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NEVER AGAIN: THE POPPY BRAND

The Poppy Brand: Fitting National Remembrance in a Shopping Cart
By Silvia Binenti

This article does not intend to criticise the value of national remembrance per se; most simply it is concerned with the socio-political consequences of its discursive exercise, military marketing and corporate-like promotion. What does the “Poppy brand” stand for and how is it promoted? How do branding strategies reflect and calibrate national identity politics? How is the national consumer asked to ‘rethink remembrance’ today and what geopolitical imaginaries is this likely to shape?

In light of the progressive commodification of national memory and in anticipation of the imminent ‘urban poppification’ for Armistice Day, I aim to unwrap the ‘remembrance product’ and critically assess its back label.

The Poppy Appeal

The Royal British Legion (RBL) launched the first Poppy Appeal in 1921 as part of a national fund-raising campaign aimed at supporting veterans and civilians directly affected by the First World War. Since then, every year millions of people across Britain have pinned the red flower to their lapel during the first two weeks of November leading up to the Armistice Day (today known as the Remembrance Day or Poppy Day) – a solemn occasion “to remember and honour those who have sacrificed themselves to secure and protect our freedom” (RBL, 2017).

The symbolic use of the poppy is inspired by the poem “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae (1919), a Canadian army doctor whose verses moved the spirit of the post-war public. Poppies, as originally conceived, were hand-made by wounded soldiers at the Poppy Factory, symbolically called ‘the Factory of Remembrance’ – now a living memorial in the London suburb of Richmond (Gregory, 1994). In 1922 the success of the first Poppy Appeal exceeded the Legion’s expectations: publicity posters reading ‘Buy a Poppy for Remembrance Sake’ appeared all over Britain and around 30 million poppies were sold (Saunders, 2014: 119).

By the late 1920s, wearing the red flower had already become a central part of the public ritual of remembrance and almost a moral obligation towards the collective trauma of war still so fresh in the collective memory of the nation. Yet, as post-war pacifist movements started to gain momentum, questions over the tendency of the poppy to embody jingoistic sentiments and its inability to symbolise the regret over war casualties started to emerge. Most notably, in 1926 the Peace Pledge Union created a white version of the symbol, a visual pledge against war whose motto ‘No More War’ inscribed in the black centre of the flower replaced the prosaic ‘Haig Fund’ of the red precursor (Saunders, 2014: 157). However, just as the white poppy grew evermore popular, a new world conflict soon unfolded, thereby revitalising the significance of – or perhaps the need for – the remembrance poppy in Britain. After 1945, the symbol effortlessly became the emblematic protagonist of acts of remembrance, not only in commemoration of the two world wars but also of the British conflicts that followed.

Today, the fundraising appeal of the Legion represents one of the most successful charity campaigns in Britain and its red symbol is a banal accessory and urban adornment of the autumn. The image of the poppy, as a fragile but resilient flower that grows out of the broken ground of battlefields, both mirrors and calibrates national sentiments of loss, grief and healing. The Legion – self-proclaimed as ‘the national custodian of Remembrance’ – is the storyteller of such national tale of collective memory. By directing and zooming into the various scenes of commemoration, the charity makes the red poppy the guest of honour at times and an unnoticed participant at others. However, while its blood-red petals are firmly rooted in the national psyche of Britain as a bitter yet comforting symbol, in the last couple of years a recognised social pressure on public figures to wear the poppy, acts of rebellion against its geopolitical resonances and the increasing commodification of Remembrance have generated a new curiosity around the significance of the symbol. There are indicators that Remembrance-tide is destined to become a divisive issue, offering an entryway to contemporary dilemmas of national belonging and consumption culture.

The Brand

The Remembrance Brand is both a concept brand – namely, it promotes the preservation of the abstract and symbolic value of collective memory – and a commodity brand – as it is associated to an actual service and trademark supporting ex-servicemen and women (Briciu and Briciu, 2016). While the poppy has long been an iconic national symbol, the Legion formally trademarked its brand in 2001 (GovUK, 2017), whereby inaugurating the marketing orientation of its fund-raising strategy and awareness campaigns. The relatively recent ‘poppification’ of Remembrance – namely, the visual protagonism of poppy-inspired products and the year-round promotion of the brand – seems to be the result of the progressive corporatisation and (charitable) commodification of Remembrance fiercely pushed by the Legion in the last few years.

The Legion launches a new Remembrance ‘collection’ every year, as most branders do. Throughout the years the brand has carefully mirrored events of popular geopolitics and its identity has been attentively designed around the context, goals and challenges of modern memorialisation. In 2009, for instance, the prosaic ‘For their sake, wear the poppy’ campaign was hazarded after the Iraq war, while a heavily family-oriented strategy was adopted in 2013, when families were reuniting after British troops withdrew from Afghanistan. Most recently, preparations for the 2014-18 centenary have marked the beginning of the new strategy of the Legion, which culminated in 2016 when the public was invited to ‘rethink Remembrance’. In this regard, in 2014 the Legion’s Marketing Director, Gary Ryan, affirmed: “From a PR perspective there’s no better time to make changes to our marketing than over the next two years” (Joseph, 2014). Then, I would add, there is no better time to start reflecting upon the social implications of such changes.

Remembrance for sale?

The poppy enjoys an impressive recall rate (97% according to the Legion’s website), yet in 2013 the Remembrance Brand ranked lower than newer bereavement military charities, such as Help for Heroes, in the Charity Brand Index (Third Sector, 2013). Consequently, the Legion launched a pivotal commercial strategy that largely marked the merchandising shift of the Remembrance Brand. A new Head of Trading, E-commerce Director and Events & Campaigning Manager were recruited, new commercial partnerships were created and order fulfilment services were outsourced (ECOMD, 2014). In 2014, the brand was relaunched under the LIVE ON™ trademark, in the hope to convey a refreshening image and emphasise the welfare work the charity carries out throughout the year but is not so well-known for (RBL, 2017c). Around the same time, the online ‘Poppy Shop’ went live, quickly becoming a key platform of retail that today sells a whole new range of products – from pieces of clothing (such as “I Love Poppy” t-shirts), home gifts (“Mini Poppy Jute Bag will have you looking good and feeling great”) and sport fandom accessories (“Premier League Poppy Pins: Show your support for both your team and troops”) (Poppy Shop, 2017).

