversity. Partition was inevitable and constitutionalism was undermined. During 1917, a broad Irish nationalism emerged, closely associated with Sinn Fein. In January 1918, Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, with their commitment to national self-determination, stoked Irish aspirations. Unlike the Irish Parliamentary Party’s strategy of working through parliament, Sinn Fein withdrew from Westminster and created an alternative Irish Dail. The final straw was the Military Service Bill in April 1918 that linked conscription in Ireland with the implementation of home rule, a proposal opposed by all nationalist parties, trade unions and the Church. Although conscription was not extended to Ireland, the outcome was to make Sinn Fein the national voice – and its position was strengthened by Lloyd George’s statement that home rule would be postponed until conditions in Ireland made it possible.23 The coalition government generally accepted that partition was necessary but ruled out ‘complete severance’ from the British Empire so that the constitutional position of Ireland remained a matter of debate. The more militant members of the IRB – now usually called the IRA – turned to shooting members of the Royal Irish Constabulary as representatives of an oppressive colonial power. Unlike in the rest of the United Kingdom and in Ulster, soldiers were not greeted as returning heroes but as targets for hostility. The political wing was wary of the growing violence of the IRA, and the Dail set about creating the ‘shadow’ institutions of a virtual republic. The initial British response was to rely on the police who were weakened by shootings and resignations. Declaring martial law was politically risky. The alternative in 1920 was no better: the ‘black and tans’ to reinforce the police, whose use of violence gave the IRA the justification it wanted. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein continued to win local elections, railway workers refused to move troops, sectarian riots occurred in Belfast and martial law was declared in various places. At the end of 1920, the Government of Ireland Act created devolved parliaments in Dublin and Belfast, linked by the irrelevant Council of Ireland. The government initially proposed the partition of nine counties, but Ulster Unionists realised that the balance of Protestants and Catholics
23
Foster, Modern Ireland, pp. 477–92.
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was too close and might lead to unification; they secured a smaller group of six counties where they were confident of dominance. In July 1921, the IRA and British army reached a truce and negotiations on an Anglo-Irish treaty were concluded in December. The situation was still not fully resolved, and the Anglo-Irish war slid into civil war on the unresolved issue of Irish engagement with the crown and empire. The offer of dominion status in 1919 and 1920 – and hence Irish involvement in the empire and allegiance to the crown – was acceptable in Ulster. It was much more problematic for nationalists and was rejected by De Valera. The treaty gave full domestic independence, including on taxation, but the hard-line nationalists refused to accept any role for the crown. The treaty was only ratified in the Dail by a small majority of sixty-four to fifty-seven which led to civil war in 1922–3. Members of the Dail, and exsoldiers in the British army, were assassinated, and the government responded with summary executions and reprisals.24 Although the Irish Transport and General Workers Union grew in 1918 and 1919, and Labour had some success in local elections, nationalism overrode class; social and economic reform were the casualty.25 By comparison with the bloodshed and violence across the Irish Sea, sporadic unrest in British cities was trivial. But under the surface, there were major structural changes that proved more significant than the hopes or fears of revolution, and that made 1919 a fundamental break in Britain’s economic and social history.
Redistribution and Resentment In Edwardian Britain, class hostility and resentment simmered. Although Lloyd George proclaimed the emergence of social cohesion and solidarity during the war, with peace the growth of profiteering and the rise of both women and the lower class created feelings of displacement within the social order and unsettled class relations. In the words of Ross McKibbin, there was a ‘sense that there was a lower depth which could sweep away property, decorum, the constitution’.26 This sense of unease was understandable, for unionised workers secured greater gains during and after the war than white-collar workers who had less bargaining power. The distribution of income and wealth in Britain underwent a fundamental shift with an increase by 10 per centage points in the share of
24
25 26
Foster, Modern Ireland, pp. 494–513; Charles Townsend, Political Violence in Ireland: Government and Resistance since 1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). Foster, Modern Ireland, pp. 513–15. McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, p. 67.
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Table 30.2. Factor shares as a percentage of GNP at current prices, Britain 1913 and 1924
Labour income Income from abroad Rent Farm property income Profits Property income
1913
1924
56.0 8.5 6.4 2.4 26.7 44.0
66.6 5.0 5.3 1.8 21.3 33.4
Source: Matthews, Feinstein and Odling-Smee, British Economic Growth, table 6.3.
gross national product that went to labour.27 Rents underwent a modest reduction, largely as a consequence of rent controls in 1915, but the most significant changes were interest payments received from abroad and the squeeze on profits. Before the war, British capital exports were running at a high level which radical economists linked to a maldistribution of income and wealth at home, both reflecting and entrenching a low level of domestic consumption. Initially, Lloyd George argued that overseas investment led to the importation of cheaper food and secured export markets – but by 1914, it was clear that the economic recovery was not happening, and that overseas investment was driving up the costs of borrowing for social reform. During the war, many foreign investments were sold or were expropriated [see Table 30.2].28 The loss of income from abroad is easily explained; the squeeze on profits is more surprising given complaints about war profiteers. In 1913, the share of gross profits in trading income in Britain was 33.8 per cent and the rate was 11.8 per cent; in 1924, the figures were 24.9 and 8.7 per cent. Part of the explanation was the rise in labour costs; another was the excess profits duty which the Federation of British Industries argued was ‘encroaching on capital or slaughtering assets, thus draining industry and commerce of the very resources which are essential to a revival of trade’. The claim was selfinterested but had some justification. When inflation and taxation are taken into account, the return on equity capital fell from 10.0 per cent in 1910–14 to 8.7 per cent in 1915–20 and 3.1 per cent in 1921–4. War profiteering was 27
28
R. C. O. Matthews, C. H. Feinstein and J. Odling-Smee, British Economic Growth, 1856–1973: The Post-War Period in Historical Perspective (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), table 6.1, p. 164. Avner Offer, ‘Empire and Social Refor British Overseas Investment and Domestic Politics, 1908–14’, Historical Journal, 26 (1983).
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Table 30.3. Time rate of unskilled workers as a percentage of the time rate of skilled workers
1914 1920 1925
Shipbuilding
Railways
55.2 77.2 68.8
54.3 81.2 69.4
Source: KGC Knowles and D. Robertson, ‘Differences between the wages of skilled and unskilled workers, 1880–1950’, Bulletin of the Oxford University Institute of Statistics 13 (1951), p. 111.
largely a monetary illusion and profit taxation removed any gains to equity income. Companies tried to maintain their distribution of dividends after the war, with the result that retained profits and capital accumulation fell, with long-run harm for the competitiveness of British industry.29 Labour gained at the expense of capital, and within labour, unskilled workers gained at the expense of skilled workers. The removal of manpower for the armed forces created labour shortages and led to the ‘dilution’ of skills and reduction in the casual workforce that was the source of poverty before the war. Most wage increases during the war were flat-rate which eroded differentials. The data in Table 30.3 show that the differential between skilled and unskilled workers narrowed substantially. Skilled workers resented their loss of status and tried to regain their position, but the pre-war levels of differential were never restored. The exception was the differential between women’s and men’s wages which only narrowed to a modest extent, and there was virtually no change in the proportion of women in employment. Most married women withdrew from the workforce as men returned from the armed forces [see Tables 30.4–30.5].
Inflation Militant workers secured wage increases at the end of the war, moving ahead of and exacerbating inflation. By contrast, anyone living on fixed incomes, such as pensioners and annuitants, and white-collar workers who were less organised and militant, suffered as inflation eroded their purchasing power 29
Matthews, Feinstein and Odling-Smee, British Economic Growth, p. 186; M. Daunton, Just Taxes: The Politics of Taxation in Britain, 1914–79 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 83–5; A. J. Arnold, ‘Profitability and Capital Accumulation in British Industry during the Transwar Period, 1913–24’, Economic History Review, 52 (1999), table 3; S. N. Broadberry, ‘The Impact of the World Wars on the Long-Run Performance of the British Economy’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 4 (1988).
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Table 30.4. Women’s wages as a percentage of men’s wages
Clerks Skilled manual Unskilled manual All
1913–14
1922/4
42 72 44 53
46 78 57 58
Source: G. Routh, Occupation and Pay in Great Britain, 1906–79, 2nd ed., 1980, p. 123.
Table 30.5. Female employment by marital status, percentage England and Wales
1911 1921
Scotland
Married
Single
Married
Single
14 14
77 78
5 6
87 87
Source: A. McIvor, A History of Work in Britain, 1880–1950, 2001, p. 38.
and savings. To them, it seemed workers were abusing their power. The Board of Trade wholesale price index stood at 100 in 1900 and increased to 117.2 in 1914; by 1918, it stood at 268.1, in 1919 at 296.5 and 1920 at 368.8 [see Table 30.6].30 The short, intense spike in prices had major redistributive effects. In 1919, Keynes pointed to Lenin’s realisation that ‘the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate . . . an important part of the wealth of their citizens’. Moreover, ‘they confiscate arbitrarily’, with some people securing ‘windfalls, beyond their deserts’ who were ‘the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflation has impoverished’. The continuation of inflation meant that ‘all permanent relations, between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundations of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealthgetting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery’.31 Keynes was right: inflation had very serious consequences after the war. 30
31
B. R. Mitchell with the collaboration of Phyllis Deane, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 476. J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London: Macmillan, 1919), p. 220.
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Table 30.6. Inflation in the United Kingdom, 1910–1940: annual percentage change 30.00% 25.00% 20.00% 15.00% 10.00% 5.00% 0.00% –5.00% –10.00% –15.00% –20.00% 1910
1915
1920
1920
1930
1935
1940
Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/ cdsi/mm23
Inflation led to resentment against war profiteers who were accused of gaining at the expense of respectable, patriotic citizens. The increase in costs made British goods more expensive, thus contributing to difficulties in export markets. The ratio of wholesale prices in the United Kingdom and United States rose from 100 in 1913 to 109 in May 1919 and 123 in December 1919.32 The post-war spike in prices also led to an artificial, short-lived surge in the price of assets which had long-term consequences for the future of British industry. At the end of the war, goods were in short supply with a need to restock inventories which were run down as a result of production for the war effort – a purely short-term restocking boom, for in many cases world-wide production increased. A good example was the shipping industry and shipbuilding, where British firms were dominant before the war. Despite shipping losses of 15 million tons during the war, there was no absolute shortage: the British fleet
32
J. A. Dowie, ‘1919–20 Is in Need of Attention’, Economic History Review, 28 (1975), p. 447.
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at the end of the war was down by 3 million tons, but the world fleet increased by 4 million tons. The shortage was apparent rather than real. Ports were congested; and dockers, railwaymen and miners mounted strikes in 1919 which disrupted trade, securing reduced hours of work that slowed down trade. At the end of the war, ships were in the wrong place and freight rates and the price of ships soared to unprecedented levels. The index number of charter rates on British cargo ships rose from 100 in 1913 to 2,492 in 1918. Ships changed hands for inflated prices to take advantage of the high freight rates, new shipping companies were floated, and the situation was exacerbated by banks who advanced up to two-thirds of the finance. As a result, many shipowners and shipbuilders were trapped into indebtedness to banks. Reality soon returned and freight rates tumbled. The index number of charter rates on British cargo ships fell to 561 in 1919 and 330 in 1920. In December 1919, a ‘ready’ ship of 7,500 deadweight tons sold for £232,000 and in March 1920 for £258,750; by December 1920, it was £105,000 and the end of 1922 only £70,000. Enough tonnage was built to last a decade.33 The post-war boom was disastrous for British shipping, by far the largest merchant fleet in the world. Reserves were dissipated and many companies were forced into bankruptcy or had to use any profits to write down the value of their ships, with little chance of paying dividends or modernising the fleet. Before the war, British shipowners had used modern ships with lower costs of operation and maintenance, selling off second-hand ships to other countries where lower wages allowed them to cover the higher costs of fuel and repair. This ceased to be the case after the war, since British owners were less able to buy new ships and were obliged to operate older ships. British owners lost much of their pre-war advantage34 and the order books of shipbuilders were hit as owners could not afford to replace their ships. A similar pattern was found in other industries such as cotton and steel, where companies changed hands at absurdly inflated prices and left banks exposed to risk. In Lancashire, for example, a boom in the cotton industry led to high prices for mills, and banks provided loans. In reality, the market for cotton textiles was depressed by the collapse of Britain’s market share in India. Lancashire was trapped with over-valued assets which meant that mill owners had to write down the value of existing plant rather than invest in more modern equipment. The involvement of the banks threatened their financial 33
34
Michael B. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World: A Twentieth-Century History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 246; D. H. Aldcroft, ‘Port Congestion and the Shipping Boom of 1919–1920’, Business History, 3 (1961), pp. 100–1, 106; S. G. Sturmey, British Shipping and World Competition (London: The Athlone Press, 1962), p. 36, 59; E. S. Gregg, ‘Vicissitudes in the Shipping Trade, 1870–1920’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 35 (1921), p. 615; Mitchell, Abstract, p. 222. Sturmey, British Shipping, pp. 34–5, 254, 259–61.
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Table 30.7. Growth of trade and GDP, United Kingdom 1873–1937, annual percentage growth rates Export of goods 1873–1913 1913–1924 1924–1937
2.7 2.3 1.1
Imports of goods 2.8 1.0 1.6
GDP 1.8 0.1 2.2
Source: Matthews, Feinstein, Odling-Smee, British Economic Growth.
stability which led the Bank of England to intervene to ‘rationalise’ the industry – essentially to protect banks rather than to modernise industry.35 The post-war boom of 1919 therefore had major long-term consequences for British industry, both its competitiveness, and employment.
Growth and Political Economy The war also had a long-term impact on the growth of the British economy, since ‘the absolute fall in GDP across the war . . . is one of the most spectacular features of recent British economic history’.36 Above all, the old staple industries were seriously damaged – cotton and other textiles, shipbuilding, iron and steel, and coal – and their exports never recovered to pre-war levels [see Table 30.7] British industries faced growing competition before the war – but the process was accelerated by war-time disruption. The export of coal was hit by a shift to oil-fired ships. South Wales was facing competitive pressure before the war due to lower productivity and increased labour costs – and the gains of the miners in 1919 further reduced its ability to compete. The boom of 1919–20 led to a permanent shift in the cost of labour, and British business also suffered from taxation that reduced profits, as well as squandering of wartime reserves on purchasing assets at inflated prices. The difficulties were exacerbated by the wish of the Cunliffe Committee on Currency and Exchange Rates in December 1919 to return to the gold standard at the same rate as in 1914 ($4.86 to the pound). British prices had moved out of line with the United States so that high interest rates were needed to deflate the 35
36
J. Tomlinson, ‘The First World War and British Cotton Piece Exports to India’, Economic History Review, 32 (1979); B. Tomlinson, The Political Economy of the Raj, 1914–47: The Economics of Decolonisation in India (London: Macmillan, 1979); J. H. Bamberg, ‘The rationalisation of the British cotton industry in the interwar years’, Textile History, 19 (1988). Matthews, Feinstein and Odling-Smee, British Economic Growth, p. 543.
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economy and force down prices, just as the post-war boom was breaking in April 1920. Employers had to reduce their costs to compete, and they tried to cut wages which provoked labour unrest. Britain failed to share in the economic recovery of the 1920s.37 The war marked a new political economy as the staple industries experienced decline and distress. In Edwardian Britain, Liberal free trade and social reform defeated Conservative tariff reform, but in the process the belief that free trade by itself would lead to prosperity changed as new Liberals and Labour argued that income and wealth should be more fairly distributed. What was the point of exporting British goods if they were produced by sweated labour and reflected a lack of domestic purchasing power?38 During the war, the rhetoric of free trade underwent further change, reflected in the Labour Party manifesto of 1918 which linked free trade with international labour legislation, organisation of domestic distribution, and a redistributive agenda to increase consumption. The pre-war combination of free trade and domestic reform was under strain. The symbol of free trade before the war was the large white loaf baked with cheap foreign grain that stood in contrast with German rye bread. During the war, reliance on imported grain was problematic and wholemeal bread became a patriotic duty, with the grain trade now controlled by bureaucrats. A new symbol came to the fore – milk as a source of motherhood. The Milk (Mothers and Children) Order of 1918 allowed local authorities to regulate and subsidise milk – a continuation of Edwardian concern for child and maternal health that led to the Maternity and Child Welfare Act of 1918. The politics of consumption thus moved away from Edwardian confidence in free trade to the regulation of domestic consumption. In January 1918, a Consumers Council was created to advise the Ministry of Food, representing the TUC, the War Emergency Workers Committee and industrial women. It developed a socialist policy of consumption. The experience of war showed that the economy could be planned and regulated to create a greater sense of fairness, with a shift from ‘liberal cosmopolitanism’ to what J. A. Hobson termed ‘organised economic internationalism’.39 37
38
39
S. Broadberry, The British Economy between the Wars: A Macroeconomic Survey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 81–3; Dowie, ‘1919–20’; S. Solomou, Themes in Macroeconomic History: The UK Economy 1919–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Frank Trentmann, Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption, and Civil Society in Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); F. Trentmann, ‘Civil Society, Commerce and the “Citizen Consumer”: Popular Meanings of Free Trade in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Britain’, in F. Trentmann (ed.) Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History (Oxford: Berghahn, 2000). Deborah Dwork, War Is Good for Babies and Other Young Children: A History of the Infant and Child Welfare Movement in England, 1898–1918 (London and New York:
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In 1915, concern over the loss of foreign earnings and shipping space on luxuries such as cinema films and motor cars prompted the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Reginald McKenna – a free trade Liberal – to introduce import duties. They survived at the end of the war and were soon extended with the Safeguarding of Industries Act of 1921 to protect key industries for five years – a measure that Winston Churchill, the ‘coupon’ candidate for Dundee which faced competition from Calcutta, conceded was compatible with his commitment to free trade.40 The attitude towards domestic industrial structure shifted. Before the war, both free traders and tariff reformers assumed that small-scale firms were more efficient. Tariff reformers assumed that the removal of unfair competition from abroad would allow British firms to continue with their existing organisation. Similarly, free traders saw large combines and trusts in Germany and the United States as pathological products of protection. Liberals started to see that welfare would no longer be delivered by free trade in grain but through planning and coordination. Similarly, tariff reformers argued that external protection was now necessary for internal reorganisation and modernisation.41 This change of emphasis was apparent in the way that businesses returned to private management. In some cases, the opportunity was taken to reorganise. The pre-war electricity industry was fragmented and inefficient: in London in 1913, there were sixty-five suppliers with ten frequencies and twenty-four voltage levels. A wartime enquiry concluded that the industry had developed on the wrong lines and recommended grouping generators into regions. But who should run the plant – the districts, the state, or private owners? Although the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1919, rejected nationalisation, it created an Electricity Commission to negotiate reorganisation on a regional basis and set up regional joint authorities for suppliers.42
40
41 42
Tavistock, 1987); F. Trentmann, ‘Bread, Milk and Democracy: Consumption and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Britain’, in M. Daunton and M. Hilton (eds.) The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America (Oxford: Berg, 2000); Sidney Webb, The New Constitution of the Labour Party: A Party of Handworkers and Brainworkers: The Labour Programme and Prospects (London: Labour Party 1918), p. 4. F. Trentmann, ‘The Transformation of Fiscal Reform: Reciprocity, Modernization, and the Fiscal Debate within the Business Community of Early Twentieth-Century Britain’, Historical Journal, 39 (1996) and ‘The Strange Death of Free Trade: The Erosion of “Liberal Consumerism” in Great Britain c. 1903–32’, in E. F. Biagini (ed.) Citizenship and Community: Liberals, Radicals and Collective Identities in the British Isles, 1865–1931 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). On Churchill, see J. Tomlinson, ‘Churchill’s Defeat in Dundee, 1922, and the Decline of Liberal Political Economy’, Historical Journal, 63 (2020), pp 980–1006. Trentmann, ‘Transformation’. Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society 1880–1930 (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); L. Hannah,
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The railway industry was also fragmented before the war with serious problems of low profits, in part the result of government regulation of freight rates and passenger fares. Before the war, railway workers were demanding higher wages than the industry could afford which led to demands for nationalisation. Lloyd George, at this time President of the Board of Trade, accepted that mergers would improve efficiency, cover higher wages and hold down rates, but the proposal ran into political difficulties from supporters of competitive markets. The war changed the situation. The railways were put under the control of the Railway Executive Committee, and the companies were promised compensation after the war for the depreciation of assets and loss of profits. The benefits of coordination were now stressed in contrast to the inefficiencies of pre-war management. In 1918, Eric Geddes was appointed to reorganise transport. As the former general manager of the North-East Railway Company, he had been responsible for military transport on the western front before joining the coalition government and becoming the first Minister of Transport in 1919. At one stage, the coalition manifesto contemplated nationalisation, and Geddes’s Ways and Communication Bill of February 1919 contained a proviso that would allow the state to purchase any transport in the public interest. The clause was subsequently dropped, but his plans for a wide-ranging reorganisation was partially successful in the Railway Act of 1921. When the railways were returned to their private owners in 1923, 120 companies were grouped into four large companies. The government required standardisation of equipment and cooperative working, and the companies were regulated by a new Rates Tribunal that set a target return on capital with any excess divided between the companies and the customers. The new companies were strictly regulated oligopolies, treated as public utilities rather than profitable private concerns. The change was linked to better terms for workers who embarked on a nineday national rail strike in September 1919 to protect their wartime gains: they secured full recognition of their unions, an eight-hour day and a new wages board. The industry and its labour relations were established on a new basis.43
43
Electricity before Nationalisation: A Study of the Development of the Electricity Supply Industry in Britain to 1948 (London: Macmillan, 1979). Morgan, Consensus and Disunity, pp. 59–62; T. Gourvish, Railways and the British Economy, 1830–1914 (London: Macmillan, 1980); K. Grieves, ‘Sir Eric Geddes, Lloyd George and the Transport Problem, 1918–21’, Journal of Transport History, 13 (1992); G. W. Crompton, ‘Efficient and Economical Working’ The Performance of the Railway Companies 1923–33’, Business History, 27 (1985), and ‘The Railway Companies and the Nationalisation Issue, 1920–50’ in R. Millward and J. Singleton (eds.) The Political Economy of Nationalisation in Britain, 1920–50 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
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In both electricity and the railways, reorganisation proved possible. The coal industry was more problematic. In 1919, total output was falling but the price of exports was high as a result of world shortages. The result was a windfall in profits which the miners argued should benefit workers in less profitable districts supplying the home market. The government hastily appointed a Royal Commission on the Coal Industry, equally representing miners (whose representatives included the economic historian R. H. Tawney and Sidney Webb) and owners. The mine owners made a poor impression. Tawney dismissed the owners as ‘extraordinarily incompetent, not to say stupid’, and the chairman agreed. Although initially the commission was meant to confine itself to wages, it was dominated by discussion of wider social responsibilities for which the owners were ill-prepared. The commission awarded a large pay increase and a seven-hour day, and – to considerable surprise – recommended nationalisation of the mines with workers’ participation in management. Ministers, although willing to accept the nationalisation of the railways, would not accept public ownership of an extractive industry, and the government turned down the proposal on 18 August. The immediate threat of a strike passed as a result of the wage increase but the future of the industry was now politicised. In March 1921, the mines were decontrolled, subsidies ended, and owners demanded wage reductions. The miners refused to compromise on public ownership which meant they failed to secure reorganisation of the industry and government intervention.44 Sidney Webb’s commitment to nationalisation was linked to clause IV of the Labour Party’s constitution of 1918 in which he played a leading role. It aimed ‘to secure for the producers, by hand or by brain, the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service’. The extension of membership beyond manual workers to all workers ‘by hand or by brain’ would exclude, as Webb pointed out, ‘the unoccupied and unproductive recipients of rents and dividends – the so-called “idle rich”. . . . The Labour Party of the future, in short, is to be a Party of the producers, whether manual workers or brain workers, associated against the private owners of land and capital as such’.45 This strategy was central to the party’s approach to post-war finance and how to deal with war debt.
