LONDON RADICAL HISTORIES

“There was this afternoon, unfortunately, a somewhat serious situation as between a procession of discharged soldiers and sailors and the police. I cannot agree for a moment that the cause of the unfortunate situation was the lack of employment, or the lack of work, or that it had anything to do with it, or had anything whatever to do with a legitimate grievance. The cause of the unfortunate situation was that the men, unfortunately, acted under the control of wild spirits who were amongst them, instead of under their own proper leaders… The leaders of the men, so far as I have been able to ascertain, or those who appeared to be leaders of the soldiers and sailors, were very anxious to try to prevent any such procession taking place, but they were unable to do so. The police therefore were obliged to take steps to bar the way of the procession. They barred the way by Constitution Hill and the procession went down Grosvenor Place and tried to turn up New Palace Road. There they were barred again by the police, and as the road happened to be under repair there were missives handy for the wild spirits and they used blocks of wood to assail the police and used the poles to trip up the horses of the mounted police. The same sort of scene occurred outside Parliament Square.” (Edward Shortt, then Home Secretary)

On 26 May 1919 , a protest by discharged British soldiers and sailors ended in a riot outside the Houses of Parliament in London.

When World War 1 came to an end, in November 1918, there were millions of men in uniform across Europe.  After the initial nationalist fervour and pro-war enthusiasm that had seen mass enlistment in the first year or two, the war fever had largely abated. Mass slaughter, the stalemate of trench warfare, the horrors of soldiers’ experience – trauma, disease, cold, horrific wounds, as well as vicious military discipline, punishment of those who refused orders, were unable to fight any more…

After the war, economies which for nearly five years had been geared heavily to armaments and the war effort, were plunged into upheaval and depression, an on top of this, the huge numbers of discharged servicemen returning to civilian life and looking for work often faced hardship and unemployment. On top of the trauma, injury, shell shock many of them were already dealing with, this angered large numbers, leaving them feeling they had ‘served their country’ only to be cast on the scrapheap when they came back.

This was to prove important in 1919, a pivotal year, when industrial unrest, and the inspiration of the Russian Revolution threatened the stability of the British state. Wartime clampdowns on strikes and workplace organisation had eroded into a massive wave of strikes. Insurgent soldiers rebelling against military discipline had already mutinied in British armies across France and elsewhere, as a wave of mutinies, strikes and rebellions throughout Europe helped to end the war.

In January 1919 another wave of protests had erupted as 1000s in uniform demanded to go home and refused to continue the war by fighting in Russia against the new Bolshevik regime.

Soldiers’ discontent continued to manifest itself through collective action in early 1919. At a meeting at the YMCA Club in Ecclestone Square, London, attended by 600 soldiers, a sergeant of the Army Service Corps made a speech of a ‘very inflammatory’ nature, stating that ‘if you men in uniform will combine with the workers, we will then be the strongest party in the country’. Soldier mechanics at a depot in Bristol went on strike complaining about being kept in the armed forces. Royal Engineers who had been employed as telegraphists and seconded to the Post Office, threatened a strike at having been kept under military discipline and in poor accommodation.

These examples caused a great deal of concern to the authorities, especially because of their apparent left wing character… Links between unhappy soldiers and trade union and leftwing parties were apparently being built, although much of the agitation was based in immediate demands rather than ideology.

A fledgling police union was also organising strikes among coppers. Protests by ex-servicemen continuing as they filtered back into civvy life were the last thing the government needed.

A number of organisations rapidly formed to express the atmosphere of collective rage among ex-servicemen, coming from a widely varying range of political points of view.

One leading veterans’ organisations was the National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers (NFDDSS) formed in January 1917 by various London-based veterans groups opposed to the Military Service (Review of Exceptions) Act 1917, which made it possible for people invalided out of the armed forces to be re-conscripted. Left-wing Liberal Party MPs James Hogge and William Pringle became its national leaders, the Federation fought for improved pensions for ex-servicemen.
The organisation’s statutes called for the nationalisation of industry and land. The Federation’s politics were thus broadly liberal, although there was a wide diversity of opinion.

On Monday 26 May 1919, the Woolwich branch of the NFDDSS organised a march on Parliament Square, which was baton charged by police.