The #PoppySelfie campaign, the ‘Poppy Rocks’ compilations, the Poppy Ale (donating 10p to the Legion for every pint you pour) are all examples of the innovative promotional solutions employed by the Legion. And as the Daily Mail notes, “[i]f you feel that paper and plastic is a little bit last year, there is plenty of scope to update your poppy before Remembrance Day” (Kisiel, 2010). The design and distribution of the new Poppy Pin came to almost replace the ubiquity of the cheap assemblage of plastic of the traditional poppy (Rawlinson, 2014) and the Legion itself describes the pin as their most successful product: “[T]he perfect culmination of product and brand” (Vizard, 2017). The so-called ‘bling poppies’ – fine jewellery and limited design collection also available on the Poppy Shop for up to £750 – attracted strong media attention, as they were endorsed by high profile figures and featured heavily in TV entertainment shows such as X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing (Rawi, 2011). Remembrance Festivals themselves were turned into entertainment shows, where glamorous artists annually perform prior to the two minute silence (Andrews, 2011).

As part of this growing commercial strategy, throughout the years the Legion has also developed and progressively strengthened meaningful corporate partnerships. ‘Cause related marketing,’ as advertised on their website, is described as the chance to link external corporate products to the Remembrance Brand, representing a commercial opportunity to “help increase sales, build customer loyalty, retain or recruit customers” (RBL, 2017d). In 2016 alone, Sainsbury’s (a core ally of the charity) raised over £3.2 million for the Legion through store collection and poppy inspired merchandise (RBL, 2017e). Moreover, in 2014 the retailer’s yearly Christmas TV advertisement was produced in partnership with the Legion and told the story of the 1914 Christmas Day truce between British and German troops in ‘No Man’s Land’ (Sainsbury’s, 2014). On the one hand, the moving advertisement sends out the hopeful message that ‘even in war there is humanity’, on the other it depicts a romantic idea of one of the most brutal battlefields of the conflict, and a charitable image of Sainsbury’s. While being described as “possibly […] the best Christmas advert of all time” (Pocklington, 2014), the promotional video made the top 5 most complained adverts in 2014. The Advertising Standards Authority (2014) received 823 complaints (none of which were upheld) objecting to the way war history had been co-opted by a supermarket with the ‘shameful’ complicity of the Legion.

In light of this diversified commercial strategy, in 2014 the Legion won the ECMOD Direct Commerce Awards (2014), in 2016 it received the Enterprise Award in the third sector and LIVE ON™ was voted as the UK’s most trusted brand (Third Sector, 2016). More importantly, the commercialisation of the brand lead to a double digit increase in income and order value (ECOMD, 2014). To use the words of the Head of Retail Trading, John Norton, the charity has sought “to create more varied products to take us into more places so more people can find out a bit more about what we do” (Vizard, 2017). Beyond the fundraising potential of this commercial diversification, the insinuation of material objects naturally contributes to the symbolic aim of the ‘national custodian of Remembrance’ to spread portable objects of memory. However, while the plain poppy has no immediate, practical function in the everyday life of the wearer and its role is almost entirely symbolic, fashionable or practically functional merchandise that simply happens to be poppy-themed arguably distract the consumer from the evocative image of the nation, lacking the same symbolic potential of a simple pin. In this view, such objects become an even more banal and stretched reminder of the nation and its collective memory. This might accentuate the distinction between the distribution of portable lieux de mémoire and the sale of simple commercial objects available in the Poppy Shop.

Despite that, Norton comments that the charity only took a “light approach” to retailing and marketing so far, and this new merchandising turn “should not commercialise Remembrance” (Vizard, 2017) like some critics pointed out (see Samuel, 2010; Wallop, 2014). After all, the Legion is simply keeping pace with the dominant culture of consumerism to raise funds for a cause the consumer supposedly supports. Interestingly enough, however, in the most recent version of the Legion’s website, the online visitor is faced with two options: to “donate” or to go to “the Poppy Shop”, each respectively matched by a love-heart and a shopping cart icon. The consumer, thus, is given the option to generously embrace the value of remembrance or to buy it. However, can the consumer actually buy memory, or even the national identity associated with it? If national traditions are ‘invented’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983), in the modern era of commercialisation they could arguably also be sold and bought. In their most recent strategy briefing, the charity explicitly seeks new ways to ensure that the public actually owns a personalised piece of remembrance and “get everyone to 2 degrees of separation from a personal connection to WW1.” As part of the ‘Every Man Remembered’ project, the consumer will be able to shop for a piece of remembrance as well as a personal war story to go with it. For instance, the Passchendaele 100 Poppy Lapel Pin – limited item produced for the centenary commemoration of the battle on July 2017 – not only is materially made of “the very essence of the battlefields that the brave men fought upon” (Poppy Shop, 2017), but also comes with a Commemorative Certificate illustrating the story of a fallen British soldier – 60,083 Passchendaele pins for the 60,083 soldiers who died in the battle.

With this wide commercialisation of the brand, since 2011 – when the factory in Kent began the mechanisation of production – most poppy items are now produced at industrial scale or outsourced to the charity’s partners (Saunders, 2014). Consequently, the ‘enchanted’ idea of wounded soldiers behind the production of objects of remembrance has been delusioned and, contrary to popular belief, even the vast majority of ‘traditional’ poppies are no longer hand-made by veterans. In this regard, an article published in the Legionary – the magazine of the Canadian Legion – remarks the crucial difference between veteran-made and factory-made poppies: “The disabled veterans in Vercraft and the Red Cross workshops are creating true memorials, while a poppy replica produced under ordinary commercial competitive conditions is nothing more nor less than an artificial flower” (quoted in Saunders, 2014: 134). The ‘emotional dryness’ of industrial production can potentially create an affective rupture between the producer materially making the object and the consumer. Only the Richmond factory remains still active as an almost entirely symbolic site of memory visitable by tourists. In this way, the visitor can still appreciate the material affection of the symbol through the preservation of its fetishised modes of production.