44
45
Morgan, Consensus and Disunity, pp. 63–6, 70–4; Barry Supple, The History of the British Coal Industry, Volume 4: 1913–1946: The Political Economy of Decline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), ch. 4. Webb, New Constitution, p. 3.
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Table 30.8. Public sector net debt: United Kingdom since 1700, percentage of GDP
Source: Institute for Fiscal Studies TaxLab
Rentiers versus Producers In November 1922, Keynes explained to the Institute of Bankers that ‘The burden of the national debt is the measure of what the active earning part of the community have to hand over to the rentier or bond-holding class . . . You will never induce the active earning taxpayer to surrender more than a certain proportion to the inactive bond-holding rentier class’.46 The politics of debt were linked to equality of sacrifice. Men had been conscripted in the war; it was only fair that wealth should be conscripted. The high level of debt created serious political difficulties as a result of low growth and high interest rates [see Table 30.8].47 Neither was it possible to shift the costs onto the empire as had been done in the nineteenth century: the wartime burdens on India meant that it was granted a degree of fiscal autonomy so that it could impose import duties that hit British cotton textile exports to the subcontinent. Competition
46
47
D. E. Moggridge., ed., The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes: volume 19 Part I: Activities 1922–29: The Return to Gold and Industrial Policy (London: Macmillan, 1981). Daunton, Just Taxes, p. 38; N.F.R. Crafts, ‘Reducing High Public Debt Ratios: Lessons from UK Experience’, Fiscal Studies, 37 (2016), pp. 201–23.
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Table 30.9. Interest as a percent of GDP: United Kingdom 1800–1940 10
percent GDP
8
6
4
2
19 32
19 20
8 19 0
6 18 9
18 8
4
2 18 7
0 18 6
8 18 4
18 36
18 24
18 12
18 00
0 Year
Source: calculated from ukpublicspending.co.uk website
from goods produced with cheap Indian labour became an important issue in Lancashire cotton and Dundee jute after the war. Churchill opposed self-rule on the grounds that it was ‘monstrous that India should be allowed to put on a protective tariff against British goods while Britain herself remains a free trade country’. His solution was to support employers’ attempts to cut wages in Dundee which alienated workers who preferred action to raise wages and improve condition in India, and maintain domestic wages.48 Furthermore, universal manhood suffrage meant that it was not possible to adopt an inequitable tax regime. The costs of debt service were high: in 1913/14, interest on the internal debt was 9.6 per cent of budget receipts; by 1920–21, it was 22.4 per cent of receipts [see Table 30.9].49 How would it be possible to build a land fit for heroes when the costs of servicing the debt were so high?
48 49
Tomlinson, Political Economy of the Raj; on Tomlinson, ‘Churchill’s Defeat’, p. 1005. PP 1927 XI, Report of the Committee on National debt and Taxation, p. 33.
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In 1919, Sidney Webb remarked that ‘The problem of how to deal with finance – involving, as it must, in the society of today, the sharpest issues between class and class – between those who, whether by hand or by brain, live by producing and those who live by merely owning – will presently dominate our politics’. He set producers against parasites and profiteers, and the solution was a one-off tax on capital assets to pay off the debt and allow more generous welfare, that would unite workers, shopkeepers and the salaried middle class against ‘men of great wealth and those living without personal exertion on the proceeds of their investment’. Labour had been conscripted, returning to an uncertain future. Property owners had not risked their lives, and they now lived off the interest payments of the war debt.50 Webb’s opponents saw an attack on property by selfish workers who were exploiting their post-war bargaining position. In their view, the solution was to cut ‘waste’ in government. The Anti-Waste League created by the newspaper proprietor Lord Rothermere in January 1921 won three by-elections, and Lloyd George feared that the coalition might end up ‘. . . caught between labour in the North and anti-waste in the South’.51 Could the coalition fulfil its pledge to ‘reduce the war debt in such manner as may inflict the least injury to industry and credit’? The coalition manifesto was non-committal about the priority to redeeming the national debt by high taxation or by cutting spending on social reforms. How should taxation be levied on goods or incomes, industry or individuals, capital or labour? During the war, income tax was extended to many working people. Before the war, there were about 1.2 million income-tax payers but the number assessed in the war rose to 5,747,000. Miners in South Wales resented paying income tax and in 1919 voted for a tax strike.52 The government’s solution was to remove married working men with families so that the tax only fell on single working men. Philip Snowden, soon to be Labour’s first Chancellor of the Exchequer, realised that any attempt to press for further relief would ‘bring ridicule upon the Labour Movement’.53 The policy of the unions and Labour Party was to pass the cost of war to wealth. In 1916, the TUC passed a resolution demanding that ‘a proportion of the accumulated wealth of the country shall be immediately conscripted’, to avoid large-scale borrowing and the payment of interest after the war which 50
51
52
53
S. Webb, National Finance and a Levy on Capital: What the Labour Party Intends (London: Fabian Society, 1919), pp. 2–3, 16; F. W. Pethick-Lawrence, A Levy on Capital (London: Allen and Unwin, 1918), pp. 77, 85. Quoted in A. MacDonald, ‘The Geddes Committee and the Formulation of British Expenditure Policy, 1921–22’, International Review of Social History, 31 (1976), p. 650. Daunton, Just Taxes, 48; R. C. Whiting, ‘Taxation and the Working Class, 1915–24’, Historical Journal, 33 (1990), pp. 898–906, 916. M. Daunton, ‘How to Pay for the War: State, Society and Taxation in Britain, 1917–24’, English Historical Review, 111 (1996), pp. 889, 890.
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would handicap industries and impoverish the people.54 Here was a way of extending Labour support amongst middle-class electors who did not have accumulated capital and wealth, against wealthy rentiers. Interest payments could be reduced and instead reinvested in productive enterprises and social welfare. A capital levy was not practical politics in war time, given the difficulty of compiling a census of wealth and the threat to confidence that would hamper future borrowing. But the Treasury did not rule out a levy after the war and offered reassurances that the cost of servicing the debt would not harm workers’ interests. At the end of the war the capital levy was accepted as a pragmatic solution by leading economists, and even Bonar Law had an open mind. The problem was that Labour might see the capital levy as a step to nationalisation by retaining ownership of shares. The Labour Party was torn between presenting the levy as a way of reducing taxation and relieving industry, and of releasing funds to allow more generous welfare and implementing Clause IV. The electoral risks of the capital levy became apparent: it was a central element of the programme in the election of 1918 but became a sign that the party was not fit to govern.55 The coalition government needed to show that the fiscal system was fair and equitable in the absence of the capital levy, and that the policy was ‘in the interest of no particular class or section’. The task was not easy. Labour wanted to tax accumulated wealth; meanwhile industrialists complained that they were paying more than their counterparts in other countries in excess profits duty. The duty was meant to expire at the end of the war but in 1918/19 the duty accounted for 36 per cent of the total revenue of the government. In 1919, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Austen Chamberlain, reduced the rate from 80 per cent to 40 per cent, but his need for revenue prevented abolition. The budget of April 1920 raised the excess profits duty to 60 per cent to deal with ‘wholly abnormal and often extravagant profits’ that were causing such political concern; and a new corporation profits tax of 5 per cent was introduced. The Federation of British Industries feared industry would be ‘absolutely crushed’ but Chamberlain refused to give in to pressure from this ‘selfish, swollen lot’. He pointed to the ‘very dangerous feeling throughout the country. If those very great and sudden increases of wealth escape contribution, I think it will be at some cost to the security of more hardly earned capital’.56 Chamberlain’s fear was that ‘the whole capitalist system is being attacked’ as a result of excessive profits made by a few people. ‘We have for the first time a great political party organised on an anti-capital basis. The prejudice against 54 55
56
Daunton, ‘How to Pay’, p. 890 Daunton, ‘How to Pay’, pp. 892–4; A. C. Pigou, ‘A Special Levy to Discharge War Debt’, Economic Journal, 28 (1918), pp. 135–56. Daunton, ‘How to Pay’, pp. 896–903.
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Table 30.10. United Kingdom spending on defence, interest and other items, 1900–1940, percent % 30 20 10 0 –10 –20 1910 1912 1914 1916 1918 1920 1922 1924 1926 1928 1930 1932 1934 1936 1938 1940
Source: calculated from ukpublicspending.co.uk website
great wealth in “pockets” is a danger to all capital’ – and the middle class and squires also resented ‘new men in the country flinging wealth about extravagantly’. The Profiteering Act of 1919 established central and local profiteering committees to investigate prices, costs and profits on the sale of goods in everyday use, and, if the complaint were upheld, to declare a reasonable price. There were few successful cases, and the act annoyed local traders without removing the grievance. Chamberlain turned to a levy specifically on war wealth to respond to the problem of profiteering, deal with the debt, and contain Labour’s radical demands. Unlike the capital levy that would hit all capital, it would preserve the social hierarchy of 1914 by taxing only those who did well from the war, remove the grievances of the professional and ‘black coated’ middle class’ and restore the relative value of different forms of wealth. Churchill agreed. He saw the dangers of maintaining capitalism with ‘this immense electorate’; rejection of the levy would mean that ‘we become a plutocratic and not a national Government – the chance of getting the honest comradeship of the men who saved the country’. But the cabinet rejected the proposal which would alienate business opinion and create ‘unreasoning fear’ in the City, without satisfying Labour. Lloyd George insisted that ‘It is very important to give the impression we are not a “class” Government. The strength of this Government must be that it holds the balance evenly between classes . . . We should lose the support of the professional classes, the small rentier, and the small property-owner’ [Table 30.10].57
57
Daunton, ‘How to Pay’, pp. 903–8
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The government was left in a difficult position in 1920. Labour was demanding a capital levy; the lower middle class wanted a cut to ‘waste’; industry complained of the burden of excess profits duty and profits tax. In August 1921, a Committee on National Expenditure was appointed under the chairmanship of Eric Geddes. Its report proposed cuts in spending – the ‘Geddes axe’ with its threat to the land fit for heroes. In reality, it offered sufficient cuts to contain the threat from anti-waste without ‘any radical abandonment of social provision’. What is most striking about the post-war debates is that the government insisted that industry had the capacity to pay. Taxation of business profits meant that other, more divisive, taxes were avoided – whether the capital levy or a new indirect tax that would fall predominantly on the poor. The tax authorities were not sympathetic to claims that industry was over-burdened. The alternative of a sales tax would increase prices and lead to a demand for higher wages which would precipitate strikes and higher costs. Hence industry would not escape, and it would be easier to pay excess profits duty and corporation tax. The government successfully negotiated the treacherous waters of the post-war financial and fiscal system, with the result that the legitimacy of the tax system was preserved at a higher level of extraction. Whatever the cuts made by Geddes’s axe, spending on welfare remained higher as a proportion of GDP and total government spending than before the war [Table 30.10].58
Homes and Health The high costs of debt service created potential difficulties in delivering the coalition’s promise of social reform, most obviously in housing. The cover of Richard Reiss’s book published in 1919 captured the ambition: a soldier pointed to ‘the home I want’, an ‘A1’ arts and craft style cottage in a garden rather than a row of ‘C3’ terraced houses opening directly onto a paved street. As the cover proclaimed, ‘you cannot expect to get an A1 population out of C3 homes’ [see Fig. 30.2].59 The need for council houses arose from the serious housing shortage at the end of the war. The building boom at the turn of the century was followed by a drop in house prices of around 40 per cent as a result of low returns caused by the glut of houses, increased local government taxes, and higher interest rates.60 By 1914, the over-capacity of housing was ending and, in the normal course of events, a housing boom might have followed – though the squeeze on profits in the Edwardian period possibly marked a major structural change. 58 59 60
Daunton, ‘How to Pay’, pp. 908–15; Macdonald, ‘Geddes Committee’, p. 672. Richard Reiss, The Home I Want (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1919). Avner Offer, Property and Politics, 1870–1914: Landownership, Law, Ideology and Urban Development in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), ch. 18.
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Figure 30.2 ‘You cannot expect an A1 population out of C3 homes’, the cover of Richard Reiss, The home I want (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1919).
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In any case, war meant that building was not possible, which led to social problems as workers moved into the major centres for production of munitions and armaments – above all in Glasgow where the strains of the war collided with pre-war tensions. In Scottish cities, working-class property was let as annual tenancies, unlike the weekly lets in England. The result was a mismatch between the housing and labour markets in terms of ability to move house when changing jobs and budgeting with fluctuating weekly wages. Underpinning this system of long lets was a draconian system of ‘hypothec’ which allowed landlords to seize goods to the value of rent due. The campaign against long lets and hypothec succeeded in 1911 at the price of a swifter procedure for eviction. The result was politicisation of the housing market which exploded in the Glasgow rent strike of 1915.61 Placards held by children proclaimed that ‘My father is fighting in France. We are fighting the Huns at home’, and women in Partick complained that ‘Our husbands, sons and brothers are fighting the Prussians of Germany. We are fighting the Prussians of Partick. Only alternative – municipal housing’.62 The government responded with the Increases of Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act, 1915 which prevented the exploitation of scarcity: the rents of all houses whose rateable value did not exceed £35 in London, £30 in Scotland and £26 elsewhere should not be increased above the ‘standard rent’ paid on 3 August 1914. The act also controlled mortgages by ensuring that interest was not increased or the loans called in to gain a higher return on war bonds. The Act was to apply for the duration of the war and six months afterwards.63 It created serious difficulties for the post-war housing market. Restrictions were due to expire in 1919, and rents would obviously rise given the shortage of property and general inflation. The risk was a return of tenant unrest. Dan Rider, a member of the Reconstruction Committee, warned in 1918 that ‘any increase of rent whatsoever will be greatly resisted . . . any increase owing to scarcity will be strenuously opposed as an attempt of one section of the community to profit at the expense of the workers, resulting in widespread discontent and serious upheavals of extreme gravity’. He warned that ‘if Bolshevism is ever popular in this country’, then the rapacious 61
62
63
M. Daunton, House and Home in the Victorian City: Working-Class Housing 1850–1914 (London: Edward Arnold, 1983), pp. 132–8, 153–4; David Englander, Landlord and Tenant in Urban Britain, 1838–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), ch. 8 and 10; Joseph Melling, Rent Strikes: People’s Struggle for Housing in West Scotland, 1890–1916 (Edinburgh: Polygon Books, 1983). See photos at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01sgk4m and https://www.theglasgowstory .com/image/?inum=TGSE00907 PP 1918 XIII, Ministry of Reconstruction. Report of the Committee on the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Acts; Englander, Landlord and Tenant, pp. 234–5.
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behaviour of landlords would be the reason. His fears were realised when rent strikes reappeared in late 1918 and early 1919. Rent controls did not provide security of tenure and landlords started to evict tenants. One judge warned Christopher Addison, President of the Local Government Board from January 1919, of the risk of ‘evicting families by dozens into the streets or the workhouse. I need not dwell upon the serious addition to the present state of “unrest” that such happenings would produce’. Not everyone was sympathetic. One official complained in August 1919 that a worker was willing to pay £50 for a piano or fur coat for his wife but was unwilling to pay a decent rent. Of course, retaining the restrictions would limit the construction of new houses. The government was caught in a dilemma: ‘You will not get the houses until the Act is removed, and, therefore, unless the Act is removed the necessity for the Act remains.’64 On the last day of 1918, the Reconstruction Committee recommended the continuation of controls for a further two and a half years, to the alarm of some ministers who felt that landlords were sacrificed. The Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Act of 1919 allowed an increase of rents of 10 per cent, an additional ½ percent mortgage interest up to a maximum of 5 per cent, and extended controls to houses with a rateable value up to £70 in London, £60 in Scotland and £52 elsewhere. It was admitted that an increase of 35 per cent was needed to return landlords to the position in 1914, but rents would only rise gradually to meet the general price level to avoid social unrest and to keep rents within limits that public opinion thought equitable. Rent controls were expected to end in 1923 when it was hoped that the housing shortage would be removed by state subsidy of both private and public housing, and the market would ‘be again established on an economic footing’.65 State intervention was largely a response to the distorted economics of the housing market and political concerns about social unrest. Here was the challenge confronted by Addison, who from June 1919 to April 1921 served as the first Minister of Health. The Housing, Town Planning Act of 1919 – the Addison Act – proposed to build 500,000 houses by 1922, but the target was not met. In all, 170,090 houses were built by local authorities and a further 39,186 by subsidised private enterprise. One view of the termination of the programme is that the end of post-war unrest removed the need to insure against revolution. More plausibly, the early termination of the scheme was the result of a serious ‘liquidity’ problem. At the end of the war, local authorities and the contractors who built most of the houses had problems in 64
65
Englander, Landlord and Tenant, pp. 235, 238, 267–85, 289, 291; TNA HLG 41/24; PP 1918 XIII, Committee on the Increase of Rent. PP 1918 XIII, Committee on the Increase of Rent; PP 1920 XVIII, Report of the Committee on the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act; Englander, Landlord and Tenant, pp. 286–94.
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raising finance. Local authority bond issues often failed and local authorities turned to more expensive forms of finance; contractors and builders’ merchants had similar problems in financing their activities and securing materials. Wartime controls on building were removed at the end of 1918, so that local authority schemes had to compete for scarce resources at inflated prices: costs rose from an estimated £600 a house in 1918 to £1,200 in 1920. Skilled labour was in short supply and expensive; and builders formed cartels to limit competitive tendering.66 Local authorities also needed to secure land, and vendors could demand high prices until councils secured compulsory purchase powers in 1919.67 Addison was side-lined as minister without portfolio in April 1921, and he resigned from the government in July when the cabinet decided to suspend the housing programme.68 In theory, rent controls were meant to end in 1923 but the failure to remove the housing shortage meant they continued until controls were extended during the Second World War. The result was distortion of housing markets: existing tenants with low rents had no incentive to move, and new households had to enter the uncontrolled market at higher rents. Council housing did not disappear. Labour argued that it should be the norm rather than a means of ending a shortage to allow the return of private enterprise. Labour’s Housing (Financial Provision) Act of 1924 moved beyond a return to ‘normalcy’ and offered a longer-term, fifteen-year programme of subsidies.69 The Local Government Board, and its successor the Ministry of Health, had oversight not only for housing but also for public health. During the war, the health of the nation remained more or less stable, with gains from some groups who benefitted from higher wages and a better diet, and losses for others.70 The major exception was the influenza pandemic which swept across 66
67 68 69
70
Mark Swenarton, Homes Fit for Heroes: The Politics and Architecture of Early State Housing in Britain (London: Heinemann, 1981), pp. 81, 85–7, 113–21, 129, 131–2, 161; S. Marriner, ‘Cash and Concrete: Liquidity Problems in the Mass Production of “homes for heroes”’, Business History, 18 (1976), p. 182; L. F. Orbach, Homes for Heroes: A Study of the Evolution of British Public Housing, 1915–21 (London: Seeley, 1977), ch. 5 and 6; Madge Dresser, ‘Housing Policy in Bristol, 1919–30’ and Robert Ryder, ‘Council House Building in County Durham, 1900–39: The Local Implementation of National Policy’, in M. Daunton, ed., Councillors and Tenants: Local Authority Housing in English Cities, 1919–1939 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1984). Ryder, ‘Council House Building’, pp. 58–60. Marriner, ‘Cash and Concrete’, pp. 152–3. PP 1923 VIIii Final Report of the Departmental Committee on the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Act 1920; Englander, Landlord and Tenant, p. 287. The optimistic assessment of Jay Winter, The Great War and the British People (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986) is modified in H. Harris, ‘The Demographic Impact of the First World War: An Anthropometric Perspective’, Social History of Medicine (1993) and L. Breeder, ‘The First World War: Heathy or Hungry?’, History Workshop Journal, 24 (1987) and by Winter in ‘Surviving the War: Life Expectations, Illness and Mortality
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the globe in three waves between March 1918 and April 1919. The impact was particularly severe in the second wave that hit Britain in September– November 1918. Data are not reliable given the problems of recording causes of death: overall influenza was recorded as killing around 225,000 people in Britain. In London, 16,250 influenza deaths were recorded between June 1918 and May 1919, of which 11,898 were in the autumn. Unusually, this strain of influenza hit the young and healthy between the ages of fifteen and forty-five rather than the elderly, probably because it was virulent and provoked a destructive immune response in younger people. The speed and virulence of the disease, and the lack of scientific understanding or therapies, overwhelmed the medical community and public health officials across the world – but the response in Britain was particularly ineffective, despite its welldeveloped system of public health. In the United States, a number of cities imposed social distancing measures of isolation and quarantine, school closures and bans on public gatherings.71 In Britain, the official advice was to continue business as normal, to avoid ‘scare-mongering’ and to remain calm and cheerful as the best prophylactic. Absences hit war-related industries such as mining and munitions, and any further measures to stop the spread of the diseases would affect the war effort. Arthur Newsholme, the chief medical officer at the Local Government Board, admitted that lives could have been saved by isolating the sick and excluding them from work, or increasing floorspace in factories and barracks, but ‘There are national circumstances in which the major duty is to “carry on”, even when risk to life and health is involved’. Official advice in October and November was minimal and was based on the preventive measures used for other infectious diseases, of cleanliness, disinfectant gargling, and ventilation – specifically of cinemas which reflected cultural concern rather than epidemiology. Despite the risks, election rallies, mass meetings and celebrations continued, and the Lancet noted that there was not ‘on the part of the public any general attempt to limit intercourse where this is possible’. Some local public health committees saw the danger, but little was done. The high death rate could be blamed on weakened resistance of a war-weary population, and it was masked by the death of young adult men during the war. Supporters of a new Ministry of Health argued that the pandemic was the price for the failure to replace the ineffective Local
71
Rates in Paris, London and Berlin, 1914–19’, in J. Winter and J.-L. Robert (eds.), Capital Cities at War: London, Paris, Berlin, 1914–1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 519. Richard J. Hatchett, Carter E. Mecher and Marc Lipsitch, ‘Public Health Interventions and Epidemic Intensity during the 1918 Influenza Epidemic’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA, 104 (2007).