A crowd of about ten thousand attended a demonstration in Hyde Park, sponsored by the NFDDSS. At the meeting in the Park, the crowd decided to march on Parliament, in defiance of the Sessional Order passed by Parliament forbidding such demonstrations within one mile of the Palace of Westminster when Parliament is sitting.

The large group had hoped to march from Hyde Park to parliament buildings with bands and banners to register their opposition to what they consider to be the inaction of the government in dealing with the problem of unemployment amongst those recently discharged from military service.

However, the progress of the ex-servicemen was thwarted by police, who would not allow them beyond Westminster Abbey. A police superintendent on horseback tried to bar the way and there was an immediate scuffle before he was injured and swept aside. Near Westminster Abbey, a cordon of policemen had been thrown across the roadway and when the march leaders tried to press on through them, one young constable lost his temper and struck out wildly with his truncheon. In no time, Parliament Square resembled a battlefield as bricks and bottles filled the air.

Disorder and rioting followed as some protestors broke through the cordon. Missiles of various sorts were flung at the ranks of mounted police. The police subsequently baton-charged the protestors but many bystanders were caught in the affray and a number of people were injured. The casualties kept the hospitals near Westminster busy until late at night and feelings on both sides were running high.

‘We have been stopped by batons and horseback charges, but it is only beginning’, one discharged soldier told a reporter.

The behaviour of the police was defended in the House of Commons by Edward Shortt, the Home Secretary.

Mr Shortt claimed that the cause of the trouble was not the lack of employment, but the fact that the men had come under the unfortunate control of ‘wild spirits among them, instead of their own proper leaders’.”

Meanwhile, a deputation from the National Federation of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers petitioned George Wardle, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour, to urge that the government engage in a programme of works of public utility in order to employ as many of the ex-servicemen as possible.

Wild spirits among them, instead of their own proper leaders’.

The mini-riot/fighting with police exhibited the willingness of some elements within the ex-servicemen’s movement to confront the state. Other branches worked closely with the trade union movement, and some set up soup kitchens.

But the Federation’s attitude towards the labour movement was ambivalent: it adopted a “trade union manifesto” committing members to oppose strikebreaking, but it had opposed strikes during the War, and some members of its leadership were involved in undercover efforts to disrupt the wave of strikes after the War.

The Federation voted to reject affiliation to the Labour Party in 1918, and the following year it came out against the railway strike in the autumn of 1919, calling on Prime Minister David Lloyd George to “hold firm against Labour tyranny”. The organisation’s support for the government against the railwaymen caused tension within its ranks, and many left-wing members left to join a Labour-aligned rival, the National Union of Ex-Service Men, which supported the railway strike.

The Comrades of the Great War was meanwhile founded as a right-wing alternative veterans group.

In 1920, the Federation invited NADSS, Comrades of the Great War and the Officers’ Association to a meeting to discuss a potential merger, and this was achieved in 1921, establishing the Royal British Legion.

Rising workers’ organisation was thwarted in the end by the unwillingness of trade union leaders to capitalise of the reality of the threat to the state and push forwards…

Infiltration

The May 1919 agro confirmed to some extent conclusions forward thinking movers and shakers in the British establishment had already decided – action had to be taken to prevent angry and rebellious serving and former members of the armed forces being attracted to radical ideas. Spreading subversion in the forces would undermine the potential for the army to be used against the increasing wave of strikes or revolutionary insurgency.

In March 1919, on the initiative of the Commander in Chief of the British Home Forces, Sir William, an organisation was set up to counter the threat of what Robertson saw as the worrying attitude of the rank and file in the forces to the rising tide of civilian social and industrial unrest.

Recognising that successful Army operations in support of the civil power depended on reliable soldiers, Robertson was alarmed about reports that: ‘Determined attempts to undermine the stability of the troops by encouraging Bolshevik principles are being made’.

“This organisation, whose existence was confided to senior Army Commanders on 4 March 1919, was designated A2 Branch GHQ G.B. A2 was run from an office adjacent to Room 101, Horse Guards’ Annexe, Carlton Terrace, in Whitehall, the Intelligence Headquarters of Home Command. A2 officers were tasked with going around and “talking to the troops and placing before them the real facts and the devastating effects of Bolshevism”; investigating causes of unrest amongst the troops, in order to ascertain from what source the disaffection springs, and to suggest the means of eliminating such sources, and keeping in close personal touch with Officers Commanding Formations and Unit Commanders, in order to co-ordinate for the benefit of all the experience, information and opinions of each.” (Julian Putkowski)

As well as propagandising against Bolshevism, A2 agents also infiltrated and disrupted ex-servicemen’s organisations like the Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Airmen’s Union (SSAU), a smaller group than the NFDDSS, which had developed links with army mutineers in early 1919 (especially the Folkestone mutiny)  – in the end helping to completely destroy the SSAU, whose initial links with trade unionists and communist and socialist groups had appeared to represent a serious threat to the state.