The Poppy’s Politics of Representation

For some, the increasing commodification of Remembrance jeopardises the ability of the poppy to be a meaningful part of the national material culture. For example, some of the Remembrance jewellery aforementioned are actually sourced from China, consequently the absence of the label Made in Britain can potentially disrupt the ability of such products to also stand for a hypothetical Brand Britain.

The UK does not have an official national day that unites the whole country and currently, in the search for one, Remembrance Sunday is one of the most quoted candidates (BBC, 2013b). As a matter of fact, Remembrance celebrations offer a powerful ritualistic language that still draws from the three traditional institutional pillars of the nation: the monarchy, the armed forces and the Established Church. According to Elgenius (2005), national commemorations are most powerful when religious elements are present, due the ‘sacredness’ of patriotic sacrifice and the religious symbolism of death. The grave music played by the massed bands (such as Beethoven’s Funeral March and Purcell’s Dido’s Lament); the silent and solemn behaviour of the participants, the official funeral clothing of public representatives all manifest the sacredness of this collective secular funeral. The red poppies on the chest of all participants emphasise the unity among the living and the red wreaths on the war memorials signal the connection with the dead.

Today, this ceremonial ritual of collective mourning still offers the (challenging) context to the Legion’s work currently aiming to reinvent the identity of the Remembrance Brand: “Forward, not backward looking. Life, not death affirming. Hopeful, not despairing” (RBL, 2016). In the attempt to update and rejuvenate the brand identity, the charity’s core strategy for the five years leading to its own centenary in 2021 aims to make Remembrance more generationally relevant and more ethnically inclusive. The Legion is well aware that most of its supporters tend to be over 70, white and male and this affects the perception of the brand. The ‘Women at War 100’, for example, seeks to highlight the historical contribution of the female corps and auxiliary work during the Great War, while giving adequate attention to new generations of service-women (RBL, 2017f).

However, if the significance and the work of the Legion has to carry on in the future, the engagement of young people represents a priority in the Legion’s approach to the centenary, especially in light of the inevitable and forthcoming extinction of the old guard of veterans. The challenge for the charity is to emotionally connect young people, who are distant from the idea of war, to new generations of young soldiers, who do not face mandatory conscription and fight in wars that the public do not always approve of (see Gribble et al., 2015). With this goal in mind, the awareness videos released in 2016 – as part of the ‘Rethink Remembrance’ campaign (RBL, 2017a) – overimpose the stories of old veterans with those of younger soldiers, in the attempt to shift the empathy from the former to new generations of veterans on which the Legion currently spends £1.7 million a week (Vizard, 2017).

In light of the evolving politics of representation in multicultural Britain, moreover, the dominant narrative of memorialisation has been challenged and new efforts have been made to bring back to memory minor battles, as well as the contribution of foreign nationals who fought alongside Britain. The ‘custody’ of Remembrance invested to the Legion is defined in the Royal Charter as applying to those “on active service to the Crown” and this extends to the Commonwealth Forces and the citizens of Commonwealth ancestries now living in the UK (McCulloch, 2017). While older memorials, like the Thiepval Memorial, often omit the names of black South Africans who contributed in the war, the Legion seems committed to ensure that UK BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) groups enjoy their equal right to have their fallen remembered. In this regard, Nigel McCulloch (2017), current Head of Remembrance and former National Chaplain to the Legion, in a conference on Remembrance, Memory and Commemoration, noted: “If Remembrance is to continue in a meaningful way, it must become more honest about history and true to the realities of the UK’s richly diverse society. At present, we acknowledge we’re not getting it right.”

The most recent audience research issued by the Legion intentionally seeks the opinion of BAME groups and highlights responses such as “The British Legion was just for the whites. But we all bleed” and “The front page is always a white man. They were the heroes. They saved the world. It’s like the movie Independence Day” (Good Innovation, 2017). The research, moreover, emphasises that Muslim respondents are particularly divided over Remembrance and do not feel confident in buying or wearing a poppy due to current conflicts and hostility – “It’s very us and them. It brings back all the UKIP feelings. It doesn’t unite. It separates people.” This should be no surprise given the delicate balance of Muslim integration in the post 9/11 climate, that largely draws upon the increasing perception of a ‘clash of civilisations’ (Huntington, 1993). These tensions are calibrated in the politics of Remembrance managed by the Legion, as well as in the contested politics of the poppy in popular geopolitics. For instance, in 2011 an activist from Muslims Against Crusades was arrested and fined for burning a poppy outside the Royal Albert Hall during Remembrance celebrations, as an act of protest against the British military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan (Guardian, 2011). This episode was later counteracted by a poppy-rich demonstration organised by the English Defence League (EDL), far-right group opposing “global Islamification” and standing “for English cultural norms” (EDL, 2017).

In prevision of the commemoration of the centenary, the Islamic Society of Britain (ISB) has joined the Legion in the commitment of easing these tensions and raising awareness about the loss of Muslim lives alongside those of (white and Christian) British soldiers (Gadher, 2013). In 2014, in occasion of the centenary of the first Muslim soldier being awarded the Victoria Cross for Bravery, fashion student Tabinda-Kauser Ishaq, in collaboration with the ISB and the integration think-tank British Future, launched the first Poppy Hijab (Kenny, 2014). The headscarf – today on sale in the Poppy Shop for £22 – is meant to encourage those British Muslims willing to take part in Remembrance and raise awareness and appreciation about the 400,000 Muslims that fought alongside British soldiers. The Poppy Hijab effectively shows how the Legion has at least formally included the idea of ‘Muslimness’ in the material culture of national remembrance. However, as any highly symbolically charged symbol that evokes imaginaries of national belonging, religion and politics, the poppy headscarf has received some criticism from the Islamic community itself (BBC, 2013b). The item has been accused of perpetuating islamophobic attitudes, by suggesting that Muslim women need to visually ‘prove’ their loyalty to Britain and its rituals of remembrance.