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Government Board; fortunately, the virus mutated and deaths fell after the third wave in 1919.72 The promises of welfare and social reform in the manifesto in 1918 were scaled down rather than rejected. A frequent claim is that social reform failed after the war, and that the government was looking for a return to 1914 and a free market. Addison became a fierce critic of the coalition, and as a member of Attlee’s government after the Second World War drew a contrast between success then and failure in 1919–21. It is true that some radical reforms, such as coordinating the existing institutions of health care, were not implemented and that Addison’s new Ministry of Health was a weak body. Similarly, H. A. L. Fisher’s Education Act of 1918 failed to raise the school leaving age, but there were gains. The Education Act did instruct local authorities to provide schools for all ages. The housing programme was far from perfect, but it marked a major intervention. Further, a new principle was introduced in unemployment insurance. In October 1918, Addison worried about the effect of demobilisation and running down of war industries. The government had not prepared plans for the extension of unemployment insurance beyond the few occupations covered in 1911, and the right to benefits was determined by payment into the scheme. Returning soldiers had not paid contributions during war service, so the immediate response in November 1918 was to offer ‘out of work donations’ – the payment of benefits without contribution. The scheme was costly, and in 1920 the government tried to revert to the principle of 1911 by extending contributory unemployment insurance to all workers except in agriculture and domestic service. Despite failures, Gillian Sutherland concludes that ‘expectations of what the State ought to provide for everyone were expanded’, and Kenneth Morgan argued that ‘the 1919 and 1920 sessions were marked by a spate of social legislation without parallel since the heady days of the 1911 National Insurance Act. The Coalition became the vehicle for the New Liberalism redivivus’. Morgan rightly points out that the outcome was ‘far from negligible’ until the impact of dear money and return to gold constrained the social programme in 1921–2.73 Even then, public spending on health, education and welfare remained at a higher level than before the
72
73
Catherine Rollet, ‘The “Other War” II: Setbacks in Public Health’, in Winter and Robert (eds.), Capital Cities, pp. 480–5; Sandra M. Tomkins, ‘The Failure of Expertise: Public Health Policy in Britain during the 1918–19 Influenza Epidemic’, Social History of Medicine (1992), pp. 435–54. P. Abrams, ‘The Failure of Social Reform, 1918–20’, Past and Present 24 (1961); Rodney Lowe, ‘The Erosion of State Intervention in Britain, 1917–1924’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 31 (1978), pp. 270–86; Gillian Sutherland, ‘Review: Social Policy in the Interwar Years’, Historical Journal, 16 (1973), pp. 421–3, 425, 427–8; Morgan, Consensus and Disunity, pp. 82–4, 92–3, 106; Christopher Addison, The Betrayal of the Slums (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1922).
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war – though admittedly less than promised in the manifesto of 1918, and less than Addison and Labour wished.
Conclusion The events of 1919 were, in part, a culmination of the crises of the Edwardian period over home rule, a resurgent working class, and concerns over the empowerment of women. These issues were now negotiated in difficult circumstances after the war, when they collided with new concerns about debt, the return of industries to private management, the overturn of social hierarchies, and the intensification of problems in Ireland. There was social unrest in Britain, but in general the story is less about revolution than resolution. Returning soldiers were reinstated into the workforce and attempts were made to end dilution, restore differentials, and remove women. The violence and bloodshed in Ireland was a different matter, but in Britain there were considerable changes. The massive redistribution of income from capital to labour led to unease from the middle classes who saw their relative position decline, and the costs of servicing debt were high and led to political difficulties. However, the tensions were negotiated more successfully than in other combatant nations, with the survival of the tax regime at much higher levels of extraction and more spending on welfare. The political economy of Britain was transformed by a change in trade policy and the impact of foreign competition, by reorganisation of utilities on their return to private control, and by the higher costs generated through the advances of labour.
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INDEX
Aberdare, charitable relief in, 313 ‘The Abolition of Economic Control’ (Tawney), 243 Abraham, W. J., 233, 235 Absolute pacifism, 512–13 Acland, F. D., 162 Adams, R. J. Q., 362–3 Adamson, Willie, 230, 276–7 Addison, Christopher health and, 75 housing and, 75–6, 629–30 Munitions of War (Amendment) Act 1916 and, 378 munitions production and, 367–70 social reform and, 603, 632–3 Stokes mortar and, 373 tanks and, 373 unemployment insurance and, 632 ‘Addison Act’, 629–30 Admiralty. See also Royal Navy generally, 9 Auxiliary Patrol, 187, 190–1, 194 ‘badging’ of employees, 290 blockade of Germany and, 73 control of shipbuilding industry, 401 convoys and, 456–7 Defence Regulations and, 84 fishing industry and, 186–9 merchant shipping and, 70 munitions production and, 71 pensions and, 75 railways and, 429, 435–6 requisition of property by, 82 Requisitioning Branch, 462
Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) (Trawler) Section, 186–7, 194, 198, 459 shipbuilding industry and, 419–20 timber industry and, 173 Transport Department, 459, 462 war strategy and, 9 Admiralty, War Office, and Press Committee (AWOPC), 491–4 Aerial Navigation Acts, 81 Agriculture. See also Food generally, 203–4 Board of Agriculture (See Board of Agriculture) Board of Agriculture and Fisheries (See Board of Agriculture and Fisheries) ‘business as usual’ and, 205 child labour in, 216, 565–6 continental Europe compared, 475–8 County War Agricultural Executive Committees (CWAECs), 210, 215, 218 Cultivation of Lands Order, 210 Defence of the Realm Act and, 210, 212–13 emergency measures proposed, 206–7 in England, 206–7, 212 enlistment, effect of, 207–8, 261–2, 290 family farms, 529–31 family pig, 529 farm horses, requisition of, 207 food shortages, 209 free trade, effect of, 4–5 Germany compared, 209
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increase in production, 475–8 in Ireland, 204–8, 215, 262 labour shortages, 208–9, 214–15 land acquisition and, 212–13 machinery, 213 manuring and, 205 minimum prices, 211–12 minimum wages, 211–12 ploughing regulation, 211 in post-war period, 217–19 prisoners of war and internees, use of, 216, 353–4 in Scotland, 204–7, 212–14 as sheltered from war, 202–3 statistics, 204–5, 217 stock returns, 205 substitute labor, 216–17 tension between agricultural and military needs, 217 tractors, 213 in Wales, 212 women, employment of, 215–16, 262 The Aims of Labour (Henderson), 275 Air Ministry, 71 Air raid committees, 104 Air raids civilians, targeting, 23–4, 589–91, 597–8 Giants (planes), 595 Gothas (planes), 24, 592 lessons from, 597–8 letters and, 593–6 women and children as vulnerable victims of, 24–5, 596 Alcohol homes and families and, 538–9 Lloyd George on, 376, 378, 408–9 women and, 538–9 Alexandra Palace internment camp, 342–3 Alexandra (Queen), 61, 304 Aliens Registration Act, 552 Aliens Restrictions Acts, 80, 86 Allen, Clifford, 516 Allen, D. E., 486 Allen, Mary, 558, 560 Amalgamated Musicians’ Union, 272 Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, 272
Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), 263, 276, 374, 409 Amalgamated Society of General Toolmakers, Engineers and Machinists, 263 Amara, Michael, 315 AMC Cap Trafalgar, 458 Ancaster, Lord (Gilbert HeathcoteDrummond-Willoughby), 211 Angell, Norman, 43, 511, 517–19, 521–3 Anglican Church. See Church of England Anglo–German Committee, 116 Anglo–German Friendship Society, 116 Anglo–Irish Treaty (1921), 610 Annual Statutes, 80–1 Anti-Corn Law League, 6 Anti-Semitism Bolshevik Revolution and, 509 riots, 556 Anti-Waste League, 623 ‘Appeal to Evangelical Christians Abroad’, 130–1 Aquascutum, 290 Aquinas, Thomas, 132 Arboricultural Society, 179 Archbishop of Canterbury, 592 Argentina, meat imports from, 450 Armaments. See Munitions production Armed merchant cruisers (AMCs), 457–8 Armenian genocide, 491, 507, 509 Armitage, Joseph, 581–2 Armstrong Whitworth Ltd, 330–1, 407 Army Accrington Pals, 284 Army Veterinary Corps, 433–4 British Expeditionary Force (See British Expeditionary Force) Buffs, 433–4 conscription (See Conscription) 11th East Lancashire Regiment, 284 15th Highland Light Infantry, 284 15th Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 284 51st Highland Division, 20–1 1st Birmingham Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 50
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Army (cont.) 14th Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 284 14th Welsh Regiment, 284 4th Division, 387 Glasgow Corporation Tramways Battalion, 284 Grenadier Guards, 433–4 Grimsby Chums, 284 Hertfordshire Yeomanry, 433–4 Highland Light Infantry, 396 Inns of Court Officer Training Corps, 283 King’s Own Scottish Borderers, 32, 117, 396 King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, 433–4 London Scottish, 433–4 Medical Corps, 433–4 munitions production and, 360–1 Ordnance Department, 362, 369 Public Schools Battalion, 284 relative invisibility of troops on home front, 21–2 Royal Engineers, 433–4 Royal Engineers Forestry Companies, 178 Royal Engineers Works, 355 Royal Fusiliers, 99 Royal Fusiliers (London Regiment Battalions), 50 Royal Sussex Regiment, 445 Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 433–4 Scots Guards, 433–4 17th (Service) Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers (NER Pioneers), 434–5 16th (Irish) Division, 288, 396 16th Middlesex Regiment, 284 16th Northumberland Fusiliers, 284 6th Welsh Battalion, 433–4 Stockbrokers Battalion, 289 Swansea Pals, 284 10th (Irish) Division, 288 10th Lincolnshire Regiment, 284 10th Royal Fusiliers, 289 38th (Welsh) Division, 287 36th (Ulster) Division, 288
216th Fortress Company, Royal Engineers, 425 Army Act 1881, 79 Army Council Defence Regulations and, 84 supplies for troops and, 307, 310 timber industry and, 170, 174 Army Medical Department, 309 Army Service Corps (ASC), 308, 580 Arnold-Forster, Hugh, 309 Arran, Earl of (Arthur Gore), 504 Ashanti Expeditionary Force, 308 Ashley, William, 69–70 Ashton, Thomas, 227 Asquith, Herbert Henry generally, 13, 56, 89, 363 agriculture and, 206–7 on Belgian refugees, 323 Bonar Law, early support of, 10 ‘business as usual’ and, 12 Cabinet appointments, 14, 16–18, 224 Cabinet government and, 64–7 civilian internment and, 333–4 coal industry and, 221, 223, 225 coalition government and, 11, 65–6, 271, 281, 410 Committee on the Co-ordination of Military and Financial Effort, 67 as Congregationalist, 124–5 conscription and, 15, 67, 295, 513 Conservative Party, early support of, 10 coupon election and, 604–6 criticism of, 11 Dardanelles Committee, 65–6 German invasion of Belgium and, 512 health and, 75 on honour, 120, 132 Irish Nationalists, early support of, 10 as leader of Liberal Party, 17 League of Nations and, 521 Lloyd George compared, 19, 67, 69 middle ground in Liberal Party, finding, 13 monarchy and, 59–60 munitions production and, 364, 366
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peace movement and, 511, 518 in pre-war period, 30–1 propaganda and, 490 recruitment and, 282 remaining Prime Minister, 10 ‘shells crisis’ and, 366 split in Liberal Party and, 519 strengthening of position, 11 War Council, 64–6 War Policy Committee and, 66–7 on women’s suffrage, 601–2 Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, 561 Astor, Waldorf, 234–5 At War! (Schaller), 575–6 Attlee, Clement, 632 Aubers Ridge, 10–11 Austin, Alfred, 203 Australia armed forces in war, 21 conscription in, 519–20 meat imports from, 450 prisoners of war and internees in, 333 timber from, 160 trade with, 3, 159 transplanted Britons in, 42 tungsten from, 147 wool from, 249 Austro–Hungarian Empire deprivations in, 583 food queues in, 586 refractory materials from, 144 seizure of ships by United States, 422 sugar imports from, 474 United Kingdom compared, 45 Auxiliary Patrol, 187, 190–1, 194 Auxiliary Shipbuilding Department, 418 Baden-Powell, Robert, 570, 572 Balderston, Theo, 255 Baldwin, Stanley, 379 Baldwin’s, 144 Balfour, Arthur as First Lord of the Admiralty, 16–17 munitions production and, 360, 365–6
tanks and, 373 in War Committee, 66 on War Council, 65 war strategy and, 17 Balkan Wars, 44 Ball, James B., 163, 169 Ballantyne, R. M., 573 Bampfylde, Joseph, 163, 168 Bank holidays, 245 Bank of England borrowing from, 252–3 as buyer of last resort, 245 cotton industry and, 615–16 currency exchange rate and, 247 free trade and, 244 response to war, 71 Stock Exchange and, 245 Banks, government intervention in, 12 Banks-Martin, Robert, 98–9, 109 Baptist Union, 116 Baptists, 113, 124–5 ‘Barbed wire disease’, 348 Barbour, Mary, 264–5 Barking Advertiser, 98, 102, 104–5 Barnbaugh Colliery, 237 Barnbow National Filling Factory, 375 Barnes, George, 75, 271, 273, 275 Barnett, Margaret, 91, 471, 474 Barratt, William Donald, 139–40 Barton, James, 507 Basic Iron Programme, 145, 151 Bayes, Walter, 597 Beardmore’s Naval Construction Works, 406 Beatrice (Princess), 57 Beatty, David, 52 Beaverbrook, Lord (Max Aitken), 23, 40 Belfast Chamber of Commerce, 169–70 police strike in, 557 rioting in, 609 Belfast Trades Council, 277–8 Belgian Canal Boat Fund, 300 Belgian Hospitality Committee, 324 Belgian refugees generally, 314–17, 332, 583 archives, 331
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Belgian refugees (cont.) atrocities, tales of, 319–21 barbarism, feeling, 321 Brabant, from, 318 categories of, 317 cessation of influx, 318 charitable relief and, 296, 298–300 cultural mobilisation, role in, 318–19 early struggle to respond to, 321 economic cooperation and, 331 Flemish provinces, from, 318 government involvement in relief, 323–4 heroes, viewed as, 319 ‘home front’ and, 316 integration of workers, 328–31 in Ireland, 318 Jews and, 322–3 local efforts, 321–2 munitions production, employment in, 374 railways and, 425, 443 rioting against, 326, 328 Roman Catholics and, 322 scale of, 317 scholarly studies, 315–16 in Scotland, 318 specific group solidarity, 323 tensions with, 324–8, 331–2 in Wales, 318 Walloon provinces, from, 318 Belgian Soldiers’ Fund, 300, 306 Belgium deprivations in, 583 German atrocities in, 122, 132–3, 591 German invasion of, 512, 518 imports from, 288–9 military mobilisation in, 328 monarchy in, 62 neutrality, German violation of, 119–20, 122 rape of women in, 560–1 refugees from (See Belgian refugees) Roman Catholics in, 125 self-defence and, 112 timber industry, inter-allied committees, 169 Bennett, Edie, 593–5
Bennett, Edwin “Welsh,” 593–5 Berridge, Virginia, 88 Bessemer process, 138, 145 Beveridge, William generally, 85 on competition, 269 food and, 471 food rationing and, 74, 88–9 on government control of economy, 242–3, 258 on mutual aid, 297 social security and, 258, 275 war economy and, 27 Bevin, Ernest, 86 Bideford, Westward Ho! and Appledore Railway, 437 Big Ben, 592 Bigamy, 546 Bilbrough, Ethel, 583, 593 Bill of Rights 1689, 78 Bird, Charles Wesley, 182 Birmingham, population of, 35–6 Birmingham City Battalions, 284 Blackbourn, David, 61 Blanchard, Ben, 306 Blockade of Germany generally, 361 fishing industry and, 197–8 France, coordination with, 19 war strategy, 8–10, 18 Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, 210 Board games, children and, 576 Board of Agriculture generally, 105, 211, 218 Defence Regulations and, 86 Food Production Department (FPD), 210–11, 213, 217 Labour Branch, 216 labour shortages and, 214 Lloyd George and, 209–10 manuring and, 205 recruitment and, 73 stock returns, 205 timber industry and, 163–4, 166–8 women in timber industry and, 180–1 Board of Agriculture and Fisheries generally, 262 fishing industry and, 188–9 timber industry and, 162, 164, 167–8
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women in timber industry and, 179 Board of Education for England and Wales, 566–7 Board of Fisheries, 85 Board of Trade generally, 1, 9, 66–7, 69–70 blockade of Germany and, 10 coal industry and, 225 on conscription, 292 Controller of Timber Supplies (CTS), 163, 169–70, 173, 354 on enlistment, 290–1 food and, 482, 485 inflation and, 613 merchant shipping and, 71, 74, 450, 459, 461, 463 Ministry of Labour and, 72 protectionism and, 18–19 Timber Cutting Section, 180 timber industry and, 162–3, 167–8, 172–3 Timber Supply Committee, 182 Timber Supply Department (TSD) (See Timber Supply Department (TSD)) trade unions and, 264 Treasury Agreement and, 410 uniforms and, 393–4 women in timber industry and, 179–81 Boer War. See South African War Boilermakers Society, 403–6 Bolshevik Revolution anti-Semitism and, 509 fear of political upheaval and, 22–3, 378 fishing industry and, 199 food shortages and, 269–70 Labour Party and, 237 monarchy and, 56 peace movement and, 516, 518–20 women and, 588 Bonar Law, Andrew on capital levy, 624 as Chancellor of Exchequer, 67, 463–4, 490 in Colonial Office, 11 on conscription, 16 coupon election and, 604–5
early support of Asquith, 10 expenditures and, 77 Ireland and, 32 merchant shipping and, 463–4 monarchy and, 59–60 protectionism and, 19 on tariffs, 18 taxation and, 251 on voluntarism, 490, 497, 499 in War Cabinet, 67, 70 in War Committee, 66 Bonds. See Debt Bonzon, Thierry, 106 Books, children and, 573–6 Booth, Charles, 36 Booth, George Macaulay, 365–6 Boothman, Joseph, 302 Borrowing. See Debt Borthwick, Albert, 167 Boston Deep Sea Fishing and Ice Company, 199–200 Bottomley, Horatio, 55 Bourke, Joanna, 528 Bourne, Francis, 118, 125 Bowr, Gertie, 222–3 Bowter, Mary Sophia, 535 Boy Scouts, 43, 568–70 Boys’ Brigade, 568–9 The Boys’ Own Paper (magazine), 573 Brace, William, 224, 228, 230–1, 271 Bradbury, John, 245 Brand, R. H., 244–5 Bratchell, Edgar George, 97 Bread, 471, 617 Brereton, Frederick Sadlier, 573 Brewer, John, 544, 554 Bright, John, 42–3 British Empire. See also specific country challenges to dominant position, 45–6 changing relationship with, 3 India, role of, 3–4 pre-war attitudes toward, 41–2 tension with British Isles, 30 trade within, 3 war as unifying force, 4 British Empire Agency, 282 British Expeditionary Force generally, 64–5, 362
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British Expeditionary Force (cont.) creation of, 42 deployment to France, 8 India and, 7 letters to, 528 railways and, 429, 434–7 reluctance to deploy, 7 in Second World War, 26–7 shortages of manpower, 15 uniforms and, 385, 387 The British Food Supply (Beveridge), 471 British Ford, 213 British Legion, 312 British Manganese Co Ltd, 149 British Munitions Board, 369–70 British Red Cross Society, 304 British Workers’ League, 234–6, 273 Brocton internment camp, 340 Brooke Hitching, Thomas, 306 Broughton, Leonard G., 118 Brown, Ian, 154–5 Brown, William John, 529 Brownies, 572 Brunner, Mond and Co, 24–5 Bryce, James Viscount, 521, 523 Bryder, Linda, 484–5 Buchan, John, 23–4 Buckingham Palace, 56 Bull, Paul, 124 Burford Hancock, Lady (Alice Maud Nancy), 596–7 Burroughs, E. A., 538 ‘Business as usual’ agriculture and, 205 criticism of phrase, 11–12 Defence of the Realm Act and, 89–90 finance and, 71, 242 free trade and, 12 munitions production and, 71, 379 railways and, 445 ‘shells crisis’ and, 366 Butling, Ben, 580 Butling, Eric, 580 Butling, George, 580 Butling, Grace, 580 Buxton Lime Firms, 141