Infiltration and parallel harassment of SSAU activists formed something of the backdrop to the May 26th events. On the 1919 May Day demonstration in London a few weeks before, where the SSAU had had a contingent, ex-Rifleman Henry MacDonald and Regimental Sergeant Major Humphreys DCM of the Royal Fusiliers as key speakers delivering speeches from one of eight platforms. In addition to reciting familiar element of the SSAU programme, the spy noted that a resolution was read at all platforms. Prefaced by a bugle call, it ‘protested against sending troops to Russia and demanded their withdrawal …’. All the speakers had also urged the crowd: ‘to observe a general strike on 11 May, as this date marks six months after expiration of hostilities, when the Government contract expires.’

MacDonald repeated the call in the leftwing Daily Herald newspaper (who had backed the SSAU, lending them printing facilities) , reporting: ‘that all men who had enlisted under the Derby Scheme should demobilise themselves on 11 May – six months after the armistice of 11th November 1918.’

Although spies’ reports on SSAU were scornful of its organising ability, and influence, and several of its leading activists were Special Branch or A2 plants, this call scared the government.

Winston Churchill, the Minister of War, responded to ex-Rifleman MacDonald’s May Day exhortations by ordering a raid on his home and confiscation of SSAU papers. Churchill told the Cabinet: ‘It was possible that on this day soldiers might march out of camp and discard their uniforms. He had received information from the Adjutant-General as to the conditions in France, at the Curragh, Kempton Park, Winchester and other centres, to the effect that men might possibly demobilise themselves. The Daily Herald had fostered this campaign amongst the men, and the leaders who had been working the affair up had been to see General Childs and confessed to him that they were frightened at the turn events had taken. As for himself, although affairs were grave, he thought nothing untoward would happen. The commands had been notified and steps taken to meet any great outbreak that may occur.’

Three days after police raided SSAU and the Daily Herald offices, the Cabinet were told that evidence suggested that the plot was widespread, that H.T. McDonald, intended to go with Eden Paul, the ‘notorious revolutionary speaker’, to the Army Service Corps Training Camp at Grove Park, SE London (which had seen a strike and mutiny that January) and bring a disorderly demonstration to Whitehall. Although 800 men of the RASC had threatened to demobilise themselves on the 12th, owing to effective steps taken by the military authorities, and the fact that publicity had been given to the movement in the press, it collapsed.

The press aided the authorities in disrupting the movement. McDonald’s plans had been published in newspapers on 9th May, while the Daily Mail, still towing the line on demobilisation, stated that articles in the press had had a ‘cooling effect upon the hotheads who have been trying to stir up the Derby men to demobilise themselves’.

A document was circulated to officers, asking whether they believed their troops would be loyal enough to assist in strike-breaking, they would be willing to serve in Russia, and if there had been a growth in trade unionism among them. The disclosure of this circular increased the circulation of the newspaper and had undone ‘much of the good work which has been done by propaganda’. It was believed that the working man and soldiers were to be used to break strikes and that the government was hostile to trade unions. The fact that the Guards Division had been brought back and paraded in London in March, potentially as a warning that seditious actions would be met by force, did little to appease fears.

Another aspect of the SSAU targeted was its embryonic links with the Police Union, the NUPPO. As part of a range of SSAU expressions of solidarity with NUPPO Jack Byrnes had promised the full support of the SSAU for a proposed strike by the police on 1June. The NUPPO action, backed by a ballot of it’s members, aimed to secure official recognition for the Union, a pay rise and reinstatement of a dismissed NUPPO activist.

However police violence against the demonstrating ex-soldiers on the May 26^th demo had soured relations between the nascent coppers’ union and the ex-servicemen’s organisations somewhat…

Union leaders protested angrily to Jack Hayes, General Secretary of the new National Union of Police & Prison Officers, that if this was the way his members behaved, the police were no friends of the working class.