The Legion maintains to oppose any exclusionary sentiment of remembrance and xenophobic understandings of the poppy products. Building on that, the charity claims that the centenary has also led to greater awareness over the joined efforts of non-Commonwealth Forces that were under British Command, those who operated with British assistance and former Allied Powers during the war: “The ability of Remembrance to draw nations together is powerful” (RBL, 2017g), adding that this cohesive power of memory is even more relevant today in light of the changing relationships of Britain with the rest of the continent. However, even granted that the Legion actually decides to share the domestic stage of Remembrance with the other nations and their casualties, it is still all about the memory of Britain and the friends of Britain, as one would naturally expect from a national, rather than a universal, brand. In this regard, the ‘What We Remember’ page on the Legion’s website reads: “The Legion advocates a specific type of Remembrance connected to the British Armed Forces, those who were killed, those who fought with them and alongside them” (RBL, 2007h). Consequently, one should ask whether it is Remembrance to ‘draw nations together,’ or war to draw national allies closer.

Building on the last point, the Brand consistently flags our country, takes pride in our sacrifices, mourns our victims who bravely fought for “our ways of life and freedoms” (emphasis added) (RBL, 2016). This language constantly signals the imaginative presence of the nation. The words ‘proud’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘bravery’ are closely associated with the brand, not only by the language and discourses directly employed by the Legion, but also by the people to whom they offer a platform to share their stories. Such patriotic resonances might not merely depend on the specific brand design promoted by the Legion year after year, but on a broader shift in the current culture of memorialisation.

Military Branding: Banal and Hot Nationalism

Billig (1995: 7) affirms: “In the case of the Western nation-states, banal nationalism can hardly be innocent: it is reproducing institutions which possess vast armaments.” When Armistice Day was first introduced after the First World War, it was meant to express a committed sentiment of ‘Never Again’. However, as the memory of old conflicts slowly disappears from the experience of the living, the Remembrance Brand has assumed new tones (Harrison, 2012). People are now asked to show gratitude and respect, while orderly pinning their poppy to “Support our Troops”. Building on that, this section will explore how the Remembrance Brand promotes a war culture of national sacrificialism and triumphalism, inevitably blurring the lines between banal and hot nationalism.

For the marking of the 2018 centenary, the Legion is currently looking for the development of a core theme, what they internally call the ‘Big Idea’. According to The Armistice 100 Brief (RBL, 2016), the message of the ‘Big Idea’ should be: 1) “Respectful for the service and sacrifices made”; 2) “Thankful for their contribution to our way of life and freedoms”; 3) “Inspired by their example”. The plan already involves ‘Thank You’ and ‘Hope’ campaigns, to show the gratitude for past and present sacrifice and send a message of hope for the future – a key aspect of the brand that is currently not sufficiently communicated according to their research. The campaigns will highlight how some of the lessons, achievements and creative expressions of the Great War are still relevant today: “Through the horrors of war some of the most beautiful pieces of music, art, poetry and literature have been produced” (Good Innovation, 2017). By highlighting the positive fruits generated as the result of harrowing conflicts, however, the Legion risks romanticising, if not even celebrating, the idea of war without ever condemning it. As a matter of fact, the charity declares to be strictly non-political and neutral regarding the causes and consequences of conflict, most simply “its concern is for those who have served the nation, often at great cost and sacrifice” (RBL, 2017g).

The ‘non-political’ silence of the charity over the nature of war is often a rather critical choice, and most of all a political one. By way of the example, the 2014 track song of the Legion reinterpreted (or perhaps ‘silenced’) the spirit of the original song ‘No Man’s Land’ (RBL, 2017i), arguably to fit the apolitical attitude as well as the commercial end of the Remembrance Brand. The song was originally conceived to build up a climax ending with the denunciation of war, however the Legion’s version left the most sentimental verses of the first part of the song, while cutting the following verses from the second half:

Do all those who lie here know why they died? / Did you really believe them when they told you ‘The Cause?’ / Did you really believe that this war would end wars?/ Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame / The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain, / For Willie McBride, it all happened again, / And again, and again, and again, and again.

The author of the original piece, who does not own the rights to the song, admitted that the Legion’s version negates the strong anti-war intention of the original lyrics, while giving a sentimentalistic tone to the story of ‘the glorious fallen’ from 1916 (Bogle, 2014). Subsequently, a petition was launched on change.org requesting that the Legion apologise for their reinterpretation of the song, which was critically labelled as “syrupy” and “jingoistic” (Banks, 2014).

It is somewhat ironic that an inspirational brand that exalts the bravery of ex-military personnel, never questions, or at least contextualises, how and why these soldiers need their support. To contrast such politically agnostic position, the Legion puts under the spotlight personal stories that potentially sentimentalise ‘loss’ and ‘sacrifice’ in the eye of a general public, who is already largely anaesthetised to modern and distant wars. For example, the selected citation reader at the Festival of Remembrance in 2016 was Beth, a 10-year-old girl who composed the poem “Why Do You Wear a Poppy Beth?.” The final verses of the poem read:

It is because of their sacrifice, /That we are free, you see / To proudly fly our Union flag, / For all the world to see. / And it’s because of those still fighting, / In wars across the world, / That I can sleep safely in my bed, / Free from any cares.