Cabinet Committee on Manpower, 217 Cabinet government. See also specific person or office generally, 63, 77 Asquith and, 64–7 CID compared, 64 conscription and, 67 disputes regarding war strategy, 66–7 economists and, 69–70 food and, 74–5 growth in number of departments, 71 health and, 75–6 housing and, 75–6 informality of, 63–4 labour and, 72–3 Lloyd George and, 67–70 merchant shipping and, 70–1, 73–4 munitions production and, 71–2 pensions and, 75 in pre-war period, 63–4 railways and, 71 recruitment and, 73 secretaries, 69 standing committees, 68–9 trade and, 73–4 Treasury control, 64, 77 Cahalan, Peter, 315 Cairncross, Alec, 257 Caledonian Railway, 437–9 Calthrop, Guy, 225 Calvinistic Methodists, 113 Cambrian Collieries, 367, 370, 377 Cammaerts, Emile, 329–30 Campbell-Morgan, George, 119 Camps Library, 310 Canada Canadian Corps, 21–2 Canadian Forestry Corps (CFC), 161 clothing procured from, 392, 394–5 conscientious objectors in, 513–14 food imports from, 474 prisoners of war and internees in, 333 railways and, 436–7 timber from, 153–4, 157, 160, 174, 176 trade with, 3, 159
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transplanted Britons in, 42 Canadian Northern Steamships, 464 ‘Canary girls’, 25 Cannadine, David, 49, 52 Capital markets bank holidays, 245 Bank of England as buyer of last resort, 245 effect of war on, 244–6 free trade in, 244 government intervention in, 247–8 interest rates and, 245, 247 moratorium on debt, 245 printing of money, 245 problems in, 246 regulation of, 246–7 The Captain (magazine), 573 Cardiff and District Women’s Suffrage Society, 277 Cardiff Commercial Battalion, 396 Cardiff Railway Company, 290 Carmania (Cunard liner), 458 Carmarthenshire War Agricultural Committee, 531 Carnegie Peace Endowment, 88–9 Carruthers, Susan, 88 Carson, Edward, 32, 418 Carter, Hyley, 528 Cartmell, Anna, 428 Casartelli, Louis, 125 Casement, Roger, 555 Casson, Mark, 427 Catholic Women’s League, 322 Catholics. See Roman Catholics Cave, George, 603 Cecil, Robert, 17, 73, 602 Cecilie (German Princess), 61 Cecilienhof (Potsdam), 61 Cenotaph, 51, 608 Censorship, 490–2 Central Committee on Women’s Employment, 391–3 Central Control Board, 409 Central Labour College, 224, 227–8 Central Land Association, 212 Central Register of Belgian Refugees, 317–18 Chamberlain, Austen, 624–5
Chamberlain, Joseph, 41 Chamberlain, Neville, 16, 72–3 Chancellor of the Exchequer bank holidays and, 245 borrowing by, 252–3 Excess Profits Duty (EPD) and, 413, 624 government expenditures and, 64, 76–7 taxation and, 251 Treasury Agreement and, 263–4, 410 Charitable relief generally, 296–7 in Aberdare, 313 amount raised, 300–1 Belgian refugees and, 296, 298–300 children, involvement of, 304–5 demographics of persons involved, 302 Director General of Voluntary Organisations (DGVO), 304, 307, 310–12 fraud in, 305–7 Germany compared, 311–12 local efforts, 302–3 monarchy and, 53–4 mutual aid, 297–8 National Relief Fund (NRF), 298–300 number of charities, 300 number of persons involved, 301–2 philanthropy, 297 in pre-war period, 37–8, 297–8 professionalism and, 312 types of causes, 303 voluntarism and, 312 women and, 298–9, 301–2 Charity Organisation Society, 299 Charity Organisation Society of Fulham, 326 Charles, Robert, 123 Charles I, 60, 79–80 Charman, Terry, 88 Chemical weapons, 596 Children agriculture, child labour in, 216, 565–6 air raids, as vulnerable victims of, 24–5, 596
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Children (cont.) board games and, 576 books and, 573–6 charitable relief, involvement in, 304–5 child labour, 565–6 child neglect, 541 contributions to war effort, 566–7 enlistment by underage minors, 565 family connections, effect of war on, 564, 579–82 infant welfare, 539–41 letters and, 564, 579–82 mobilisation of, 564 schools and education during war, 566–8 songs and, 567–8 South African War, underage minors serving in, 565 timber industry, child labour in, 176 toy guns, 577 toys and, 576–9 youth groups, 567–72 Children Act 1908, 547–8 Children in Need (charity), 303–4 China timber industry, unskilled labour from, 178 Christadelphians, 515 Church Lads’ Brigade, 282 Church of England generally, 113 anti-war sentiment among, 130 in England, 113 ‘The Ethics of War’ series and, 118 homes and families and, 537 in Ireland, 113–14 monarchy and, 58 peace movement and, 116–17 in pre-war period, 39 recruitment and, 123–4 response to war, 114–15 Church of England Peace League, 116 Church of Scotland see also Presbyterians, 113 Church of Wales, 603 Churchill, Winston
Dardanelles Campaign and, 11 duties and, 618 Economic Section of War Cabinet, 69–70 economists and, 69–70 India and, 622–6 industrial conscription and, 86 in Ministry of Munitions, 369 on monarchy, 51 Munitions of War (Amendment) Act 1916 and, 378 press and, 491 Prime Minister’s Statistical Section, 69–70 on Shells Committee, 363 tanks and, 373 on War Council, 65 on wealth levy, 625 CID. See Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) Clark, Andrew, 202, 208 Class distinction food and, 481–3, 485–6 monarchy and, 53 in pre-war period, 36–7 prisoners of war and internees and, 345–6 working class, disproportionate burden of deprivations during war, 584–8, 591–2 Clémentel, Etienne, 19 Clergy. See also specific person or denomination anti-war sentiment among, 130 cultural mobilisation and, 114–15, 131–2 dissenting voices, 128–30 ‘The Ethics of War’ series, 118–28, 132 on German barbarism, 121–3, 132–3 German clergy, response to, 130–1 on Germans as anti-Christian, 123 on honour and war, 119–21 hope for revival resulting from war, 132 on just war, 126–7 peace movement and, 116–17 public endorsement of war, 117 recruitment and, 123–5
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on righteousness of war, 118–19, 132 South African War, opposition to, 116, 118 Cleveland Mine Owners Association, 140–1 Clifford, John, 116, 118–19 Clothing industry. See also Uniforms collaboration in, 391–4 labour and, 388–9, 396–7 self-mobilisation of, 388–91 women in, 390–1 Clyde Dilution Commission, 416–17 Clyde Shipbuilders’ Association, 405, 411, 416–17 Clyde Workers’ Committee (CWC), 409–10, 415–16 Clydeside conscription, effect of, 16 Defence of the Realm Act and, 415–16 dilution of labour in, 416–17 general strike in, 606–7 Labour Party in, 607 labour unrest in, 12, 376–7, 409, 412–13 leaving certificates in, 411 Munitions of War Act 1915, resistance to, 414–17 political surveillance in, 555 ‘Red Clydeside’, 264–5, 416, 555, 607 rent strikes in, 264–5 shipbuilding industry in, 411 strikes in, 374–5 workers’ newspapers, suppression of, 415–16 Clynes, J. R., 271, 275 Co-op Party, 271, 276 Coal Controller, 225, 227 Coal industry generally, 221 anti-war sentiment among miners, 232–3 ‘comb out’, 226–7 Conciliation Boards, 222 conscription and, 226–7 Conservative Party and, 235–6 decline in output, 227 decontrol of, 239
Defence of the Realm Act and, 266–8 diversity of, 222 divisions among miners created by war, 235 enlistment, effect of, 223, 265 France, supplying of coal to, 221 government intervention in, 221, 225, 238–9 importance of, 265 Labour Party and, 228, 230–40 labour unrest in, 607 Liberal Party and, 228, 233–5 Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) (See Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB)) Mining Association of Great Britain, 222, 225 overview of, 222 post-war expectations of miners, 227 in post-war period, 239–40, 620 pro-war sentiment among miners, 233–5 South Wales Miners’ Federation (SWMF), 223–5, 232–4, 266 statistics, 221 strikes in, 222–5, 265–6 trade unions and, 222–3 wage bargaining in, 221, 223–4, 266 Yorkshire Miners’ Association (YMA), 235–7 Coal Mining Organisation Committee, 225 Coalition government Asquith and, 11, 65–6, 271, 281, 410 Conservative Party and, 11, 19, 65–6 Labour Party and, 19, 230–2 Liberal Party and, 11, 19 Cobden, Richard, 6, 42–3 Cock, Albert A., 567 Cohen-Portheim, Paul, 343, 347, 351 Coke production, 143 Cole, G. D. H., 274, 375 Collard, A. S., 418 Colley, Linda, 29 Collings, Jesse, 205 Colonial Office, 9 Comic Relief, 303–4 Commission Internationale de Ravitaillement, 249
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Commission Internationale des Achats de Bois, 169 Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) generally, 4 Balfour in, 16–17 Cabinet compared, 64 Cabinet government compared, 64 limited powers of, 9 merchant shipping and, 71 Ottley in, 9 railways and, 428 requisition of property and, 87 Sub-Committee on Air Raids Precautions, 598 War Council compared, 65 ‘War Organization of the British Empire’, 9 war plan and, 9 war strategy in, 64 Committee on Civil Employment of Ex-Soldiers and Sailors, 309 Committee on Munitions Supplies, 71 Committee on National Expenditure, 626 Committee on Production, 263–4 Committee on Timber Supplies, 168 Committee on War Policy, 67 Committee on Wheat and Flour Supplies, 249 Common law prerogative powers, 87–8 Commonwealth Dominion Line, 464 Communist Party, 278 Conference of Scottish and Municipal Country Authorities, 535 Congregationalists, 113, 124–5 Connolly, James, 278 Conscientious objectors abuse of system by, 516–17 atheists and, 513–14 coal miners and, 235 induction of rejected claimants, 514–15 non-combatant service and, 514 punishment of, 514–15 ‘shirkers’, 514, 517 statistics, 514–15 unconditional exemption, 515 Conscription
generally, 280 adoption of, 15 Cabinet government and, 67 ‘clean-cut’, 150, 515, 517 coal industry and, 226–7 ‘comb out’, 226–7 commencement of, 291–2 Conservative Party and, 16–17, 513 employment exemption, 292–4 failure to meet goals, 16 fishing industry, effect on, 194–5 fitness to serve, 292 in Ireland, 291–2, 510, 609 Labour Party and, 42–3, 513 Liberal Party and, 513 married men, 295 munitions production, effect on, 375 opposition to, 16–17 popularity of, 15–16 possibility of, 14 in pre-war period, 42–3 reluctance to accept, 281 in Scotland, 16 Second World War compared, 281 service versus compulsion, emphasis on, 497–8 sole proprietors and, 294 statistics, 280 Conservative Party British Workers’ League and, 273 coal miners and, 235–6 coalition government and, 11, 19, 65–6 conscription and, 16–17, 513 coupon election and, 604–6 early support of Asquith, 10 free trade and, 617 government control of economy, opposition to, 243 Ireland and, 32, 604 Labour Party and, 270 Lloyd George and, 238–9, 243 munitions production and, 366 in Northern Ireland, 278 in pre-war period, 32 protectionism and, 18 social reform and, 603 tariffs and, 41
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trade unions and, 272 Unionist Business Committee, 18 universal suffrage and, 602–3 War Cabinet and, 70 Constables. See Police Consumers Council, 617 Control Department, 308 Convoys, 456–7 Cook, A. J., 232–3 Cook, E. T., 492, 494 Cooperative Wholesale Society, 392 Corn Production Act 1917, 211–12, 218 Corn Trade Association, 284 Cornish Wolfram Mines Ltd, 148 Corporation of Glasgow, 396 Cosens & Co, 459 Cossmann, Paul, 347–8 Cotton Association, 284 Cotton Control Board, 69–70, 267–8 Cotton industry in India, 615 labour and, 268 in post-war period, 615–16 shortages, 267 strikes in, 268 trade unions and, 268 wages in, 268 Council houses, 626–8 Council of Ireland, 609–10 Country Life, 203 County Louth Recruiting Committee, 504 County regiments, 285 County Territorial Associations (CTAs), 281–2, 285, 396 County War Agricultural Executive Committees (CWAECs), 210, 215, 218 Coupon election (1918), 601, 604–6, 608 Courthope, G. L., 163 Courts (Emergency Powers) Acts, 86 Cowans, John, 307 Cowley, Minnie, 567–8 Cowlin, Mabel, 559, 561 Craig, James, 32 Crewe, Marquess of, 67 Crime generally, 562
bigamy, 546 declining crime rates during war, 545–6 Defence of the Realm Act and, 543, 551 domestic violence, 546 in England, 545–6, 548–51 interaction between military and civilian courts, 546–7 in Ireland, 545, 550 juvenile delinquency, 543, 547–50 larceny, 550–1 magistrates and, 550 minor offences, 551 rioting, 543, 555–6 in Scotland, 545–6, 550 sexual offences, 546, 562 statistics, 545, 548–50 summary proceedings, 550–2 in Wales, 545–6, 548–51 Crimean War, 43, 157, 251, 383 Cromarty, Zeppelin raids on, 24 Crooks, Will, 593 Crozier, John, 118, 121, 126 Cuba, sugar imports from, 449–50 Cultivation of Lands Order, 210 Cunard Line, 284, 452, 457–9, 464–6 Cunliffe, Walter, 245 Cunliffe Committee on Currency and Exchange Rates, 616–17 Curragh ‘mutiny’ (1914), 32, 288 Currency and Banknotes Acts, 86 Currency exchange rate government intervention in, 247 imbalance in, 14–15 in post-war period, 616–17 Curry, John, 305–6 Curzon, George Lord, 67, 168, 175 Customs and Excise Department, 9 D & W Henderson, 406 Daily Express, 40 Daily Herald, 54 The Daily Mail, 40, 118, 366, 578 The Daily Mirror, 40, 577–8 Daily Telegraph, 17 Dalrymple, James, 284 Dalziel, Davison, 118
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Dangerfield, George, 32 Dardanelles Campaign, 11, 366 Dardanelles Committee, 65–6 Darling, Charles Lord, 84 Darwin, Charles, 39 ‘The Dash to Berlin’ (board game), 576 Daunton, Martin, 251 Davidson, Randall, 118, 121 Davis, Belinda, 106 Dawson, Margaret Damer, 558 De Groot, Gerald, 88–9, 540 de Valera, Éaman, 508, 608, 610 Death Duties (Killed in War) Act 1914, 81 Debt capital levy and, 623–4 capital markets, moratorium on debt, 245 cuts in government expenditures and, 626 methods of borrowing, 252–3, 256 in post-war period, 621–6 in pre-war period, 34 problems with, 254–5 from South African War, 6, 34, 244 statistics, 252, 254 success of borrowing programme, 253–4, 256 taxation and, 623 wealth levy and, 625 Declaration of war, 79 Defence Acts, 81 Defence of the Realm Act 1914 generally, 81–2 agriculture and, 210, 212–13 ‘business as usual’ and, 89–90 challenges to, 91–3 Clydeside unrest and, 415–16 coal industry and, 266–8 command economy, rise of, 90–1 contents of Defence Regulations, 85 crime and, 543, 551 Cultivation of Lands Order and, 210 Defence of the Realm Losses Commission, 175 effect of, 89, 93–4 enabling acts and, 83 export restrictions, 89–90 free trade, interference with, 89
Germany compared, 92–3 homes and families and, 536 industrial conscription not imposed, 86–7 Ireland and, 553 legality of Defence Regulations, 83–4 Liberal Party and, 13 police, effect on, 544, 552–3, 555 popularity of, 82 press and, 491, 496 promulgation of Defence Regulations under, 78 railways and, 441 requisition of property under, 82 response to domestic dissatisfaction and, 82–3 scholarly studies of, 88–9 Sinn Féin and, 554 sub-delegated orders, 85–6 timber industry and, 170, 175 venereal disease and, 561 volume of Defence Regulations, 86 Defence of the Realm Consolidation Act 1914, 84–5 Deissmann, Gustav Adolf, 130–1 Delegated legislation, 78, 80–1 Denmark, blockade of Germany and fishing industry in, 197 Dent, Francis, 434 Department for National Service, 180 Department of Information, 23 Department of the Director-General of National Service, 72 Derby, Lord (Edward Stanley), 211, 282 Derby Scheme, 280–1, 283, 286 Despard, Charlotte, 277 Development Commissioners, 192–3 Devonport, Lord (Hudson Kearley), 74 Dewey, Peter, 45–6 d’Eyncourt, Eustace Tennyson, 373 Dicey, A. V., 601–2 Dickinson, Goldsworthy Lowes, 521 Dickinson, James Hargreaves, 306 Dilution of labour generally, 72 in Clydeside, 416–17 in munitions production, 263, 374, 376 in shipbuilding industry, 411, 413–17
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trade unions and, 12, 263 Treasury Agreement and, 12 women and, 20 Director General of Voluntary Organisations (DGVO), 304, 307, 310–12 Director of Ship Requisitioning, 457 Directorate of Timber Supplies (DTS) generally, 162–3 assumption of responsibilities, 164–7 collation of requirements and, 173 committees and, 168 in Ireland, 167 legal authority of measures, 170 organisational structure, 166 requisition of timber and, 174–5 Directors of Ship Repairs, 420–1 Disabled persons, monarchy and, 58 Diseases of Animals Acts 1894-1914, 86 Displacement effect, 76 Disraeli, Benjamin, 41 Domestic violence, 546 Donaldson Line, 464 Donington Hall internment camp, 338 Donop, Stanley von, 362–5 DORA. See Defence of the Realm Act 1914 Dorchester internment camp, 336–7 Douglas internment camp, 340–1, 345 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 376 Draskau, Jennifer Kewley, 349–50 Drisceoil, Donal Ó, 496 DTS. See Directorate of Timber Supplies (DTS) Dublin Dockyard, 407 Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), 544, 554, 560 Duffett, Rachel, 528 Dunne, William, 554 Durham Miners’ Association, 235, 240 Duties, 251, 618 Dynevor, Baron (Walter Rice), 368 East India Company, 3 East London Advertiser, 106 Easter Rising (1916) generally, 278, 508, 588 British reaction to, 608–9
censorship and, 496 effect on attitudes toward war, 126, 491 martial law and, 443 violence in, 554, 588 Economic and Social History of the World War (Carnegie series), xxi, 27 Economic mobilisation for war, 9–10 The Economist, 5–6, 17–18, 246, 253 Edinburgh, Zeppelin raids on, 553 Edinburgh Agreement (1908), 406 Edinburgh Evening News, 534 Education. See Schools and education Education Act 1870, 38 Education Act 1918, 632 Edward VII, 32 Edward VIII, 60 Edwards, Eddy, 230 Edwards, Enoch, 223 Edwards, George S. F, 420–1 Egypt cotton from, 267 Egypt State Railways, 434 Electric arc furnaces, 137, 146–7 Electricity, 618 Electricity (Supply) Act 1919, 618 Eley, Geoff, 61 Ellerman, John Reeves, 464–5 Ellerman Lines, 465–6 Emmott, Alfred Lord, 73 Empire. See British Empire Empire Day, 41 Empire Forestry Conferences, 181 Emsley, Clive, 546–7, 555 Enabling acts, 83 ‘The End of Laissez-Faire’ (Keynes), 257 England agriculture in, 206–7, 212 Church of England in, 113 crime in, 545–6, 548–51 English Fishery Board, 193–5 English Forestry Association, 163 fishing industry in, 183–6, 196–200 juvenile delinquency in, 548–50 lighting regulations in, 553 magistrates in, 550 police in, 556
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England (cont.) recruitment in, 287–8 Roman Catholics in, 113, 125 Special Constables in, 556–7 within United Kingdom, 28 Englander, David, 88, 555 English, Jim, 41 Enlistment. See Recruitment and enlistment EPD. See Excess Profits Duty (EPD) Esher, Lord (Reginald Brett), 52, 55 Essential Works Orders, 86 Essex generally, 95–6 air raid committees, 104 demographics of, 96 developing role of local government, 101 distress and relief in, 99–100 Emergency Committees, 100–1 Food Control Committees, 101–2, 105–7, 111 food rationing in, 107 Housing and Town Planning Committees, 104 local sacrifice in, 111 Military Service Tribunals, 102, 105, 108–11 recruitment in, 98–9, 108–11 response to war, 98 structure of local government, 96–7 War Agricultural Committees, 103–4 War Agricultural Executive Committee, 103–5 War Pensions Committees, 102–3, 105, 111 wartime roles in local government, 97–8 Zeppelin raids on, 24 ‘The Ethics of War’ series, 118–28, 132 ‘Europe in Arms’ (board game), 576 Evans, George Ewart, 202 Excess Profits Duty (EPD) merchant shipping and, 463–5 in post-war period, 624 revenue from, 251 shipbuilding industry and, 414 Exchequer Bonds, 253 The Expansion of England (Seeley), 3–4
Fabians, 499 Factory Acts, 393–4 Fairplay (journal), 463 Families. See Homes and families Family businesses, 526, 529–30 Family farms, 529–31 Farming. See Agriculture Fawcett, Millicent, 31, 540 Featherstone, Samuel, 236 Federation of British Industries, 272, 611, 624 Feldman, Gerald D., 93 Fellowship of Reconciliation, 130, 513–14, 523 Fenwick, Charles, 230 Field Service Regulations Parts 1 and 2, 309 Finance generally, 243–4, 256–7 ‘business as usual’ and, 71, 242 capital markets (See Capital markets) changing role of United Kingdom and, 241 character of war and, 241 debt (See Debt) government control of economy and, 242–3, 257 government expenditures (See Government expenditures) in pre-war period, 34 public support for war and, 241 social progress and, 241–2 taxation (See Taxation) United States, financial support from, 255–6 Financial Interests Manual, 86 Finn, Ivan, 581 Finn, Margaret, 581 First Hague Peace Conference (1899), 44 1st Chiswick Scout Troop, 570 Fiscal policy. See Government expenditures Fisher, H. A. L., 632 Fisher, Jacky, 7, 11 Fisher, Victor, 236 Fisher, W. Hayes, 76 Fishery Board for England and Wales, 198