Hayes was alarmed, as the NUPPO was making a play for support among trade unionists, and in his anxiety to placate the labour movement he issued a press statement on behalf of the Union, apologising to the demonstrators who were, he said, only demanding the right to work. The statement put the blame for the violence which had occurred on militarism in the police and called for ‘the closer linking up of the police with organised labour’.

(In the police union’s own terms this was an own goal, as many members shared the General dislike of trade unionism, and were outraged that Hayes was apologising… If there was one single factor which led many policemen to sever their link with the Union, this was it. Furthermore, as Hayes was calling for closer links with organised labour, he was as good as saying that the Union, if it had its way, would prevent the police from maintaining order in future strikes; this hardened the existing Met and Home Office attitude that they would never deal with the police union again.)

In the end the August 1919 Police Strike was a flop, compared to the relatively stronger stoppage of a year before, and the police union withered away into insignificance.

Read much more on infiltration of the SSAU in the excellent ‘A2 and the Reds In Khaki’ by Julian Putkowski.

The SSAU largely collapsed in late 1919, partly due to the infiltration of A2 and Special Branch plants. Its demise and the gradual anti-strike shift in the National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers led to a growth in the National Union of Ex-Servicemen (NUX), formed as a socialist ex-servicemen’s organisation in London in early 1919. Many of its members were formerly supporters of the NFDDSS and SSAU. Within six months it had grown from one branch with fifty members to over one hundred branches and claimed a membership of nearly 100,000. Its membership was boosted by the stance of the NFDDSS against the 1919 United Kingdom railway strike in the autumn of that year, prompting many left-wing members to leave and join NUX, which had supported the strike. By the end of 1919 NUX had 200,000 members and 200 branches.

The NUX was allied to the Labour Party and the Independent Labour Party. It articulated the grievances of ex-servicemen and campaigned for better living conditions for former soldiers by raising issues such as unemployment, higher back pay, better pensions, inadequate housing and improved medical care for soldiers disabled by injury. It played a role as a claimants union aiming to secure justice for disabled former soldiers and adequate provision for the widows and families of soldiers who died in the First World War.

Many former servicemen in fact went on to play a part in the growth of unemployed activism in the years after World War 1 and the organising of the National Unemployed Workers’ movement.

The NUX program also included requisitioning empty homes for the use of unemployed ex-servicemen, land reform, a tax on profiteering landlords, and reform of military court martials. It also pushed to defend and extend the rights of former soldiers with shell shock, forcing the Labour Party to pass a motion condemning their treatment by the government as “pauper lunatics”, and bringing the demand for better mental health treatment for ex-servicemen into the political mainstream. It tried to organise a national rent strike. It also supported democratisation of the army. But – unlike other ex-servicemen’s organisations – it called upon ex-servicemen to unite to improve society as a whole rather than simply campaigning on veteran’s issues. The Union’s view was that soldiers should not be seen as a caste separate from the rest of society: that when they served they were “workers-in-uniform”, and that when they ended their duty they went back to being workers.

The Union was based in London but had a strong regional presence especially in Birmingham, Glasgow and Lancashire. Its leaders included G. D. H. Cole, Ernest Thurtle and Clement Attlee. Its first President was Duncan Carmichael, also Secretary of the London Trades Council. He was succeeded by John Beckett (who became a Labour MP and later a leading fascist). The NUX produced a monthly publication New World. It operated on a shoestring and always struggled financially although it received some financial support from the ILP.

Like the SSAU, NUX was kept under close surveillance by the newly formed Home Office Directorate of Intelligence because of Government fears that it might be promoting subversion or revolution, although little evidence of subversive activity was found. A more militant international offshoot, the International Union of Ex-Servicemen (I.U.X) was formed in Glasgow in 1919, although it claimed only 7,000 members by November 1919. The NUX also supported the Hands Off Russia campaign to oppose British support for the anti-Communist White movement in the Russian Civil War.

Fifty-three NUX supporting Labour Party candidates were elected in the urban district council elections of 1920 but by the autumn of 1920 and following a ballot of its members, the NUX reconstituted itself as a loose federation of autonomous branches many of which were then absorbed into the ILP, the Labour Party or the Communist Party, and it was wound up as a national organisation.