The poem carries on explaining that she wears the poppy “with pride” in honour of her father who died while serving in the Royal Navy: “Because my Daddy, my hero, bravely gave his life” (RBL, 2017). The Legion’s website, however, clarifies that Beth’s father died on a submarine while still in Southampton shot by a fellow seaman. Finally, it adds that Beth, a Sea Cadet herself, and her two elder brothers, also in the Royal Navy, are now proudly following their father’s footsteps.

The Legion affirms that they are simply trying not to show people as mere victims and they are offering a platform to tell stories that come directly from the veteran community. However, by only voicing those who are understandably trying to emotionally cope with the unfortunate consequences of war – perhaps by writing a poem about their heroic father – the Legion is contributing to create a culture of war sacrificialism, heroism and triumphalism. This potentially gives space for young people, such as Beth and her brothers, to project a role for themselves in the new war culture and take part in it. In this regard the act of telling some stories, singing certain verses, showing specific perspectives and omitting others is fundamentally a political act. Moreover, it is also worth noting that the Legion is actually giving space to highly politicised, if not political, matters. One of the ‘Stories’ on the Legion’s website, for instance, tells of the Queen’s unveiling of the Afghanistan and Iraq war memorial, reporting Sir Michael Fallon’s (Secretary of State Defence) words celebrating the monument as “a permanent reminder of the contribution and sacrifice […] towards the security of the United Kingdom and the interests of Iraq and Afghanistan” (RBL, 2017j). On the same page, a video produced by the Legion captures soldiers telling of their ‘proudest’ moment in war, such as: “When I first engaged with Iraqi people they saw us as saviours, they saw we were there to help them and save them” (RBL, 2017j).

Tensions over the progressive militarisation of the Remembrance Brand come to the forefront when looking at the Legion’s sponsorship from some of the global leaders in arms retail. Lockheed Martin UK, one of the largest arms company worldwide specialised in the development and production of long-range nuclear missiles, has sponsored the Young Professionals’ Poppy Rocks event in 2014 (WhitePoppy4Peace, 2014). Thales, a French arms company with a track record of supplying the world’s most oppressive autocracies, has adorned the London underground station at Westminster with a poppy-themed hoarding (Smith and Burnett-Stuart, 2014). The UK’s largest arms producer, BAE Systems, which this year has sponsored the annual Poppy Ball and annually hosts its own fundraising events, has been a long-standing ‘platinum corporate sponsor’ of the Legion (ibid). On top of that, in 2012 the then president of the charity, Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely, resigned after a press report accused him of using the charity’s network to lobby on behalf of arms companies and recorded him while describing the Remembrance Day as a “tremendous networking opportunity” for arm dealers (Smith and Burnett-Stuart, 2014).

According to critics, by accepting such sponsorships, the Legion is indirectly validating the business of war and it is ironic that a charity that helps the victims of weaponry would take money from their producers. In response to early criticism about BAE’s sponsorship – which is now maintaining a lower profile – the former Corporate Communications Director of the charity, Stuart Gendall, commented: “The British armed forces require equipment and BAE supplies much of that equipment. Without the best-quality tools to do the job, we would be remembering a few more casualties of conflict” (Tweedy, 2002). Of course, a few less on the British side potentially means a few more on the other, but this seems acceptable according to the internal hierarchy of death of the nation. Moreover, due to these debates, accepting such sponsorships is arguably poorly strategic from the perspective of banal nation branding, since suddenly the least ‘romantic’ sides of war, namely actual weaponry, become more visible and questionable in the mind of the public. On the one hand, this could reduce the popularity of the Remembrance Brand, given that banal nationalism has to only be passively upheld, while the ‘hot’ nationalism – towards which the new militaristic tones of the brand seem to point – requires a more active support and belongs to a narrower political spectrum. On the other hand, however, by making the banal less banal, this militaristic shift could also ease the transition from banal nationalism to ‘hot’ national activism. Despite that, the Legion declares that the brand is intended to be “[s]tirring and emotional, but NOT celebratory, jingoistic or militaristic” (capitalisation in the original) (RBL, 2016), while currently seeking feedback from respondents that would more closely identify with the white poppy.

This cultural shift of the Remembrance tale from ‘Never Again’ to the militaristic tones of war heroism is somewhat mirrored and confirmed by the appearance of a new major charity competitor on the market since 2007, Help for Heroes (H4H). The military charity has already reached £36.5 million in total income and has quickly won the support of the public. Their website shows almost exclusively white, and predominantly male, young military personnel and the words ‘sacrifice,’ ‘bravery’ and, of course, ‘heroes’ largely dominate. In this regard, the charity ‘clarifies’: “Help for Heroes considers anyone that volunteers to join the Armed Forces, knowing that one day they may have to risk all, is a hero. It’s that simple” (H4H, 2017a). They also have their own online shop, which today sells over 500 branded articles, since “we knew the public would like to ‘wear their support’” (H4H, 2017b). However, even the items on sale have a different tone if compared to the Legion’s friendly poppy-themed collection: the Union Jack features almost on every item, if only through the predominantly red, blue and white colours, along with ‘fearless’ logo t-shirt, military-patterned clothing for kids, and medal-shaped stationary. Contrary to the decorum and tact required from the ‘national custodian of Remembrance’, indeed, Help for Heroes is more entitled to proudly wave the flag of Britain. However, once again, this makes the banality of the poppy more effective, and the national(istic) sentiments of Help for Heroes more visible.

As Tamir (1993: x) notes: “The sanctification of suffering fosters hatred and mistrust, and – worse still – a backward-looking politics that perpetuates conflict.” Religious patriotism and the celebration of the glorious men and women who have fought and are still fighting for ‘Queen and Country’ not only sanitises and glosses the real misery of conflict, but creates a subtle war propaganda. It basically tells the public that regardless of personal views on the causes of war (of which the charity does not want to talk), ‘you ought to support our heroes, hence their wars’. However, as the Ex-SAS soldier Ben Griffin notes, “[t]here is nothing heroic about being blown up in a vehicle, there is nothing heroic about being shot in an ambush and there is nothing heroic about the deaths of countless civilians” (WalesOnline, 2013). This is not the same as directly promoting confrontation between nations through the design of a patriotic brand. However, metaphorically speaking, in this case banal nation branding looks a bit like designing the sport uniform for the national team: players do not know whether they will end up playing or simply sit on the sidelines, but they will be ready to compete in the name of the unique jerseys they are wearing.