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Fishing industry generally, 183 Auxiliary Patrol and, 187, 190–1, 194 blockade of Germany and, 197–8 Board of Agriculture and Fisheries (See Board of Agriculture and Fisheries) Bolshevik Revolution and, 199 capture of vessels by Germany, 189 conscription, effect of, 194–5 contributions of, 198 controls on, 188–9 decline in fish landings, 196–7 demobilisation of vessels, 198–9 economic effect of cessation of fishing, 188 in England, 183–6, 196–200 Germany compared, 198 herring trade, 184, 199 income of, 198 inshore fishing (See Inshore fishing) in Ireland, 184–5, 195, 200 labour shortages, 194–5 military, loss of fleet to, 186–7 mines, sinking of vessels by, 189 minesweeping and, 186–7 Navy protection of vessels, 190–1 in post-war period, 195, 199–201 in pre-war period, 183, 185–6 profiteering and, 198 rescue operations performed by, 190 resumption of fishing, 188–9 Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) (Trawler) Section and, 186–7, 194, 198 in Scotland, 183–6, 196–200 Section Y of Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and, 194–5 statistics, 185–6 steam trawling, 183–4, 199–200 U-boat attacks on vessels, 189–91 in Wales, 183, 185–6, 196–200 women, employment of, 196 Fishman, James, 305 Fletching National School, 202 Flux, Alfred, 69–70 Foley, Patrick, 126–7 Folkestone air raids on, 592
Belgian refugees in, 318, 320 Food. See also Agriculture generally, 469 bread, importance of, 471, 617 Cabinet government and, 74–5 calorie intake estimates, 469–71 cereals, 471–3 class distinction and, 481–3, 485–6 dairy products, 473 debate regarding status of, 483–5 diversity in empirical evidence, 486 food queues, 531, 586, 588 food riots, 533 free trade, effect on prices, 4–5 Germany compared, 481 government intervention in, 12, 478, 587–8 home-grown versus imported food, 469–74 homes and families and, 525–6 imports, 205 increased prices of, 479–81, 532–3, 586 intrahousehold allocation of, 480–1 in Ireland, 525 meat, 473–4 merchant shipping and, 447, 449–52 milk, 617 Ministry of Food (See Ministry of Food) modest reduction in consumption levers during war, 481–3 price controls, 74 prisoners of war and internees, food rations, 346–7 profiteering and, 74 rationing, 74, 88–9, 107, 479 Royal Navy, role in protecting imports, 478 saving food, exhortations regarding, 536–7 secret purchases, 479 shortages, 209, 269–70 sources of imports, 474 stockpiling of, 479 sugar, 449–50, 474 U-boat attacks, effect on imports, 478
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Food. (cont.) unemployment and, 483 vitamins and, 485–6 vulnerability due to imported food, 8, 471, 475 women and, 481 Working Classes Cost of Living Committee and, 481–5 Food Control Committees, 101–2, 105–7, 111 Food Controller, 379, 566 Food Supplies Manual, 86 Food (War) Office, 478 ‘For King and Country’, 49–55 Forbes, A. C., 167 Forbes, William, 434 Foreign Office, 9–10, 73 Forestry. See Timber industry Forestry Commission, 159, 181 Forestry Committee, 162 Fortescue, Hugh, 282 Foster, J., 416 Foster’s of Lincoln, 373 4th Streatham Sea Scout Troop, 569 Fowler, R. H., 213 Foyeur de l’Ouvrier (Paris), 227–8 France Alsace–Lorraine and, 518 anticlericalism in, 114 blockade of Germany, coordination of, 19 coal, supplying of, 221 entente with, 519 German atrocities in, 122, 132–3 government control of economy, opposition to, 243 Irish, plan to recruit for French Army, 503 iron and steel, supplying with, 137 iron and steel industry in, 138 manganese ore and, 370 munitions production in, 362–3 poison gas and, 596 railways and, 434–7, 439 self-defence and, 112 supplying of, 14–15 Third Republic, 62 timber from, 160–1, 175, 178
timber industry, inter-allied committees, 169 trade with, 3 War Policy Committee and, 67–9 Franco–Prussian War, 361 Free, Richard, 123 Free trade agriculture, effect on, 4–5 ‘business as usual’ and, 12 in capital markets, 244 Conservative Party and, 617 Defence of the Realm Act interfering with, 89 family budgets, impact on, 1 inadequacies of, 263 Labour Party and, 617 Liberal Party and, 617 in post-war period, 603–4, 617 French, John, 10–11, 361–2, 366 French Relief Fund, 306–7 The Friend, 129 Friends’ Ambulance Unit, 129, 515 Friends’ Service Committee, 515–16, 519 Frith Hill internment camp, 337 Frost, J. Albert, 202 Fryatt, Charles, 272–3 G and J Weir, 409 Gaelic Athletic Association, 443 Gallagher, Willie, 409–10 Gallipoli campaign, 21, 581–2 Gardiner, Eli, 203 Gatrell, Peter, 315 Gazeley, Ian, 485–6 Geddes, Auckland, 16, 73, 110–11, 226, 293 Geddes, Eric government expenditures and, 626 munitions production and, 367–8 railways and, 435–7, 619 ship repair and, 420–1 shipbuilding industry and, 418 ‘Geddes axe’, 626 General strikes, 606–7 General Theory (Keynes), 257–8 Geneva Conventions, 44 George, Thomas, 531 George V
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austerity measures, 61 Cenotaph and, 51 class distinction and, 53 democratisation and, 59–61 on Ireland, 32 Kaiser compared, 61 on merchant shipping, 467 munitions production and, 359 as ‘People’s King’, 56 political leverage of, 61 as ‘working monarch’, 56 Germany agriculture compared, 209 air raids by (See Air raids) atrocities in Belgium, 122, 132–3, 591 Belgium, invasion of, 512, 518 blockade of (See Blockade of Germany) bread in, 617 charitable relief in, 311–12 clergy in, 130–1 command economy in, 92–3 Communist Party (KPD), 278 deprivations in, 583 economic competition with, 18 fear of German invasion, 22 fishing industry compared, 198 food compared, 481 food queues in, 586 gross national product, 3 Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), 278 iron and steel industry compared, 137–8 martial law in, 93 materials not available from, 370–1, 385–6 merchant shipping and, 453 munitions production in, 362, 365 naval race with, 399 naval shelling by, 24, 589 offensive in war, 520 peace advocacy in, 508–9 post-war economic recovery, plans to disrupt, 18–19 railways compared, 427 requisition of property in, 174 seizure of ships by United States, 422 self-defence and, 112
shipbuilding industry compared, 400 Social Democratic Party (SPD), 278 sugar imports from, 474 threat to balance of power from, 511 trade, vulnerability due to, 8 trade with, 3 trusts in, 618 tungsten from, 147 U-boat attacks by (See U-boat attacks) Zeppelin raids by (See Zeppelin raids) Giants (planes), 595 Gibbs, Philip, 56 Gilmour, David, 232, 235, 238, 240 Girl Guides, 568–72 Girouard, Percy, 366–8, 371 Gladstone, W. E., 5–6, 13, 34 Glanfield, Robert, 393 Glanfield & Son, 393, 395 Glasgow Belgian refugees in, 318, 329 Chamber of Commerce, 169–70 City Police, 562 rent strike in, 412–13, 586–7, 628 Glasgow Herald, 327–8 Glasgow Trades Council, 274 Glasgow Vigilance Association, 562 Glasgow Women’s Housing Association (GWHA), 412–13 Global trade balance of trade deficits, 14 within British Empire, 3 Cabinet government and, 73–4 dependence on, 5 effect of war on, 10 in post-war period, 616 protectionism, 18–19 timber industry and, 158–9 trade deficit, merchant shipping financing, 448 vulnerability due to, 8 war, refashioning for, 7–8 Globe, 494 Gloxinia (fishing vessel), 189 Gold standard, 33–4, 244–5, 616–17 Gore, Charles, 116, 118 Gosling, Harry, 267 Gothas (planes), 24, 592
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Government expenditures balanced budget, 244 budget deficits, 250–1 bypassing of Treasury, 248–9 cuts in, 626 defence spending, arguments for decreasing, 6–7 forms of government control, 250 goods and services, control of markets for, 249–50 increase in, 248 raw materials, purchase of, 249 South African War, debt from, 6, 34, 244 taxation and, 251 war, effect of, 76–7 Government of Ireland Act 1920, 609–10 Grantham Police Force, 560 Graves, Robert, 296 Grayson, H. M., 420–1 Grayzel, Susan, 527 Great Central Railway Journal, 427–8, 430 Great Exhibition, 41 The Great Illusion (Angell), 511 Great March of Peace (1919), 304 Great North Railway, 442 Great Southern and Western Railway, 443 The Great War: Britain’s Efforts and Ideals (art exhibit), 213–14 Great Western Ores Ltd, 148 Great Western Railway, 427, 434, 444 Greece, refractory materials from, 144 Gregory, Adrian, 44, 113, 115, 497, 502, 517 Gretna Special Police Area, 544 Grey, Edward generally, 13, 126, 282 British Expeditionary Force and, 7–8 effect of war on trade and, 10, 12 German invasion of Belgium and, 512 on honour, 119–20 League of Nations and, 521–2, 524 peace movement and, 511, 518 in pre-war period, 30–1 on War Council, 65
Griffiths, Arthur, 200, 494–5 Gross national product, 3 Grundy, Thomas, 236 Gullace, Nicoletta, 507, 591 Gunmakers’ Arms (infant welfare clinic), 540 H & C Grayson, 420–1 Hague Convention of 1899, 44, 334, 345, 355 Hague Convention of 1907, 44 Haig, Douglas generally, 9–10, 61 railways and, 435, 437, 439 training manuals and, 309 War Policy Committee and, 68–9 Hain Steamship Company, 464 Haldane, Richard Burdon County Territorial Associations (CTAs) and, 281–2, 285 efficiency and, 7 munitions production and, 360–1 reforms of, 42, 309–13 on Shells Committee, 363 Hall, A. D., 205 Hamilton, J. A. B., 441–2 Hancock, John, 235 Handforth internment camp, 343 Hankey, Maurice in CID, 9, 64 conscription and, 67 in War Cabinet, 68–9 War Committee and, 66 on War Council, 64–5 Hansen, Jutta Raab, 350–1 Hardach, Gerd, 471 Hardie, Agnes, 274 Hardie, Keir, 233–4 Harland and Wolff, 419, 423 Harmsworth, Cecil, 192–3 Harnack, Adolf von, 130–1 Harris, Jose, 29 Hart, Basil Liddell, 27 Hartlepool, naval shelling of, 24, 589 Hartshorn, Vernon, 224, 230–1, 239 Harwin and Co, 577 Haslam, Anna, 559 Hatch, Ernest, 329 Hayden, Mary, 559
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Hayman, Mark, 54 Haynes, Nell, 530–1 Haynes, Will, 530–1 Health Cabinet government and, 75–6 influenza epidemic, 630–2 Ministry of Health, 76, 630–2 in post-war period, 630–2 in pre-war period, 38–9 Held, Hermann J., 343 Henderson, Arthur generally, 273 in Cabinet, 271 conscription and, 271 ethics of war and, 118 in Labour Party, 230–1, 236, 270–1, 273–7 monarchy and, 53 peace movement and, 519 in War Cabinet, 67, 273 Henderson, Hubert, 69–70, 267–8 Henry Ford and Company, 213 Henson, Herbert Hensley, 120 Henson, James, 480–2 Henty, G. A., 573 Hewiett, Maud, 541 Hewins, George, 534 Hewson, Jack, 570 HGTC. See Home Grown Timber Committee (HGTC) Hicks, Edward, 116 High Court, 9 High Speed Steel Alloys, 147–8 High treason, 79 Highland Railway, 440–1, 444 Hill, John, 404 Hill, Myrtle, 536 Hirst, F. W. generally, 19, 27 ‘Beveridge Hoax’ and, 27 conscription and, 14 Liberal Party and, 5–8 opposition to war, 17–18 peace movement and, 520 women and, 20 His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary for England and Wales, 552 Hobhouse, Emily, 523
Hobhouse, Stephen, 516 Hobson, J. A., 36–7, 617 Hodge, John, 72, 271 Hodges, Frank, 227–8 Hodgkin, Henry T., 130 Hohenzollerns, 61 Holyport Castle internment camp, 338 The Home Front: A Mirror to Life in England during the First World War (Pankhurst), 584, 589, 591 ‘Home front’, use of phrase, 25–6, 316, 584 Home Grown Timber Committee (HGTC) dissolution of, 164 encouragement of home-grown timber, 176 establishment of, 162–4 in Ireland, 167 legal authority of measures, 170 organisational structure, 166 in Scotland, 167 Timber Trades Federation (TTF) and, 169 transfer of responsibilities, 166–7 Home Guard, 22 Home Office generally, 9 conscientious objectors and, 515 prisoners of war and internees and, 333, 349–50 uniforms and, 393–4 Home Rule Act, 31–2, 277–8, 553, 609 Homes and families generally, 526–7, 541–2 alcohol and, 538–9 changing roles in, 527–31 child neglect in, 541 children (See Children) Defence of the Realm Act and, 536 disharmony in, 531 diversity of, 525 emotional labour and, 527–8 family businesses, 526, 529–30 family connections, effect of war on, 564, 579–82 family farms, 529–31 family pig, 529
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Homes and families (cont.) food and, 525–6 food prices and, 532–3 food queues and, 531 hardships during war, 531–7 infant welfare and, 539–41 labour and, 526 letters and, 528–9 mental suffering in, 535–6 propaganda and, 527 research, difficulty of, 526 saving food, exhortations regarding, 536–7 separation allowances, 533–5, 538 symbolic importance of, 526 widows, 534–5 Zeppelin raids and, 527 Honours, 56 Hopkin, Deian, 88 Horn, Martin, 252 Horne, John, 382 Hospital ships, 457 Hospitals, visits by monarchs, 57–8 Hough, Edward, 221–38 House, Edward M., 522 ‘The House That Jack Built’, 575 Housing Cabinet government and, 75–6 construction of new housing, 629–30 council houses, 626–8 hypothec, 628 in Ireland, 76 Labour Party and, 630 munitions production and, 378 in post-war period, 626–30 in pre-war period, 36 rent control, 532, 628–30 rent strikes, 264–5, 412–13, 586–7, 628–9 in Scotland, 76 Housing, Town Planning Act 1919, 629–30 Housing and Town Planning Committees, 104 Housing (Financial Provision) Act 1924, 630
‘How to Pay for the War’ (Keynes), 258 Howkins, Alun, 527 Huddie, Paul, 586 Hughes, Annmarie, 539, 541, 585–6 Hughes, Billy, 19 Hunt, Karen, 530, 533, 586 Hunter, John, 141, 144–5 Hypothec, 628 Hythe, Lord (Charles Wakefield), 208 I. & R. Morley, 393 Ilbert, Courteney, 87 Illegitimate dependents, 585 ILP. See Independent Labour Party (ILP) Imperial General Staff, 4 Imperial War Cabinet, 3–4, 505 Imperial War Graves Commission, 25 Imperial War Museum, 60–1 Income tax, 251–2 Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Act 1919, 629 Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act 1915, 82–3, 413, 587, 628 Indemnity Act 1920, 87–8 Independent Labour Party (ILP) generally, 240, 274 coupon election and, 605–6 electoral politics and, 234–5 No-Conscription Fellowship and, 513 in Northern Ireland, 277 opposition to war, 270–1 peace movement and, 513, 519 periodicals, 40 rent strikes and, 412–13, 586 women and, 523 India armed forces in war, 21 British Expeditionary Force and, 7 cotton industry in, 615 in Imperial War Cabinet, 3–4 Indian Army, 385 Labour Party and, 605 mutiny in, 3 prisoners of war and internees in, 333
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role in British Empire, 3–4 steel hardening alloys in, 139 tariffs and, 622–6 textile industry in, 622–6 timber from, 160 trade with, 3 India Office, 9 Industrialisation, relation to armed forces, 6 Infant welfare, 539–41 Inflation, 246, 254–5, 269, 612–16 Influenza epidemic, 630–2 Inland Revenue Act 1879, 86 Inshore fishing generally, 185 easing of restrictions, 192 importance of, 191–2 motorisation and, 192–4 in post-war period, 200 Institute of Bankers, 621 Integrated steel works, 144–5 Interest rates, 245, 247, 616–17 International Arbitration and Peace Association, 512 International Arbitration League, 512 International Bible Students Association, 515 International Conference of Women (1915), 523 International Mercantile Marine Combine, 423 Internees. See Prisoners of war and internees Intoxicating Liquor (Temporary Restrictions) Act 1914, 81 The Invention of Tradition (Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds.), 52 Ireland agriculture in, 204–8, 215, 262 Belgian refugees in, 318 coastal surveillance in, 554–5 conscription in, 291–2, 510, 609 Conservative Party and, 32, 604 coupon election and, 608 crime in, 545, 550 Curragh ‘mutiny’ (1914), 32, 288 Dail, 200, 606, 609–10 Defence of the Realm Act and, 553
Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, 167 Easter Rising (1916) (See Easter Rising (1916)) economic disruption in, 586 fishing industry in, 184–5, 195, 200 food in, 525 French Army, plan to recruit Irish for, 503 Home Rule and, 28, 32, 125, 508, 553, 604 housing in, 76 insurrection in, 22 Irish Convention, 496–7 Irish Fishery Board, 184, 192 Irish Railway Executive Committee, 443 Irish Recruiting Council, 504 Irish Women Patrols, 559–60 juvenile delinquency in, 550 Labour Party and, 278, 605 Liberal Party and, 604 magistrates in, 550 martial law in, 93, 443 partition of, 609–10 police in, 544, 553–5, 557 population of, 35–6 in pre-war period, 31–2 Presbyterians in, 113–14 press restrictions in, 491–7 propaganda in, 502–5, 508 railways in, 442–3 recruitment in, 288–9, 502–5 religious denominations in, 113–14 Roman Catholics in, 113–14, 125–7 Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), 544, 557, 609 Sinn Féin (See Sinn Féin) South African War, Irish in, 503 timber industry in, 167 trade unions in, 278 uniforms in, 396 within United Kingdom, 28 violence in, 31–2 voluntarism in, 491 War of Independence, 554, 608–10 Irish National Volunteers (INV), 32, 288, 508
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Irish Nationalists generally, 30–1 on conscription, 15 early support of Asquith, 10 Irish Parliamentary Party, 125, 608–9 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 609–10 Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), 608–9 Irish Trade Union Congress, 278 Irish Transport and General Workers Union, 278 Iron and steel industry acid process, 138 Basic Iron Programme, 145, 151 basic linings, 143–4 basic processes, 138 Bessemer process, 138, 145 ‘clean-cut’, effect of, 150 coke production, 143 electric arc furnaces and, 137, 146–7 France, supplying, 137 in France, 138 Germany compared, 137–8 home resources, use of, 141–2 imported ores, reliance on, 137–9, 150 integrated steel works, 144–5 labour shortages, 137, 139–42, 150 lessons from war, 152 manganese ore and, 139, 149 mechanisation, 142 merchant shipping and, 447 open-hearth process, 138, 145 overseas investment in mining, 138–9 plant extensions, 144–5 in post-war period, 151, 615 in pre-war period, 137–8 price increases, 407–8 prisoners of war and internees, use of, 142–3 refractory materials, 143–4 resources required, 139–40 scrap, recovery of, 145–6 smelting, 143 specialist steels, 137 steel hardening alloys, 139, 146–9 Thomas–Gilchrist basic lining, 138
tungsten and, 139, 147–9 United States compared, 137–8 women, employment of, 140–1 Isle of Man (War Legislation) Act 1914, 81 Italy anticlericalism in, 114 immigrants from, 125 monarchy in, 62 supplying of, 14–15 Jackson, Jennie, 304–5 Jackson, Sophie, 88 Jacksons (company), 329 Jacobs, Arthur, 581 Jagger, Charles Sargeant, 444 James Nourse Ltd, 464 Japan merchant shipping and, 452–3, 467 Jason (fishing vessel), 189 Java, sugar imports from, 449–50 Jeffery, Keith, 504 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 515 Jellicoe, John, 418 Jewish Recruitment Committee, 282 Jewish War Refugees Committee, 322 Jews anti-Semitic riots, 556 Belgian refugees and, 322–3 Bolshevik Revolution, anti-Semitism and, 509 discrimination against in recruitment, 292 on duty to support war, 127–8 patriotism, support for war as demonstrating, 132 in pre-war period, 114 prisoners of war and internees, 350 Rabbis, 127 John Brown and Company, 146, 408 John Bull, 55 John Delaney & Co, 143–4 Johnny Walker Distillers, 370 Joint Recruiting Committee, 282–3 Jones, Dianne, 533–4 Jones, Morgan, 240, 516 Jowett, Fred, 273
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Jowett, Mary, 536 Juvenile delinquency, 543, 547–50 Juvenile Organisation Committee (JOC), 549, 559 Keighley Military Hospital, 304 Kent, Zeppelin raids on, 24 Kent and East Sussex Railway, 433, 445 Keynes, John Maynard generally, 27 on American financial support, 255–6 capital markets and, 246 conscription and, 15 on debt, 621 on gold standard, 245 on government control of economy, 242–4, 257–8 on government expenditures, 248–9 on inflation, 246, 254–5, 613 Second World War and, 69–70 ‘spirit of the age’ and, 242–4, 257 on Treaty of Versailles, 521 ‘Khaki fever’, 543, 558–9, 561 Kindersley, Robert, 499 King’s National Roll Scheme (KNRS), 58 Kipling, Rudyard, 41, 360 Kirkwood, David, 369–77, 409–10 Kitchener, Herbert Lord generally, 71, 297, 584–6 death of, 52, 494 ineffectiveness of in Cabinet, 65 munitions production and, 362–3, 365–6, 370, 379 recruitment and, 14–15, 281–2, 287–8, 362–4, 374 recruitment poster, 497 uniforms and, 387, 392, 394–5, 398 war strategy and, 66–7 Kleist, Franz Rinteln von, 348 Knockaloe internment camp, 341–2 Knox, Katharine, 315 Knox, Ralph, 309 Kohn, Marek, 88 Koss, Stephen, 40 Kryn and Lahy Metal Works, 329 Kushner, Tony, 315