Concluding Remarks

This articile has appreciated that, in anticipation of key commemorations, the Remembrance Brand has three major goals: the engagement and the participation of individuals from different backgrounds; the engagement of young audiences; a greater, and perhaps new, understanding of the relevance of remembering the fallen and supporting the living. Based on the analysis of my research, while the Legion affirms that the Remembrance Brand has “no political, religious or commercial meaning”, I contend that: 1) the Remembrance Brand is not only highly politicised, it is inherently political; 2) while it is not a religious symbol, it promotes a form of sacred patriotism and 3) it is both commercialised and fetishised in its material and symbolic form.

The brand’s banal signalling of our nation, our memory, our dead inevitably helps create a reassuring sense of inclusion within the (ethnically diverse) national community. However, inclusion by definition implies exclusion and national brands and symbols, whether they remain banal or not, necessarily come to embody both sides of the coin – the Remembrance Brand and the poppy are no exception. By trivialising and glossing the idea of war, the brand perpetuates a militaristic culture that ultimately blurs the distinction between banal nation branding and the subtle promotion of antagonistic sentiments of ‘hot’ nationalism.

As in any paradigm of power exercise, the ability of persuasion of brands represents a double-edged sword which largely depends on their design, exercise and ultimately perception. So, make sure you know what you are putting in your cart of Remembrance before checking out.

Silvia Binenti will be speaking at our Annual Conference on Saturday 10 November.

Get involved:

The full version of this article was originally published by the UCL Migration Unit Working Papers (September, 2017).

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Wallop, H. (2014) Had poppy chic gone too far?. The Telegraph. Available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/11169826/Has-poppy-chic-gone-too-far.html [Accessed 29 August 2017].

WhitePoppy4Peace (2014) Arms dealers finance the ‘red poppy’ trade in the UK. Reimagining Peace. Available at https://reimaginingpeace.wordpress.com/2014/11/07/arms-dealers-finance-the-red-poppy-trade-in-the-uk/ [Accessed 29 August 2017].

NEVER AGAIN: THE SHORES OF NORMANDY

D-Day veteran Jim Radford of Veterans For Peace sings his song “The Shores of Normandy” at his own 90th birthday party.

Jim served aboard the rescue tugboat “Empire Larch” and was the youngest participant in the Allied invasion force.

In April 1944 the Empire Larch was assigned to “Operation Corncob” in preparation for the coming invasion of France and sailed from Hull to join the convoy which collected the ships which were to be used to form the breakwaters for the Mulberry Harbour. On 6 June 1944 she crossed the channel from Poole to join the Normandy invasion fleet and arrived in the evening off Arromanches (Gold Beach) to scuttle her tow. She ran aground on the morning of 7 June (while still under artillery fire from a German shore battery) and was towed off a sandbar by a US Navy tug.

Jim went on to serve in the Royal Navy and has been active in the anti-war movement for decades.

Jim Radford served in the Merchant Navy and the Royal Navy, he is a member of VFP UK.

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VFP SOUTH WEST: LONGLEAT MILITARY SPECTACULAR

On Saturday 29th September three members of VFP UK and a VFP supporter from Frome Stop War attended the ‘Longleat Military Spectacular’

This event allows the public to handle and inspect weapon systems from a Glock pistol up to and including AS90 & Challenger II. The event is described by Longleat as child friendly.

VFP engaged with military personnel principally questioning was it right to allow such young children to be playing with weapon systems that are designed to kill.

VFP UK postcards were handed out to the public and left on military stands until the general manager of Longleat Estates (with security) told us if we continued our actions we would be asked to leave the grounds. We peacefully complied with their request.

The Armed Forces are struggling with recruitment so expect more events like this. War is not family entertainment.

Nev Dean served in the British Army and is a member of Veterans For Peace.

NEVER AGAIN: CLOTHING

Sunday 11 November 2018 will be the 100th anniversary of the 1918 Armistice. In the run up to that centenary, Veterans For Peace UK aim to resurrect the slogan Never Again which was widely used by the public in the years after the First World War.

Please consider buying and wearing the clothing. All money raised goes towards funding our Annual Gathering which culminates with our ceremony at The Cenotaph on Sunday 11 November 2018.

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NEVER AGAIN: BEATING WOOTTON BASSETT

By David Collins

How we were before we joined
was no different from the rest.
for if a man needed a reason it was us;
poor work, bad pay, too old for home, no escape.

But then you should have seen us at the camp;
smart, strong, high on respect;
raring, primed for war;
and that is what we got.

What it was then to return alone,
the regiment following later;
for I was blue on blue, mad as march
“with respect, Sir, no hands no feet”

but as I always say – they’ll not be lining streets;
not for me, not at Wootton Bassett.

David Collins served with the Royal Marines and is a member of VFP UK.

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REPORT: POLICY GROUP MEETING SEP 2018

NEVER AGAIN: THE ARTICLES

2018 ANNUAL GATHERING: VITAL INFORMATION

VETERANS FOR PEACE UK: ANNUAL GATHERING 9/11 NOVEMBER 2018
LONDON

This is our main gathering of the year and attracts VFP members from around the world. Please scroll down for dates, times, locations and accommodation options.
Please click here to register.

SCHEDULE

MAP

Key locations are indicated on the map below, including accommodation suggestions.

ACCOMMODATION

County Hotel
8-11 Upper Woburn Place
London WC1H 0JW

T: +44 (0)20 7387 5544
E: info@imperialhotels.co.uk
web: https://www.imperialhotels.co.uk/en/county

Hostel at The Exmouth Arms
1 Starcross Street
London NW1 2HR

T: +44 (0)20 7387 5440
E: exmoutharms@publove.co.uk
Web: http://www.publove.co.uk/exmouth-arms-euston
Please mention you are VFP if you want to room with other VFP members.

Tavistock Hotel
48-55 Tavistock Square
London WC1H 9EU

T: +44 (0)207 278 7871
E: info@imperialhotels.co.uk
Web: https://www.imperialhotels.co.uk/en/tavistock

DONATE

Please consider making a donation to VFPUK to help with the costs of our Annual Gathering:

TO REGISTER: CLICK HERE

NEVER AGAIN: 1916

When WW1 started in 1914 Britain quickly built up its armed forces and assembled a huge volunteer army. For many of these citizen soldiers the Battle of the Somme was their first experience of war. They were told that the massive week long artillery bombardment on the enemy lines would kill all the Germans and all they needed to do was march forward and take the now undefended opposition trenches.

In reality, when the British barrage stopped, the Germans rushed from underground bunkers to man their trenches. On 1st July 1916, the first day of the offensive, 57,470 British soldiers were killed, wounded or missing; most, cut down by machine-gun and rifle fire, died in the mud of No Man’s Land – or bunched up against the German’s barbed-wire defences. And hardly any of the expected aims were achieved, or targets taken.

If that was not bad enough, the Generals kept sending their soldiers over the top for the next five months. When winter weather finally ended the Battle of the Somme on 18th November over a million men, from all sides, were casualties – making it one of the bloodiest battles of all time. But some of the top brass still tried to claim it as a victory, because, within a small geographical area, a six-mile strip of shell-cratered mud had been captured.

The Somme came to represent the carnage of WW1 and later many books, films, poems and songs originated from it. Including this song, ‘1916’, from Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead.

Sixteen years old when I went to the war,
To fight for a land fit for heroes,
God on my side, and a gun in my hand,
Chasing my days down to zero.

And I marched and I fought and I bled
And I died and I never did get any older,
But I knew at the time,
that a year in the line,
Was a long enough life for a soldier.

We all volunteered,
And we wrote down our names,
And we added two years to our ages,
Eager for life and ahead of the game,
Ready for history’s pages.

And we brawled and we fought
And we whored ’til we stood,
Ten thousand shoulder to shoulder,
A thirst for the Hun,
We were food for the gun, and that’s
what you are when you’re soldiers.

I heard my friend cry,
And he sank to his knees, coughing blood
As he screamed for his mother
And I fell by his side,
And that’s how we died,
Clinging like kids to each other.

And I laid in the mud
And the guts and the blood,
And I wept as his body grew colder,
And I called for my mother
And she never came,
Though it wasn’t my fault
And I wasn’t to blame,
The day not half over
And ten thousand slain, and now
there’s nobody remembers our names.

This is a video of VFP at the Cenotaph in 2016, with Jim Radford, a veteran of the Normandy Landings of 1944, singing 1916:

Info by VFP member Aly Renwick, who served in the British Army from 1960-68.

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NEVER AGAIN: HANGING ON THE OLD BARBED WIRE

During the First World War, the casualties suffered on even a single day could be enormous – and a system had to be put in place to deal with the injured. There was a great expansion of medical facilities and in the British Army area in France the number of medical officers increased from 200 to over 10,000.

Clearing stations were set up just behind the front lines with base hospitals to the rear and a further move back to the more extensive medical facilities in Britain, if that proved necessary. While humanitarian concern for the wounded motivated many of the doctors and nurses, there was another reason for the vast expansion of the medical network. During the great battles, high numbers of casualties reduced fighting units to a skeleton, depleting armies and rendering them impotent.

The military command required an efficient system for clearing the badly wounded from the front and quickly treating those with lesser injuries, to ensure their speedy return to the trenches. In the British Army, senior officers tended to regard any sign of weakness among their troops as cowardice. So, ordinary soldiers were on the receiving end of harsh discipline and military courts when they were unable to function as soldiers due to mental stress.

Soldiers soon learnt to recognise the type of wounds that would ensure their evacuation from the horror of the front for good. To have a ‘Blighty one’ was regarded by many men as preferable to staying on in the trenches. Those that did stay on often became cynical, nihilistic and a little bit crazy.

‘Hanging On The Old Barbed Wire’, sung here by Chumbawamba, came from the soldiers in the trenches. Often sung whilst marching, the song is one of many showing the ordinary soldier’s dissent and disgust at the war and also at the inequalities within the army system.

If you want to find the general
I know where he is
I know where he is
I know where he is
If you want to find the general
I know where he is
He’s pinning another medal on his chest
I saw him, I saw him
Pinning another medal on his chest
Pinning another medal on his chest

If you want to find the colonel
I know where he is
I know where he is
I know where he is
If you want to find the colonel
I know where he is
He’s sitting in comfort stuffing his bloody gut
I saw him, I saw him
Sitting in comfort stuffing his bloody gut

If you want to find the sergeant
I know where he is
I know where he is
I know where he is
If you want to find the sergeant
I know where he is
He’s drinking all the company rum
I saw him, I saw him
Drinking all the company rum
Drinking all the company rum

If you want to find the private
I know where he is
I know where he is
I know where he is
If you want to find the private
I know where he is
He’s hanging on the old barbed wire
I saw him, I saw him
Hanging on the old barbed wire
Hanging on the old barbed wire

By the end of the war, some 80,000 front-line troops had been treated for various types of psychological breakdowns, which became known as ‘shell shock’. At first, it was thought that the cause of shell shock lay in gases escaping from exploding shells. Others thought that shock waves from the explosions were responsible.