Labour agriculture, labour shortages, 208–9, 214–15 Cabinet government and, 72–3 child labour, 565–6 clothing industry and, 388–9, 396–7 cotton industry and, 268 dilution of (See Dilution of labour) enlistment, effect of, 261, 269, 289–90 fishing industry, labour shortages, 194–5 government intervention in, 12 homes and families and, 526 iron and steel industry, labour shortages, 137, 139–42, 150 leaving certificates and, 86–7, 264 lockouts and, 405–6 loss of workers due to enlistment, 14 merchant shipping and, 267 munitions production and, 264 prisoners of war and internees, use of, 352–5 profiteering and, 263, 270 railways and, 266–7 Schedules of Reserved Occupations, 269 in Scotland, 261 shipbuilding industry and, 403–6 shoe industry and, 388–9, 396–7 statistics, 261 strikes (See Strikes) textile industry and, 388–9, 396–7 in timber industry, 176–82 trade unions (See Trade unions) unemployment, 483 unemployment insurance, 632 violence in, 31 in war-related industries, 19–20 women and, 20, 261, 263, 613 Labour Exchanges, 387 Labour Leader, 40 Labour Party. See also Independent Labour Party (ILP) generally, 6–7, 30–1 Bolshevik Revolution and, 237 capital levy and, 623–4 in Clydeside, 607 coal miners and, 228, 230–40
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Labour Party. (cont.) coalition government and, 19, 230–2 conscription and, 42–3, 513 Conservative Party and, 270 coupon election and, 604–6 effect of war on, 269 electoral successes of, 276–7 emergence of, 31 finances of, 276 free trade and, 617 Germany compared, 278 goals of, 274–5 housing and, 630 India and, 605 Ireland and, 278, 605 Liberal Party and, 270 MFGB and, 228, 230–2, 236, 270, 272 munitions production and, 379–80 nationalisation and, 620 in Northern Ireland, 278 opposition to war in, 17–18 peace movement and, 519, 524 post-war programme, 605 in pre-war period, 31 pro-war sentiment in, 270–1 regional strength of, 277 reorganisation of, 273–4 social questions and, 75 social reform and, 632–3 socialism and, 274–5 strength of, 270 trade unions and, 31, 272, 276 UDC and, 521 women and, 274–7 Labour Representation Committee, 277–8 Labour Withholding Committee (LWC), 409 Labour Woman (journal), 273 Lady Health Visitor, 539 Lambert, Nicholas, 10 Lammasniemi, Laura, 88 Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, 430, 434 Lancaster internment camp, 343 Lancet, 631 Lands Clauses (Consolidation) Acts, 81 Langdon Davies, B. N., 516–17
Lansbury, George, 54 Lansdowne, Lord (Henry PettyFitzmaurice), 17, 208, 519–20 Lansdowne Committee, 520 Laqua, Danial, 331 Larceny, 550–1 Larkin, Jim, 278 Law Society, 284 Lawrence, D. H., 222 Lawrence, Emmeline Pethick, 277 Lawrence, Susan Pethick, 84 Lawson, Jack, 240 League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage, 262 League of Free Nations Society, 522 League of Nations, 506, 521–4 League of Nations Society, 521–2 League of Nations Union, 522–3 League to Enforce Peace, 521–2 Leaving certificates in Clydeside, 411 labour and, 86–7, 264 Munitions of War Act 1915 and, 86–7 munitions production and, 377–8 shipbuilding industry and, 411 Lee, Arthur, 210, 217 Lee, Campbell, 536–7 Leed, Eric, 527–8 Leeds Convention, 237 Lees-Smith, Hastings, 561 Lees Smith, H. B., 237–8 Legett, Elizabeth, 589–90 Legett, Elsie, 589–90 Legion of Frontiersmen, 282 Lenin, V. I., 613 Levine, Philippa, 88 Lewisham Food Vigilance Committee, 588 Leyland Line, 423 LGB. See Local Government Board (LGB) Liberal Imperialists, 10, 511, 518 Liberal pacifism, 512–13, 521–3 Liberal Party coal miners and, 228, 233–5 coalition government and, 11, 19 conscription and, 513 coupon election and, 604–5
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Defence of the Realm Act and, 13 on defence spending, 6–7 free trade and, 617 Hirst and, 5–6 illiberal behaviour of, 13 Ireland and, 604 Labour Party and, 270 Liberal Industrial Inquiry, 269 libertarian wing, 13–14 MFGB and, 228 national efficiency and, 38 in Northern Ireland, 278 opposition to war in, 17 peace movement and, 511 in pre-war period, 30–3 split in, 519 trade unions and, 272–3 universal suffrage and, 602–3 war as unifying force, 10 Liberal Unionist Party, 41 Lidgett, John Scott, 123 Lighting regulations, 553 Ligue des Femmes Catholiques, 322 Limerick Clothing Factory, 391 Liners in merchant shipping, 452 prisoners of war and internees, housing of, 337 Literacy in pre-war period, 38 Lithgow, James, 418 Lithgow, William Todd, 412 Liverpool, police strike in, 607 Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 426 Liverpool Steamship Owners’ Association, 463 Llewellyn, Leonard, 367 Lloyd, Edward M. H., 88–9, 242–3 Lloyd, Francis, 596 Lloyd George, David generally, 11, 17, 230 accession to Prime Minister, 11, 17, 518 agriculture and, 209–11 on alcohol and workers, 376, 378, 408–9 Anti-Waste League and, 623 Asquith compared, 19, 67, 69 bank holidays and, 245 banks and, 12
as Baptist, 124–5 ‘business as usual’ and, 12, 71 Cabinet government and, 67–70 capital markets and, 245–6 as Chancellor of Exchequer, 5, 8, 12, 65, 71, 245, 251, 263–4, 363, 365, 410 class distinction and, 610 Clydeside unrest and, 415–16 coal industry and, 224–5, 238–9, 265 conscription and, 15–16, 520–1 Conservative Party and, 238–9, 243 cotton industry and, 268 coupon election and, 601, 604–5 debt and, 253 Defence Regulations and, 86 on economic mobilisation for war, 8 expenditures and, 76–7 food and, 74, 270, 478 on foreign investment, 611 German invasion of Belgium and, 512 government expenditures and, 248 government intervention in economy and, 19 health and, 75–6 Home Rule Act and, 609 on honour, 120 Ireland and, 609 labour and, 72–3, 376–7 Manpower Committee, 69 merchant shipping and, 462 in Ministry of Munitions, 14, 224, 366–9 monarchy and, 53–5, 61 Munitions of War Act 1915 and, 377 munitions production and, 71–2, 359, 361–2, 365–6, 371, 378–80 newspapers and, 40 opposition to, 17–18 pensions and, 75 on possibility of war, 5 railways and, 435–6, 441–2, 445, 619 recruitment and, 287 St. Bernard pet of, 601–2 self-assessment, 242 on Shells Committee, 363
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Lloyd George, David (cont.) shipbuilding industry and, 407, 409–10, 413, 417–18, 422 social reform and, 603 South African War, opposition to, 6, 43, 367 split in Liberal Party and, 519 Stokes mortar and, 372–3 taxation and, 251, 604 timber industry and, 161 trade unions and, 12, 263–4, 271 Treasury Agreement and, 410 on unfitness due to poverty, 481 uniforms and, 390 on voluntarism, 489–90 War Cabinet, 67–70, 271 in War Committee, 66 on War Council, 65 War Policy Committee, 68–9 War Priorities Committee, 68 war strategy and, 16–17, 27, 66–7, 520 on wealth levy, 625 women and, 376 Local Armaments Committees, 370 Local government. See Essex Local Government Board (LGB) Belgian refugees and, 324, 328–9 health and, 630–2 housing and, 75–6, 104, 629 Local Relief Committees, 298 recruitment and enlistment and, 110, 287 Local Relief Committees, 298 Local War Pensions Committees, 537–8 Lockouts, 405–6 Lofthouse Park internment camp, 343 Lomas, Janis, 534 London air raids on, 593 Belgian refugees in, 318 Chamber of Commerce, 169–70 as major capital market, 34 Metropolitan Police, 556 police strike in, 557, 607 population of, 35–6 ‘society’, 29 Zeppelin raids on, 24, 411, 589–90
London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, 163, 434 London and North-Western Gazette, 428, 433 London and North-Western Railway, 427, 434 London School of Economics (LSE), 310 Long, Walter, 70, 208, 211 Loos, Battle of, 445 Lord Balfour of Burleigh (Alexander Hugh Bruce), 377 Loreburn, Earl, 512 Lovat, Lord (Simon Fraser), 163, 168, 282 Lowther, Claude, 282 Ludendorff, Erich, 520 Lugard, Lady (Flora Shaw), 324 Lusitania sinking (1915) anti-German riots and, 341, 555–6, 591 civilian internment and, 333–4 merchant shipping and, 454, 457–8 police and, 555 rescue of survivors, 190 shipbuilding industry and, 401–2 Lutherans, 116–17 Lutyens, Edwin, 444 Lynch, Arthur, 503–5, 508 Macarthur, Mary, 53, 277 MacDonald, Nina, 575 MacDonald, Ramsay generally, 231 in Labour Party, 271, 273, 277 peace movement and, 519 as Prime Minister, 521 UDC and, 517 Mackenzie, Millicent Hughes, 277 Mackworth, Lady (Margaret Haig Thomas), 208 Maclay, Joseph, 73–4, 417–19, 462 Maclay and McIntyre, 462 Maclean, John, 555 Maclean, Norman, 51 Magistrates, 550 Manchester Chamber of Commerce, 169–70 population of, 35–6
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The Manchester Guardian, 40, 202–3, 366 Manchester School, 42–3 Manchester Transvaal Committee, 116 Manganese ore, 139, 149, 370 Manpower Committee, 69, 281 Mansion House, 5 Manual of Emergency Legislation, 81, 86, 89 Manual of Military Law, 87 Manvers Main Colliery Company, 237 Marchant, Bessie, 574 Maritime shipping. See Merchant shipping Marshall, Catherine, 524 Marwick, Arthur, 89, 242 Mary (Queen), 53–4, 56–7 Massingham, Henry William, 40 Master General of the Ordnance, 360–1 Masterman, Charles, 507 Maternity and Child Welfare Act 1918, 617 Mauretania (Cunard liner), 457–8 Maurice Affair (1918), 494 Mauritius, sugar imports from, 449–50 Maxwell, Ronald, 307 Maxwell, Stirling, 167 Maypole Dairy, 106–7 McKenna, Reginald generally, 16–17 as Chancellor of Exchequer, 14, 413, 618 conscription and, 15–16 Defence Regulations and, 85 duties and, 618 protectionism and, 18–19 on Shells Committee, 363 shipbuilding industry and, 413 taxation and, 251 in War Committee, 66 war strategy and, 17, 66–7 McKibbin, Ross, 610 Measles, 20–1 Medals, 57 Media. See Press Mee, Jeremiah, 553–4 Meek, Jeff, 539, 541, 585–6 Melling, Joseph, 88, 411 Mental health
homes and families, mental suffering in, 535–6 mentally ill persons, monarchy and, 58 prisoners of war and internees and, 348 Merchant shipping generally, 467 armed merchant cruisers (AMCs), 457–8 Blue Book rates, 460 British dominance of, 446, 453 Cabinet government and, 70–1, 73–4 changes in origins of imports, 449–50 colliers, 458–9 ‘control by committee’, 461 convoys, 456–7 Defence Regulations and, 82 domestic transport, as complementing, 448 effect of war on, 448–52, 463 Excess Profits Duty (EPD) and, 463–5 exports, effect of war on, 451–2 fixed rates, 460 food and, 447, 449–52 Germany compared, 453 global competition in, 466–7 government control of, 459–63 hospital ships, 457 imports, effect of war on, 449–50 insurance premiums, 453–4 iron and steel industry and, 447 Japan and, 452 labour and, 267 law of angary, 457 liners, 452 losses in war, 453–6 mergers and acquisitions in, 464–6 in post-war period, 465–7 in pre-war period, 446–7, 453 profiteering and, 463–4 recruitment and enlistment, effect of, 459 reliance on imported goods, 447–8 requisition of merchant ships, 80, 457, 462
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Merchant shipping (cont.) Requisitioning (Carriage of Foodstuffs) Committee, 461–2 Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) (Trawler) Section and, 459 shortages, 460–1 speculation and, 465 statistics, 448 textile industry and, 447, 451 timber and, 449 trade deficit, financing, 448 trade unions and, 267 tramps, 453 troopships, 457 U-boat attacks on, 454–6 United States and, 452 use of ships in war, 457–9 warships, attacks by, 454 Messrs Montague L. Meyer, 164 Messrs Thomas Summerson and Sons Ltd, 140 Methodists, 113 Methuen and Co, 1 Metropolitan Special Constabulary, 310 Mexborough Trades Council, 237 Meyer, Fritz, 341 MFGB. See Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) Mid-Staffordshire Appeals Tribunal, 292–3 Middleton, Thomas, 209–11 Midland Railway, 433, 444 Midlands, Zeppelin raids on, 24 Midleton, Earl of (John Brodrick), 282 Militarism in pre-war period, 42–3 recruitment and enlistment and, 42–3 toys and, 576–9 Military Land Acts, 81 Military Medal, 56 Military Medical Board, 539 Military Police, 541 Military Service Act 1916, 129, 226, 291 Military Service Act 1918, 609 Military Service Act (No. 1) 1918, 291–2
Military Service Act (No. 2) 1916, 291–2 Military Service Act (No. 2) 1918, 288, 291–2 Military Service Acts, 80, 102, 215, 226, 280, 516–17 Military Service Bill, 67 Military Service Tribunals generally, 16, 20 in Essex, 102, 108–11 exemptions and, 292–4 Milk, 617 Milk (Mothers and Children) Order 1918, 617 Miller, Emily, 562 Millman, Brock, 519 Milner, Alfred Lord agriculture and, 206–7, 211, 215–17 British Workers’ League and, 234–6 conscription and, 16 national efficiency and, 11 as ‘race patriot’, 3–4 in War Cabinet, 67 Milward, Alan, 90–1 ‘The Miner at Home’ (Lawrence), 222 Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) generally, 222 British Workers’ League and, 235 conscription and, 226–7 District Unions, 228 government intervention and, 225, 238–9 Labour Party and, 228, 230–2, 236, 270, 272 Liberal Party and, 228 organisation of, 227–8 politics and, 228–32, 276 post-war expectations of, 227, 238–9 strength of, 266 strikes and, 222–3 success in negotiations, 225–6 wage bargaining and, 223–4, 266 The Miners’ Next Step, 232–3 Mines for the Nation, 239 Minesweeping, 186–7 Mining Association of Great Britain, 222, 225 Ministry of Blockade, 71, 73, 86, 197
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Ministry of Food generally, 77, 269 Consumers Council and, 617 Defence Regulations and, 86 establishment of, 71, 74–5 merchant shipping and, 74 raw materials, purchase of, 249 voluntarism and, 499 Ministry of Health, 76, 630–2 Ministry of Labour Defence Regulations and, 86 establishment of, 72 shipbuilding industry and, 419–20 Ministry of Munitions. See also Munitions production generally, 77, 379–80 Agricultural Machinery Branch, 213 agriculture and, 213 Area Board of Management, 370 Belgian refugees and, 330 children and, 566 Churchill in, 369 Defence Regulations and, 84, 86 Department of Timber Supplies (DTS), 166 establishment of, 71 government expenditures and, 248 Home Ore Supply Committee, 141, 143–4 housing and, 378 Inventions Branch, 372 Iron and Steel Department, 144 iron and steel industry and, 141, 143–5, 150 labour and, 374–6 Lloyd George in, 14, 224, 366–9 Local Armaments Committees, 370 manganese ore and, 149 merchant shipping and, 74 police and, 544, 558 prisoners of war and internees and, 354–5 railways and, 435 recruitment and, 73 requisition of property by, 88–9 ‘shells crisis’ and, 71–2 shipbuilding industry and, 419–20
steel production and, 407–8 timber industry and, 173, 177 tungsten and, 148–9 War Office and, 369 war socialism and, 378–9 Ward in, 310 welfare provisions and, 72 Ministry of National Service Defence Regulations and, 86–7 establishment of, 73 munitions production and, 16 timber industry and, 177–8 voluntarism and, 499, 503–4 Ministry of Pensions, 75, 537–8, 541 Ministry of Reconstruction, 75, 77, 86 Ministry of Shipping, 77, 417, 462 Ministry of War Transport, 86 Moir, Ernest, 372 Monarchy. See also specific person Bolshevik Revolution and, 56 charitable relief and, 53–4 Church of England and, 58 class distinction and, 53 consent and, 59–60 conservatism and, 55 democratisation and, 55–6, 59–61 disabled persons, visiting, 58 exceptionalism, 59, 61 ‘For King and Country’, 49–55 George V (See George V) honours and, 56 hospital visits, 57–8 Irish Question, impact of, 60 medals and, 57 mentally ill persons, visiting, 58 modernity and, 61–2 national morale, importance for, 49 politics contrasted, 55 privilege, avoiding perception of, 56–7 recency of idolisation, 52–3 recruitment, importance for, 49–51 religion and, 58–9 renaming of royal dynasty, 57 sacralisation of, 51–2 tradition and, 58–9 working class, outreach to, 53–4, 56 Monck-Mason, Espine, 50 Money, Leo Chiozza, 36 Monmouthshire Evening Post, 322
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Montagu, Edwin, 3–4, 369, 376 Mor-O’Brien, Anthony, 313 Moral panic, 547 Morel, E. D., 517–20 Morgan, E. Victor, 255 Morgan, Kenneth, 632 Morkill, J. W., 497–8 Morley, John, 5–6 Morning Post, 517 Morris, Joseph, 127 Morrison, Norman, 552 Mothers’ Union, 282 Motherwell Times, 530 Motor Loans Committee, 192–3 Mr Britling (Wells), 24 Mr Standfast (Buchan), 23–4 ‘Mrs Barbour’s Army’, 264–5 Mulholland, Marc, 278 Mundy, Elizabeth, 536 Munitions of War Act 1915 generally, 80, 271 coal industry and, 224 leaving certificates and, 86–7 resistance to, 414–17 restrictions under, 250, 369–77 shipbuilding industry and, 410–11, 413–17 strikes and, 265 Treasury Agreement and, 72, 263–4 Munitions of War (Amendment) Act 1916, 83, 264, 378, 416–17 Munitions of War (Amendment) Act 1917, 83 Munitions production generally, 359–60, 379–80 accidents, 24–5 automation and, 263 Belgian refugees, employment of, 374 ‘business as usual’ and, 71, 379 Cabinet government and, 71–2 ‘canary girls’, 25 chemicals, ban on exports, 370–1 conditions of labour, 378 conscription, effect of, 375 Conservative Party and, 366 dangerous work in, 375 dilution of labour in, 263, 374, 376 disagreements regarding, 10–11 early lagging production, 364–5
effect of expansion of, 379 effect on war effort, 371 efficiency and, 370 embargo policy, 378 government intervention in, 378 housing and, 378 labour and, 264 Labour Party and, 379–80 labour unrest and, 376–7 leaving certificates and, 377–8 Ministry of Munitions (See Ministry of Munitions) mobilisation of, 359 Munitions of War Act 1915, restrictions under, 369–77 Munitions of War (Amendment) Act 1916, restrictions under, 378 new factories, 371 new inventions, 372 new supplies, obtaining, 369–70 in pre-war period, 360–1 recruitment, effect of, 362–4, 374 shortages in, 15, 362–3 South African War and, 360–1 Stokes mortar, 372–3 strikes and, 264, 374–5, 378 tanks, 373–4 uniforms compared, 381, 397–8 war socialism and, 378–9 women and, 374–6, 378 Murray, Hugh, 163 Mursell, Walter, 132–3 Mussenden Carey, Sophie de, 306 Mutiny Act 1689, 78 Napoleonic Wars generally, 8 agriculture and, 214, 217 government expenditures in, 248 level of enlistment in, 281 taxation and, 251 Territorial Force and, 285 The Nation, 40 National Democratic Party, 236–8, 240, 273, 604–5 National Farmers Union Scotland, 212 National Federation of Women Workers, 277 National Fire Union, 323
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National Insurance Act 1911, 38–9, 78, 632 National Labour Advisory Council, 72 National Lottery, 301 National Museum of Wales, 213 National Prayer Days, 58 National Projectile Factory, 330 National Relief Fund (NRF), 53, 99, 179, 298–300, 407, 533 National Reserve, 286 National Review, 40 National Seamen’s and Firemen Union, 272–3 National Service League (NSL), 42, 282 National Shell Factories, 20, 24–5, 72, 371 National Transport Workers’ Federation, 267 National Trust, 217–18 National Union of Dock Labourers, 267 National Union of Shop Assistants, 274 National Union of Women Workers of Great Britain and Ireland (NUWW), 557–9, 561–2 National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), 31, 540 National War Aims Committee (NWAC), 490, 499, 503–4, 506, 519 National War Bonds, 253 National War Savings Committee (NWSC), 499, 503–4 Nationalisation, 620 Naval Defence Act 1889, 399 Naval shelling, 24, 589 Navigation Laws, 462 Naylor, Thomas, 118 Nellie (fishing vessel), 189 Netherlands Belgian refugees, treatment compared, 324 fishing industry, blockade of Germany and, 197 merchant shipping and, 467 monarchy in, 62 requisition of merchant ships, 457 Neutrality generally, 7
Belgian neutrality, German violation of, 119–20, 122 of United States, 507 Neutrality League, 511 Nevinson, C. W. R., 588 New Armies recruitment and enlistment, 282, 285, 288 uniforms, 385, 387–8, 391, 395 New party, calls for, 11 New Zealand armed forces in war, 21 Belgian refugees, honouring, 314, 319 conscientious objectors in, 513–14 Maori, Belgian refugees and, 314 meat imports from, 450 voluntarism in, 499 wool from, 249 New Zealand Shipping Company, 464 Newbury internment camp, 337 Newcastle Commercials, 284 Newell, Andrew, 485–6 Newholme (naval vessel), 196 News of the World, 40 Newsholme, Arthur, 631 Newspaper Proprietors’ Association, 492 Newspapers. See also Press; specific paper in pre-war period, 39–40 prisoners of war and internees and, 349 workers’ newspapers, suppression of, 415–16 Newton, Gerald, 349–50 Newton, Lord (Thomas Legh), 334 Nicholas, T. E., 237 Nicholas II (Russia), 56 Nicholson, William, 289 Nickson, George, 124 No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF) generally, 271, 516 absolute pacifism and, 516 conscientious objectors and, 514–15, 524 Independent Labour Party and, 513 sedition and, 519
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No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF) (cont.) women and, 524 Norman, C. H., 515 North British Railway, 444 North-Eastern District Sea Fisheries Committee, 192 North-Eastern Railway, 290, 434–6, 444, 619 North-Western Railway, 225 Northampton Belgian refugees in, 320 rent strike in, 587 Northamptonshire Appeals Tribunal, 287, 293–4 Northcliffe, Lord (Alfred Harmsworth), 40 Northern Ireland Conservative Party in, 278 Independent Labour Party in, 277 Labour Party in, 278 Liberal Party in, 278 trade unions in, 277–8 Norway fishing industry, blockade of Germany and, 197–8 herring trade in, 199 merchant shipping and, 453–4, 466–7 O’Brien, William, 278 Observer, 274–5 Office of Woods, 157, 162 Office of Works, 162, 164 Officers’ Training Corps, 42, 309 Official Secrets Act, 552 O’Grady, James, 504 Old Age Pension Act 1908, 38–9 Oliver, F. S., 11, 16 Onions, Alfred, 240 Open-hearth process, 138, 145 Opposition to war, 16–18 Orchard, W. E., 130 Ordeal by battle (Oliver), 11 Order of the British Empire, 56 Orders in Council, 79 The Origin of the Species (Darwin), 39 Osborn, Arthur, 50 Osborne, Henry, 445 Osborne, Walter, 272
Osborne Judgment, 272 Ottley, Charles, 8–9 Ottoman Empire Armenian genocide and, 491, 507, 509 famine in, 583 Oxfordshire Iron Company, 142–3 P & O Line, 452, 457, 464–6 Pacifism. See Peace movement Paddington Station, 444 Palmers of Jarrow, 407 Pankhurst, Christabel, 31 Pankhurst, Emmeline, 31 Pankhurst, Sylvia on ‘air raid tourists’, 591–2 on disproportionate burden of war on women and working class, 584 on infant welfare, 540 naval raids and, 589 on separation allowances, 533–4, 585 Parasitic Mange Order 1911, 86 Paris Peace Conference (1919), 523 Parkgate Iron and Steel Co Ltd, 141 Parliament Act 1911, 31–2 Parliamentary Recruiting Committee (PRC), 282–3, 499, 503–4 Parsons, Lawrence, 396 Passchendaele, Battle of, 17, 68–9 Patent Shaft and Axletree Co, 146 Patents, Designs and Trade Mark Act 1914, 81 Pax Britannica, 7 Peace movement generally, 524 absolute pacifism, 512–13 Bolshevik Revolution and, 516, 518–20 broader agenda associations, 511 conscientious objectors (See Conscientious objectors) cost of war and, 518 defining, 510 German invasion of Belgium and, 512 government persecution of, 519 Labour Party and, 519, 524 liberal pacifism, 512–13, 521–3
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Liberal Party and, 511 in liberal state, 510–11 negative effects of, 511 radical pacifism, 512, 517–19, 521, 524 Russia and, 511 ‘shirkers’, 514, 517 single-issue associations, 511 Society of Friends and, 128–9 women and, 523–4 Peace Society, 116, 511–12 Peacock, Alan, 76 Pearce, Cyril, 510, 514–17 Peden, G. C., 248 Pedersen, Susan, 533–4, 537 Pedraja, R. de la, 422 Peel, Constance, 536 Peel, Dorothy, 499 Peel, Robert, 1, 34 Pelabon, Charles, 329 Pennell, Catriona, 115, 246, 502–3, 512 Pensions, Cabinet government and, 75 Penton, Edward, 390, 393 Perry, Percival, 213 Petrol Control Committee, 193 Philips, Marion, 274–5 Phillips, Christopher, 154–5 Pirrie, William Lord, 419 Plebs League, 224 Ploughing (Rothenstein), 213 Plunkett, Horace, 206 Plüschow, Gunther, 334, 337, 347–8 Poison gas, 596 Police generally, 543, 562 coastal surveillance, 552–5 Defence of the Realm Act, effect of, 544, 552–3, 555 in England, 556–7 in Ireland, 544, 553–5, 557 ‘khaki fever’ and, 558–9, 561 patchwork nature of, 543–4 political surveillance and, 555 in pre-war period, 543–4 recruitment and enlistment, effect of, 556–7 rioting and, 555–6 in Scotland, 556
sexual morality and, 560–1 sexual offences and, 562 strikes by, 557, 607 unionisation, 557 in Wales, 556–7 women in, 543, 557–62 Zeppelin raids and, 553 Police Federation, 557 Police Reserve, 556 Ponsonby, Arthur, 13–14, 56 Poor Law, 37–8 Port and Transit Executive Committee, 267–8 Porter, Bernard, 42 Porter, G. R., 1–6 Portugal, unskilled labour from in timber industry, 178 Pörzgen, Hermann, 350 Post Office, 9 Post-war United Kingdom (1919) generally, 633 agriculture in, 217–19 coal industry in, 239–40, 620 cotton industry in, 615–16 currency exchange rate in, 616–17 debt in, 621–6 duties in, 618 economic growth in, 616 economy in, 610–13 electricity in, 618 Excess Profits Duty (EPD) in, 624 fishing industry in, 195, 199–201 free trade in, 603–4, 617 global trade in, 616 health in, 630–2 housing in, 626–30 inflation in, 612–16 iron and steel industry in, 151, 615 Labour Party in, 605 merchant shipping in, 465–7 profits in, 611–12 railways in, 619 schools and education in, 632 shipbuilding industry in, 423–4, 614–15 social reform in, 632 strikes in, 606–7 tariffs in, 618, 622–6 wages in, 612–13
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Postponement of Payments Act 1914, 80 Pott, Gladys, 262 Pound sterling exchange rate imbalance, 14–15 in pre-war period, 33–4 Powis, Lord (George Herbert), 163 POWs. See Prisoners of war and internees Pratt, Edwin A., 431–2 Pre-war United Kingdom (1914) generally, 28 British Empire, attitudes toward, 41–2 Britishness, 29 bureaucracy in, 38–9 Cabinet government in, 63–4 capital markets in, 33–4 changing society in, 35–40, 45 charitable relief in, 37–8, 297–8 class distinction in, 36–7 common identity in, 29 complex economy in, 33–5, 45 conscription in, 42–3 Conservative Party in, 32 debt in, 34 exports in, 33 finance in, 34 fishing industry in, 183, 185–6 four countries of, 28 health in, 38–9 housing in, 36 inequality in, 36 integration in, 29 Ireland, 31–2 iron and steel industry in, 137–8 labour in, 34–5 Labour Party in, 31 Liberal Party in, 30–3 literacy in, 38 merchant shipping in, 446–7, 453 militarism in, 42–3 munitions production in, 360–1 national culture, development of, 28–9 national identity in, 40 newspapers in, 39–40 police in, 543–4 political challenges in, 30–3, 44–5
Poor Law, 37–8 pound sterling in, 33–4 press in, 39–40 railways in, 71, 426–7 regional differences in, 29–30 religion in, 39 schools and education in, 38 taxation in, 34 timber industry in, 156–7 ‘unified not uniform’, 30 uniforms in, 383–5 urbanization in, 35–6 war, attitudes toward, 41 Presbyterians generally, 113 in Ireland, 113–14 peace movement and, 116–17 recruitment and, 124 response to war, 114–15 in Scotland, 113, 124 Press generally, 20 censorship and, 490–2 D Notices, 490–6 Defence of the Realm Act and, 491, 496 Ireland, restrictions in, 491–7 newspapers (See Newspapers) in pre-war period, 39–40 propaganda and, 490–1 restrictions on, 491–7 voluntary submission to national interest, 491–4 Press Bureau, 491–4 Primrose League, 282 Prince of Wales, 407 Prince of Wales Fund. See National Relief Fund (NRF) Pringle, William, 377 Prisoners of war and internees generally, 355 agriculture, use in, 216, 353–4 Armistice and, 348 arts and crafts and, 351 in Australia, 333 ‘barbed wire disease’, 348 boredom and, 347 camp committees, 344 camps, 336–9
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in Canada, 333 civilian camps, 340–3, 352–3 civilian noncombatants, 333–6 class distinction and, 345–6 daily routine, 347–8 demographics of, 334 education and, 349 food rations, 346–7 in India, 333 integration of military and civilian internees, 336–7 iron and steel industry, use in, 142–3 Jews, 350 labour, use in, 352–5 liners, housing in, 337 mental health and, 348 newspapers and, 349 officers’ camps, 338, 346 orchestras and, 350–1 protection of, 345 religion and, 349–50 Roman Catholics, 349–50 sport and exercise and, 351–2 standard camp installation, 345–6 statistics, 334–5, 337–8, 340–3 termination of internment, 355 theatre and, 350 timber industry, use in, 166, 178, 354 treatment of, 345 Prisoners of War Department, 334 Prisoners of War Information Bureau, 334, 345 Privy Council Defence Regulations, 78 Orders in Council, 79 Prize Court Act 1914, 80 Profiteering fishing industry and, 198 food and, 74 inflation and, 614 labour and, 263, 270 merchant shipping and, 463–4 Profiteering Act 1919, 625 The Progress of the Nation in its Various Social and Economic Relations from the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century (Porter), 1–6 Propaganda generally, 20
civilisation, fighting to defend, 505–6 co-opting of dissenting ideas, 506 homes and families and, 527 in Ireland, 502–5, 508 local communities and, 501–2 local efforts, 499–500 missed opportunities, 508 modern analysis of, 489–90 patriotism and, 489 press and, 490–1 as public, performed, and participatory, 502 recruitment and, 497–8 rigidness of, 509 Sinn Féin and, 500 small nations, fighting to defend, 506–7 United States, directed toward, 507 voluntarism and, 489–90, 497–502 wealthy, pressure on, 499 Zeppelin raids and, 592 Protectionism, 18–19 Prothero, Rowland, 209–10, 214, 217 Public Health Act 1875, 38–9 Puffin (fishing vessel), 192 Pult, D. W., 337–8 Punch, 91, 296, 601–2 Pure prerogative powers, 79–80 Quaker Renaissance, 128–9 Quakers. See Society of Friends Queen Mary Needlework Guild, 53 Queen’s Jubilees, 41 Rabbis, 127 ‘Race patriots’, 3 Race riots, 607 Rachamimov, Alon, 350 Racial discrimination in recruitment, 292 Radical pacifism, 512, 517–19, 521, 524 Rae, John, 517 Railway Act 1921, 619 Railway Executive Committee (REC) generally, 619 ambulance stretchers and, 436 Belgian refugees and, 323 collaboration between industry and government and military and, 429–30, 445
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Railway Executive Committee (REC) (cont.) infrastructure management and, 444 ‘joy riders’ and, 441 locomotive shortages and, 439 recruitment and enlistment and, 433–4 station closures and service reductions, 437–9 Railway Operating Division (ROD), 435, 439 Railways generally, 425–6 Belgian refugees and, 425, 443 ‘business as usual’ and, 445 centralisation of, 445 collaboration with government and military, 429–30 contribution to war effort, 433–6, 445 Defence of the Realm Act and, 441 effect of war on, 436–45 excess capacity, 426–7 Germany compared, 427 goods traffic, changes in, 439–41 importance of, 425–6 infrastructure management, 443–4 in Ireland, 442–3 ‘joy riders’, 441 labour and, 266–7 locomotive shortages, 439 logistics and, 428–9 other countries compared, 438 passenger traffic, changes in, 441–2 in post-war period, 619 in pre-war period, 71, 426–7 prominence of, 427 Railway Executive Committee (REC) (See Railway Executive Committee (REC)) railway stations as social focal points, 425, 428 Rates Tribunal, 619 recruitment and enlistment, effect of, 433–5 service reductions, 437–9 staff magazines, 427–8
station closures, 437–9 strikes and, 619 women and, 430–2 Ransome, E. C., 213 Reader, W. J., 41 REC. See Railway Executive Committee (REC) ‘Recessional’ (Kipling), 41 Reconstruction Committee, 75, 162, 628–9 ‘Recruiting for Kitchener’s Army’ (board game), 576 Recruitment and enlistment generally, 280 agriculture, effect of enlistment on, 207–8, 261–2, 290 ‘badging’ of employees, 290 Cabinet government and, 73 civilian work, 498–9 clergy and, 123–5 coal industry, effect of enlistment on, 223, 265 complexity of, 295 conscription (See Conscription) county regiments, 285 demographics of enlistment, 291 early rush to enlist, 289 employers and, 290 in England, 287–8 in Essex, 98–9, 108–11 exemptions, 286–7 German atrocities as motivating factor, 289 in Ireland, 288–9, 502–5 Jews, discrimination against, 292 Joint Recruiting Committee, 282–3 labour, effect of enlistment on, 261, 269, 289–90 local efforts, 282–4 loss of workers due to, 14 low level of enlistment, 281 merchant shipping, effect on, 459 militarism and, 42–3 monarchy, importance of, 49–51 munitions production, effect on, 362–4, 374 national identity and, 287–8 New Armies, 282, 285, 288
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Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, 282–3 patriotism, effect of, 294 police, effect on, 556–7 poverty, unfitness due to, 481 propaganda and, 497–8 racial discrimination in, 292 railways, effect on, 433–5 regional variation in enlistment, 291 Roman Catholics and, 125–6 schoolteachers, effect on, 568 in Scotland, 287–8, 497 Second World War compared, 281 shipbuilding industry, effect of enlistment on, 406–7 statistics, 280 Territorial Force, 43 territorial units, 285 underage minors, enlistment by, 565 in urban centres, 284–5 voluntarism and, 14–15, 489, 497–8 in Wales, 287–8 women and, 286 ‘Red Clydeside’, 264–5, 416, 555, 607 Red Cross, 352 Redmond, John, 125–6, 508, 608 Redmond, William, 508 Rees, Noah, 233 Reeves, Maud Pember, 499 Reform Act 1884, 228 Reform Act 1918, 75, 277 Reform Committees, 232 Refractory materials, 143–4 Refugees. See Belgian refugees Regional differences in labour, 35 in pre-war period, 29–30 war as unifying force, 20–1 Reid, Alastair, 264 Reiss, Richard, 626 Religion. See also Clergy; specific denomination diversity of, 113 monarchy and, 58–9 Nonconformists, 113 in pre-war period, 39 prisoners of war and internees and, 349–50 tolerance and, 113–14
Renshaw, Charles, 437–9 Rent control, 532, 628–30 Rent strikes, 264–5, 412–13, 586–7, 628–9 Repington, Charles à Court, 10–11, 366 Representation of the People Act 1884, 37 Representation of the People Act 1918, 273–4, 601 Requisition of property generally, 88–9 challenges to, 82, 87 Defence of the Realm Act and, 82 farm horses, 207 land, 79–81 merchant shipping and, 80, 457, 462 timber, 174–5 Requisitioning (Carriage of Foodstuffs) Committee, 461–2 Reserve Forces Act 1882, 80 Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act 1919, 88 Retail Business (Licensing) Order 1918, 86–7 Reynolds, Stephen, 192 Rhondda, Lord. See Thomas, D. A. (Lord Rhondda) Richards, Tom, 230–1 Riddell, George, 492, 494 Rider, Dan, 628–9 Rioting anti-German riots, 591 anti-Semitic riots, 556 Belgian refugees, against, 326, 328 as criminal offence, 543, 555–6 food riots, 533 Lusitania and, 341, 555–6, 591 race riots, 607 Robb, George, 299 Robbins, Keith, 29 Roberts, Frederick Lord, 42 Roberts, George, 271 Roberts, Richard, 130, 247 Robertson, William, 66, 68–9 Robinson, R. L., 162 Robson, James, 235 Rogerson, Sidney, 295 Roman Catholics
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Roman Catholics (cont.) generally, 113 anti-British sentiment among, 117 Belgian refugees and, 322 in Belgium, 125 in England, 113, 125 ‘The Ethics of War’ series and, 118 French Army, plan to recruit Irish for, 503 in Ireland, 113–14, 125–7 patriotism, support for war as demonstrating, 132 prisoners of war and internees, 349–50 recruitment and, 125–6 response to war, 114–15 in Scotland, 113, 125 in Wales, 125 Romford, local government in, 97 Ropner’s of Hartlepool, 453 Rose, M. E., 88 Rosebery, Lord (Archibald Primrose), 82 Roskill, Stephen, 9 Rothenstein, William, 203, 213 Rothermere, Lord (Harold Harmsworth), 623 Round Table, 3 Rowntree, Arnold, 130 Rowntree, J. W., 128 Rowntree, Seebohm, 36 Royal Air Force, 27 Royal Arsenal, 360, 444 Royal Commission on the Coal Industry, 620 Royal Commission on Wheat Supplies, 209 Royal Defence Corps, 286 Royal Dockyards, 399, 403 Royal English Arboricultural Society, 163 Royal Flying Corps, 13th Kite Balloon Section, 580 Royal Mail Group, 465–6 Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, 457 Royal Military Tournament, 308 Royal Naval Division, 433 Royal Navy. See also Admiralty
fishing vessels, protection of, 190–1 food, role in protecting imports of, 478 HMS Agamemnon, 406 HMS New Zealand, 433–4 HMS Repulse, 408 HMS Tiger, 408 HMS War Forest, 419 HMS War Shamrock, 423 as primary branch of military, 7 railways and, 444 relative invisibility of seamen on home front, 21–2 reliance on, 8 Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) (Trawler) Section, 186–7, 194, 198, 459 Section Y of Volunteer Reserve, 194–5 taxation and, 34 Royal Ordnance Factories, 360 Royal Society, 470 Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), 310 Royden, Maude, 523 Rugby Muddling Strike, 533 Runciman, Walter, 18–19, 66–7, 410 Rural League, 282 Ruskin College Oxford, 224, 227–8, 240 Russell, Bertrand, 516, 519, 524 Russell, Diana, 529 Russia Bolshevik Revolution (See Bolshevik Revolution) deprivations in, 583 famine in, 583 food imports from, 474 food shortages in, 269–70 imports from, 288–9 peace movement and, 511 Provisional Government, 518 separate peace, 520 supplying of, 14–15 timber from, 160, 175 War Policy Committee and, 68–9
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Russo–Japanese War, 361 Ryan, Innocent, 117 Sachse, Fritz, 347–8 Safeguarding of Industries Act 1921, 618 St. Bartholomew Massacre, 20–1 St. Giles’s Cathedral (Edinburgh), 51 St. Paul’s Cathedral, 444, 592, 595 Salehurst Church, 445 Salter, J. A., 461 Sams, Jim, 595–6 Samuel, Herbert, 324, 549 Sandringham Palace, 61 Sankey, John, 238–9 Sankey Commission, 238–40 Sarrazin, Jenny, 197–8 Sassoon, Siegfried, 518–19 Saunders, Robert, 202 Savory, A. H., 216 Scarborough, naval shelling of, 24, 589 Schaller, Charlotte, 575–6 Schedules of Reserved Occupations, 269 Scheidt, Karl von, 341 Scheller, Walter, 340 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, 425–6 Schools and education balanced view of war in, 567 literacy in pre-war period, 38 patriotism and, 567 in post-war period, 632 in pre-war period, 38 prisoners of war and internees and, 349 recruitment and enlistment, effect on schoolteachers, 568 during war, 566–8 Scissors and Paste (Griffiths), 494–5 Scotland agriculture in, 204–7, 212–14 Belgian refugees in, 318 Board of Agriculture, 167 Clydeside (See Clydeside) conscription in, 16 crime in, 545–6, 550 51st Highland Division, 20–1 fishing industry in, 183–6, 196–200 housing in, 76 juvenile delinquency in, 550
labour in, 261 legal tradition in, 29–30 lighting regulations in, 553 magistrates in, 550 police in, 556 Presbyterians in, 113, 124 recruitment in, 287–8, 497 religious denominations in, 113 Roman Catholics in, 113, 125 Scottish Fishery Board, 188–9, 193–5 Scottish Insurance Commissioners, 78 Scottish Office, 162–3 separation allowances in, 585–6 timber industry in, 167 uniforms in, 396 within United Kingdom, 28 Scotland Yard, 305–6, 596 Scott, C. P., 14, 202–3 Scottish Farm Servants Union, 212 Scottish Mother’s Union, 540 Scottish Women’s Hospitals, 296 Scott’s of Greenock, 406–7 Scout Defence Corps, 570 Scrap, recovery of, 145–6 Second Hague Peace Conference (1907), 44 Second World War British Expeditionary Force in, 26–7 industrial conscription in, 86 level of participation compared, 281 manganese ore and, 150–1 manpower policy, 281 tungsten and, 150 war plan in, 26 welfare reform, xxi Sedition, 519 Seeley, John R., 3–4, 41 Selborne, Lord (William Palmer), 164, 206–7, 212 Selincourt, Basil de, 202–3 Separation allowances, 533–5, 538, 584–6 Seth, Ronald, 88 Sexton, James, 267 Sexual offences, 546, 562 Shaw, George Bernard, 505 Shaw-Stuart, Hugh, 163 Shells and Fuses Agreement, 263, 374
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Shells Committee, 363, 365 ‘Shells crisis’, 10–11, 71–2, 366, 494 Shipbuilding Employers’ Federation (SEF), 405–6, 408 Shipbuilding industry generally, 399–400 absenteeism in, 408–9 Admiralty control of, 401 British dominance of global market, 400–1 in Clydeside, 411 contribution to war effort, 424 dilution of labour in, 411, 413–17 entry of United States into war, effect of, 422–3 Excess Profits Duty (EPD) and, 414 Germany compared, 400 government control of, 409–11 increase of demand in, 399 labour and, 403–6 leaving certificates and, 411 lockouts and, 405–6 mercantile construction compared to naval construction, 421–2 Munitions of War Act 1915 and, 410–11, 413–17 Munitions of War (Amendment) Act 1916 and, 416–17 new construction versus lost tonnage, 401–2 organisation of ship repair, 420–1 plating, 403–4 in post-war period, 423–4, 614–15 recruitment and enlistment, effect of, 406–7 riveting, 403–5 ship repair, 402–3 statistics, 400, 421–2 steel price increases, effect of, 407–8 strikes and, 409–11 trade unions and, 403–6 Treasury Agreement and, 410, 413 U-boat attacks, effect of, 401–2, 417–20, 423 United States compared, 400 Zeppelin raids and, 411 Shipping. See Merchant shipping Shipping Controller, 82, 417
The Shire Horse in Peace and War (Frost), 202 Shoe industry. See also Uniforms collaboration in, 391–4 labour and, 388–9, 396–7 self-mobilisation of, 388–91 women in, 390–1 Shpayer-Machov, Haia, 88 Simkins, Peter, 98 Simon, John, 87 Simpson, Brian, 88 Sims, George R., 575 Sinn Féin coastal surveillance and, 555 Dail and, 609 electoral politics and, 60, 496–7, 504–5, 606, 608–9 nationalism and, 609 in Parliament, 608 propaganda and, 500 ‘Slavery Act’, 264, 377, 411–15 Smale, David, 553 Small Landholders (Scotland) Act 1911, 212–13 Smelting, 143 Smillie, Robert, 223, 225–7, 230–1, 237, 239, 271 Smith, Adam, 6 Smith, David, 547, 549 Smith, Edith, 560 Smith, Herbert, 236 Smith, J. Leonard, 579 Smith’s Dock, 420–1 SMS Karlsruhe, 454 Smuts, Jan Christiaan, 67, 505, 509 Snape, Michael, 115, 125 Snowden, Phillip, 231, 234, 623 Social Democratic Federation, 277 Social Insurance and Allied Services (Beveridge), 275 Socialist Defence Committee, 234 Socialist Labour Party, 231 Society of Friends anti-war sentiment among, 130 conscientious objectors and, 515 on duty to support war despite conscience, 129, 133 on horrors of war, 128
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peace movement and, 128–9 South African War, opposition to, 116 Society of Friends Emergency Committee (FEC), 352 Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Associations (SSFAs), 298, 537, 585–6 Somerville, William, 163 Songs, children and, 567–8 South Africa conscription in, 519–20 South African War generally, 7, 42–3 aid to dependents during, 585 clergy, opposition of, 116, 118 cost of, 43 county regiments in, 285 debt from, 6, 34, 244 Irish in, 503 munitions production and, 360–1 opposition to, 6 setbacks in, 41–2 taxation and, 34, 251 underage minors serving in, 565 uniforms in, 384–5 Ward in, 308–9 South-Eastern and Chatham Railway, 434, 439–40, 444 South Wales Argus, 322 South Wales Miners’ Federation (SWMF), 223–5, 232–4, 266 Southampton internment camp, 340 Southampton Pictorial, 494 Spain anticlericalism in, 114 iron ore mining, British investment in, 138–9, 150 monarchy in, 62 timber industry, unskilled labour from, 178 Special Constable Act 1914, 81 Special Constabulary, 286, 556–7 Special Fishery Reserve, 190 Special Grants Committee, 538 Special Munitions Tribunals, 411 Special Reserve, 280 Spencer, George, 226
Sprigg, E. R., 128–9 Stamfordham, Lord (Arthur Bigge), 51, 55–6 The Standard, 118 Standing Timber Order (1917), 174 Stanton, Arthur, 580 Stanton, Charles, 234, 237, 240 Stanton, Hugh, 580 Stanton, Peggy, 580 Starling, Ernest, 479 Statistical Society, 1 Steel. See Iron and steel industry Steel hardening alloys, 139, 146–9 Stephen, Rosamond, 536 Stevenson, Frances, 368 Stevenson, James, 370–1 Stevenson, John, 28–9 Stirling Saturday Observer, 540 Stobs internment camp, 337–8, 346 Stock Exchange Bank of England and, 245 closing of, 71, 244–5 reopening of, 246 Stokes, Wilfred, 372 Stokes mortar, 372–3 Strachan, Hew, 33–4 Strikes generally, 12 in coal industry, 222–5, 265–6 in cotton industry, 268 general strikes, 606–7 munitions production and, 264, 374–5, 378 by police, 557, 607 in post-war period, 606–7 railways and, 619 rent strikes, 264–5, 412–13, 586–7, 628–9 shipbuilding industry and, 409–11 statistics, 22 Treasury Agreement and, 250 Stroud Brewery Company, 290 Strutt, Edgar Gerald, 105 Sturt, George, 218–19 ‘Submarine Firing Torpedo’ (toy), 577–8 Submarine warfare. See U-boat attacks Suffrage universal suffrage, xviii–xix, 37, 601–3, 622
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Suffrage (cont.) women and, 31, 277, 540, 601–3 Sugar, 449–50, 474 Sunday Pictorial, 55 Super Tax, 34 Supple, Barry, 265 Sutherland, Gillian, 632 Sutherland, John D., 162–3 Swettenham, Frank, 492 Switzerland, prisoners of war and internees and, 334, 340, 342, 345–6 Sydenham, Lord (Charles Poulett Thomson), 460 A Syllabus in War Geography and History (Cock), 567 Taff Vale Railway, 439, 442 Tanks, 373–4 Tariff Reform League, 41 Tariffs, 18, 618, 622–6 Tawney, R. H., 243–4, 258, 620 Taxation generally, 20 capital levy, 623–4 government expenditures and, 251 income tax, 251–2 in pre-war period, 34 public support for, 252 Royal Navy and, 34 South African War and, 34, 251 success of, 256 Super Tax, 34 war, effect of, 76 war debt and, 623 wealth levy, 625 Taylor, A. J. P., 27, 45, 81 10th Battalion Canadian Expeditionary Force, 581 Territorial Force generally, 282 British culture and, 30 conscription and, 280 creation of, 42, 286 Imperial Service Obligation, 295 recruitment and, 43 territorial units, 285 uniforms and, 385, 387
Territorial Force Association of London, 50 Territorial Force County Associations, 98 Textile industry. See also Uniforms collaboration in, 391–4 in India, 622–6 labour and, 388–9, 396–7 merchant shipping and, 447, 451 self-mobilisation of, 388–91 women in, 390–1 Thermo Electric Ore Reduction Co Ltd, 147 Thirsk, James, 575–6 Thomas, D. A. (Lord Rhondda), 74, 367, 370, 377, 379 Thos Wilson Sons & Co Ltd, 464–5 Thwaites Bros Ltd, 147 Timber Advisory Committee, 168 Timber Allocation Sub-Committee, 169, 181 Timber Control Order 1918, 172 Timber industry. See also specific office generally, 153 administrative areas, 166 administrative changes and, 161 afforestation, 157–8 centralised control, 163–4, 170, 181 child labour in, 176 collation of requirements, 173 committees, 162, 167–70 continuity in, 166–7 contravention of orders as offences, 171–2 Defence of the Realm Act and, 170, 175 disruptions to imports, 157 encouragement of home-grown timber, 175–6 environmental approach to history of conflicts and, 155 estimates of future needs, 173–4 global trade and, 158–9 government timber buyer, 164 home-grown versus imported timber, 160–1 inter-allied committees, 169 in Ireland, 167 labour in, 176–82
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legal authority of measures, 170 merchant shipping and, 449 merchants’ advisory committees, 169–70 mobilisation for war effort, 155–6, 162 organisational structure of administrative bodies, 165–6 in pre-war period, 156–7 prisoners of war and internees, use of, 166, 178, 354 purchases of timber stock, 174 record keeping, 172–3 requisition of timber, 174–5 scholarly studies of, 153–5 in Scotland, 167 statistics of imports, 159–60 Timber Supply Department (TSD) (See Timber Supply Department (TSD)) Timber Trades Federation (TTF), 155, 169, 172, 177 trade associations, 169 tree coverage, 159 unskilled labour, 178 women, employment of, 178–82 Timber Supply Department (TSD) generally, 154, 181 assumption of responsibilities, 165 Divisional Liaison Officers, 163 encouragement of home-grown timber, 176 establishment of, 163 inter-allied committees and, 169 labour and, 177–8 legal authority of measures, 170 organisational structure, 166 Timber Control Order 1918, 172 Timber Trades Federation (TTF), 155, 169, 172, 177 The Times generally, 40–1, 313 on air raids, 593 on Belgian refugees, 319–20, 328 clerical support for war and, 131 on naval raids, 589 power of, 40 on rent strikes, 587
on ‘shells crisis’, 10–11, 366 South African War and, 116 The Times Fund for the Red Cross, 303–4 Times Literary Supplement, 11 Tipperary Clubs, 537 Todman, Daniel, 257 Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, 304 Tombs, Robert, 42 Tories. See Conservative Party Toy guns, 577 Toynbee, Arnold J., 507 Toys, children and, 576–9 Trade Union Act 1913, 228, 272 Trade Union Labour Party, 272 Trade unions. See also specific union advisory bodies, 271 coal industry and, 222–3 Conservative Party and, 272 cotton industry and, 268 deportation of union militants, 85 dilution of labour and, 12, 263 growth of, 262–3 importance to government, 271 increases in membership, 22 in Ireland, 278 Labour Party and, 31, 272, 276 Liberal Party and, 272–3 merchant shipping and, 267 in Northern Ireland, 277–8 police unionisation, 557 pro-war sentiment in, 272–3 Reform Committees, 232 shipbuilding industry and, 403–6 social questions and, 75 statistics, 262–3 strikes (See Strikes) Unionists and, 277–8 women in, 268–9 Trades Union Congress, 42–3 Trading with the Enemy Acts, 86 Tramps (merchant ships), 453 A Transport Girl in France (Marchant), 574 Treasury generally, 256–7 agriculture and, 204–5 Cabinet government and, 64, 77 capital levy and, 624
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Treasury (cont.) currency exchange rate and, 247 free trade and, 244 government control of economy, opposition to, 243 government expenditures and, 76–7 housing and, 76 methods of borrowing, 252–3, 256 response to war, 71, 89 Treasury Agreement dilution of labour and, 12 restrictions under, 72 shipbuilding industry and, 410, 413 strikes and, 250 as voluntary non-binding agreement, 263–4 Treaty of Versailles (1919), 521, 524 Trevelyan, Charles P., 13–14, 517 Tritton, William, 373 Troopships, 457 Trout, Ella, 196 Trout, Patience, 196 Trout, William, 196 Trower, Lillian Alice, 596 TSD. See Timber Supply Department (TSD) Tungsten, 139, 147–9 Turkey. See Ottoman Empire Turner, Lois, 528 U-boat attacks fishing vessels, 189–91 food, effect on imports of, 478 merchant shipping, 454–6 seamen lost, 272–3 ship repair, effect on, 403, 417–20 shipbuilding industry, effect on, 401–2, 417–20, 423 UDC. See Union of Democratic Control (UDC) Ulster. See Northern Ireland Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), 32, 288 Under Haig in Flanders (Brereton), 573 ‘The Underworld: Taking Cover in a Tube Station during a London Air Raid’ (painting), 597 Unemployment, 483 Unemployment insurance, 632
Uniforms generally, 382–3, 397–8 Army Boot Department and, 393 Army Clothing Department and, 383–6 changes in policies, 383, 387–8, 395–7 clothing industry, collaboration in, 391–4 collaboration between military and civilian spheres, 382–5, 398 Contracts Department and, 383–6, 390, 393–4 different levels of mobilisation, effect of, 382 expansion of procurement, 395–7 in Ireland, 396 ‘khaki shortage’, 381, 398 material shortages and, 385–6 munitions production compared, 381, 397–8 New Armies, 385, 387–8, 391, 395 in pre-war period, 383–5 procurement of, 383–4 producer perspective, 381–2 production of, 384 rapid increase in number of troops, effect of, 385 in Scotland, 396 self-mobilisation of industries, 388–91 shoe industry, collaboration in, 391–4 shortages, 362 slowness of response to war, 386–7 in South African War, 384–5 speculation and, 386 Territorial Force, 385, 387 textile industry, collaboration in, 391–4 uniforms defined, 382 in Wales, 396 Union of Democratic Control (UDC) creation of, 13–14, 130 Labour Party and, 521 League of Nations and, 506, 521 peace movement and, 520, 524 radical pacifism and, 517–19
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Union Steamship Company of New Zealand, 464 Unionist Business Committee, 18, 366 Unionists clergy and, 113–14 Ireland and, 609 partition and, 609–10 in pre-war period, 32 trade unions and, 277–8 Unions. See Trade unions United Free Church, 113 United States American Expeditionary Force, 21 blockade of Germany, effect of, 10 Civil War, 118, 157 clothing procured from, 392, 394–5 conscientious objectors in, 513–14 cotton from, 267 economic competition with, 18 entry into war, 462, 524 exchange rate imbalance and, 14–15 financial support from, 255–6 food imports from, 474, 478–9 government control of economy, opposition to, 243 gross national product, 3 inflation in, 614 influenza epidemic in, 631 iron and steel industry in, 137–8 Lusitania and, 454 merchant shipping and, 452 neutrality of, 507 prisoners of war and internees and, 334, 337, 340, 342, 345–6, 352 propaganda directed toward, 507 railways and, 436–7 seizure of enemy ships, 422 shipbuilding industry compared, 400 Shipping Board, 422 timber from, 153–4, 157, 160, 174, 176 trade with, 3, 159 trusts in, 618 United Steel, 144 Universal social security, 27 Universal suffrage, xviii–xix, 37, 601–3, 622
Vandervelde, Emile, 327 Vanguard Farm, 218 Venereal disease, 560–1 Vickers, Emma, 181 Vickers (company), 263, 329, 352, 374–5 Victoria, 41, 57 Victory Cookbook (Peel), 536 Virgil, 203 Vischer, A. L., 348 Voluntarism generally, 490–1 charitable relief and, 312 in Ireland, 491 local communities and, 501–2 local efforts, 499–500 press, voluntary submission to national interest, 491–4 propaganda and, 489–90, 497–502 recruitment and enlistment and, 14–15, 489, 497–8 values and, 491 Voluntary Action: A Report on Methods of Social Advance (Beveridge), 297 Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs), 296, 302 Volunteer Force, 285–6 Volunteer Training Corps (VTC), 22, 42–3, 285–6 Wadsworth, John, 235–6 Wages agriculture, minimum wages, 211–12 coal industry, wage bargaining in, 221, 223–4, 266 in cotton industry, 268 in post-war period, 612–13 women and, 613 Wales agriculture in, 212 Belgian refugees in, 318 crime in, 545–6, 548–51 family labour and, 526 fishing industry in, 183, 185–6, 196–200 juvenile delinquency in, 548–50 lighting regulations in, 553 magistrates in, 550 police in, 556
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Wales (cont.) recruitment in, 287–8 religious denominations in, 113 Roman Catholics in, 125 Special Constables in, 556–7 uniforms in, 396 within United Kingdom, 28 Welsh Army Corps, 287 Walsh, Stephen, 228, 230–5 Walton, James, 221–38, 240 Wanderer (fishing vessel), 190 War Agricultural Committees, 103–4 War Cabinet, 67–70, 77, 173, 271 War Charities Act 1916, 300, 304, 307, 312 War Charities Commission, 305–7 War Committee, 66 War Council, 65–6, 70 War Emergency Workers’ National Committee, 271, 617 War Material Supplies Manual of Emergency Legislation, 86 War Memoirs (Lloyd George), 211, 359 War Office generally, 9, 65, 69 administrative staff, 310–13 agriculture and, 211, 217 Army Boot Department, 393 Army Clothing Department, 383–6 ‘badging’ of employees, 290 blockade of Germany and, 73 clothing industry, collaboration with, 391–4 common law prerogative powers and, 87 Contracts Department, 293, 383–6, 390, 393–4 Directorate of Prisoners of War, 333 Directorate of Timber Supplies (DTS) (See Directorate of Timber Supplies (DTS)) enlistment requirements, 289 Forage Section, 180 free trade and, 263 government expenditures and, 248 merchant shipping and, 70, 74 Ministry of Munitions and, 369 munitions production and, 71–2, 360, 363–4, 370, 379
pensions and, 75 prisoners of war and internees and, 342, 355 railways and, 429, 433–6 raw materials, purchase of, 249 recruitment and, 73, 98, 282, 284–5 requisition of property by, 80–2, 87–9 separation allowances and, 585 shoe industry, collaboration with, 391–4 Stokes mortar and, 372 supplies for troops and, 307 Territorial Force and, 295 textile industry, collaboration with, 391–4 timber industry and, 163, 173 uniforms and, 362, 382–3 war strategy and, 9 Ward in, 309 War Pensions Committees, 102–3, 105, 111 War plan, 8–9, 26 War Policy Committee, 68–9 War Priorities Committee, 68, 73–4, 169 War Refugees Committee, 321–4, 326 War Savings Certificates, 566 War Savings Committee, 101–2, 566 War Service Badges, 570, 572 War Timber Commission, 169, 172–3 War-Time Nursery Rhymes (MacDonald), 575 War Trade Department, 73 War Weapons Week, 501–2 Ward, Edward Willis Duncan, 307–11 Wason Committee, 206 Watson, Arthur, 434 Watts Morgan, David, 233 Ways and Communications Bill 1919, 619 Ways and Means Advances, 246, 252–3 The Wealth of Nations (Smith), 6 Webb, Beatrice, 22–3, 274 Webb, Sidney, 274–5, 620, 623 Weinberger, B., 549 Weir, William, 409–10 Wells, H. G., 24 Welsford, J. H., 463
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Welsh Churches Act 1914, 81 Welsh Free Church, 501 Wensley, Frederick Porter, 543 Wesleyans, 113 West, Glyn, 368–9 West, Margery, 341–2 West Indian Contingent Committee, 310 West London Methodist Mission, 277 West Midlands, population of, 35–6 West Riding Tramway Company, 343 Westlake, Herbert, 120 Westminster Abbey, 304 Whitby, naval shelling of, 24, 589 White Star Line, 284, 423, 466 Whitehaven Basic Works, 144 Whiting, R. C., 252 Wholesale Clothing Manufacturers’ Federation, 390, 394 Why Britain went to War – To the Boys and Girls of the British Empire (Yoxall), 567 Why Women should join the Labour Party, 275–6 Widows, 534–5 Wilhelm (German Crown Prince), 61 Wilhelm II (German Kaiser), 61 William Cory & Son, 284 Williams, Aneurin, 521 Williams, Tom, 237, 240 Wilson, James Havelock, 272–3 Wilson, Woodrow generally, 422, 507 Fourteen Points, 520, 609 League of Nations and, 522–4 peace initiative of, 17 on secret diplomacy, 518 Wilson Line, 464–5 Wilsons and North Eastern Railway Shipping Company, 466 The Win the War Cookbook, 536 Winstone, James, 231, 234 Winter, Jay M., 38, 483–5, 608 Winter, J. G., 235 Wintour, U. F., 393–4 Wireless Telegraphy Act 1904, 81 Wiseman, Jack, 76 Wives’ Fellowships, 537
Women agriculture, employment in, 215–16, 262 aid provided by, 596–7 air raids, as vulnerable victims of, 596 alcohol and, 538–9 Bolshevik Revolution and, 588 ‘canary girls’, 25 charitable relief and, 298–9, 301–2 in clothing industry, 390–1 dilution of labour and, 20 disproportionate burden of deprivations during war, 584–8, 591–2 family farms and, 529–31 fishing industry, employment in, 196 food and, 481 Independent Labour Party and, 523 iron and steel industry, employment in, 140–1 labour and, 20, 261, 263, 613 Labour Party and, 274–7 munitions production and, 374–6, 378 peace movement and, 523–4 in police, 543, 557–62 railways and, 430–2 recruitment of, 286 in shoe industry, 390–1 suffrage and, xviii–xix, 31, 277, 540, 601–3 in textile industry, 390–1 timber industry, employment in, 178–82 in trade unions, 268–9 wages and, 613 Women and the Labour Party, 275 Women Police Service (WPS), 557–8 Women Police Volunteers (WPV), 557–8, 560 Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), 286, 302 Women’s Co-operative Guild, 523 Women’s Emergency Corps, 286 Women’s Financial Information Bureau, 306 Women’s Forestry Service (WFS), 156, 176–8, 180–1
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009025874.038 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Women’s International League (WIL), 523–4 Women’s Labour League, 274 Women’s Land Army (WLA), 215–16, 262, 302 Women’s Legion, 286 Women’s National Land Army (WNLA), 179–80 Women’s Peace Crusade, 523 Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), 31 Women’s Volunteer Reserve, 286 Women’s War Agricultural Committees, 215 Wood, Thomas McKinnon, 413 Woolwich Arsenal, 565 Worcester Daily Times, 533 Work on the Land (Rothenstein), 213
Working Classes Cost of Living Committee, 481–5 Wrigley, Chris, 88 Yorkshire Miners’ Association (YMA), 235–7 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 296 Youth groups, 567–72 Yoxall, James, 567 Yugoslavia, monarchy in, 62 Zeppelin raids generally, 24 ‘air raid tourists’, 591 civilians, targeting, 589–91 homes and families and, 527 police and, 553 propaganda and, 592 shipbuilding industry and, 411
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009025874.038 Published online by Cambridge University Press