Daniel Pick examined these theories in his book, ‘War Machine – The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age’:

‘For conventional medico-psychiatry, the First World War disturbances presented real diagnostic difficulties: how to make sense of this ‘no man’s land’ of illness, which seemed to negate commonly held beliefs about valour and masculinity, and to defy the prevailing organic models of insanity and its aetiology? The idea that the shellshocked were all hereditary degenerates or that their condition could be put down to the commotional effects of exploding shells on the central nervous system proved increasingly unsustainable.

Yet shellshock could not be explained away as malingering. It blurred the distinctions between neurosis and insanity – and it was a crisis on a massive scale. According to one account in 1916, shellshock cases constituted up to 40 per cent of the casualties from heavy fighting zones; more alarmingly still, officers seemed especially prone to it. Army statistics revealed that officers were more than twice as likely to suffer from mental breakdown on the battlefield as men of the ranks.’

[From – War Machine – The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age by Daniel Pick, Yale University Press 1993].

Info by VFP member Aly Renwick, who served in the British Army from 1960-68.

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NEVER AGAIN: BETWEEN THE WARS

Before his song, ‘Between the Wars’, Billy Bragg said that he was singing it in memory of WW1 veteran Will Vernon:

‘When I was a kid, I used to run errands for a old man who lived a few doors down from our house. His name was Will Vernon and he was the only World War One veteran that I knew.

He was pushing 70 in the late 1960s and had a debilitating cough, all wet and spluttery, an echo of the trenches where he was gassed as a teenager, aged 19. Will used to give me half a crown to do his weekly shopping, which was a lot of money to a 10 year old.

I happened to see an advert on Facebook offering free access to WW1 records and, thinking of old Will Vernon, I decided to put his name into their search engine where I quickly found his war records.

He was a rifleman in the 3rd Rifle Brigade, fought in the breakthrough of the Hindenburg Line and was admitted to hospital having been gassed on 12th October 1918. If you’re old enough to remember those who fought in WW1, they bore dignified witness to the insanity of war.

I was briefly a squaddie myself and I’ve found that experience has helped me to oppose war, but not demonise soldiers. The guys I served with were just like old Will Vernon, teenagers put in a difficult situation without the right equipment – where was his gas mask? – and some loving family’s son.’

In 1914-18 Britain, to protect its world interests and prevent Germany dominating Europe, had thrown all the resources of the country and empire into the First World War. Emerging triumphant, but weaker financially and militarily, Britain found itself losing markets and influence to the US – who afterwards gradually supplanted Britain as the dominant western power.

Britain’s armed forces spent the time between the two world wars mainly in their traditional role of policing the Empire. New forms of warfare were used to keep British rule in place and aircraft were found to be cheap and effective weapons for machine-gunning and gassing ‘rebels’ and dropping bombs on towns and hamlets ‘to teach the natives a lesson’.

Before WW2 many members of the British ruling class had been virulently anti-communist and pro-fascist. This included various members of the Royal family, as well as sections of the media, aristocracy and big business. They even turning a blind eye to the overthrow of the elected republican government in Spain, by a group of right wing army officers led by General Franco.

Many people in Britain and other countries had volunteered to fight against Franco’s coup d’état. And when Franco won, with the help of Hitler and Mussolini, they felt that fascism could have been checked if the establishments in Europe had opposed it in those early days.

Ruling class opinion in Britain began to change, however, when it became clear that unchecked fascism threatened parts of the empire and even the old order in Europe itself. So, just over two decades after the end of the ‘War to end all wars,’ Britain and the Empire became embroiled in another global conflict, this time against German Nazi expansionism and its Japanese ally in the far east.

In the Second World War, imperialist countries again used their modern technology of warfare against each other with devastating effect, as this conflict became the first conventional modern war in which more civilians than combatants were killed. This war, like WW1, did not end war, however, because wars / conflicts continued to go on and on and on – right up to our own day.

Info by VFP member Aly Renwick, who served in the British Army from 1960-68.

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NEVER AGAIN: DANDELIONS

The song Dandelions picks up on the theme that the British Generals in WW1 were donkeys, while the men they led were lions. This view emerged from the many veteran accounts of the war, from journals, letters, notebooks or what was told to relatives.

It came from veterans’ experiences in Battles like the Somme in 1916, when the Generals kept sending wave after wave of troops, marching forward in formation in broad daylight – against German defences protected by artillery, machine-guns and barbed-wire. This carnage on the Somme went on and on – for days, weeks and months.

So, many of the ordinary soldiers began to view their senior officers as arrogant, uncaring and incompetent. Examples can also be found in the WW1 poetry of low ranking officers, like Owen and Sassoon, who shared front-line duty with their men. ‘The General’, by Siegfried Sassoon, is a typical example:

“Good-morning, good-morning!” the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
“He’s a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

Steve O’Donoghue wrote Dandelions about Arthur, his mother’s father:

‘He joined up as a boy, lying about his age. He was a sort of yellow colour due to the mustard gas. He never talked about the war, except to say, I’ve seen things no man should have to see’.

In the song Steve depicts Arthur as not keen on poppies being used to glorify war. A better image for him was the dandelion, its seeds blown away in the wind.

Now Arthur was only a young cub
A brave lion and merely fifteen
But with the rest of his pack
He was sent to attack
To a war that was cruel and obscene
But those lions fought hard and fought bravely
While the donkeys just grazed in a field
They had no sense of shame for their barbarous game
And the thousands of lions they killed

And when he saw them marching up Whitehall
I remember what old Arthur said
He said the donkeys are all wearing poppies
So I shall wear dandelions instead

Now every remembrance Sunday
Well I pause at eleven o’clock
And I remember those dandy young lions
And those donkeys and their poppycock
Cos they’ve taken those beautiful poppies
And they use them to glorify war
Well I remember those dandy young lions
And I don’t wear a poppy no more

And when he saw them marching up Whitehall
I remember what old Arthur said
He said the donkeys are all wearing poppies
So I shall wear dandelions instead

Now if you take an old dandelion
And just blow it quite gently he’d say
You can see all the dreams of those soldiers
In the seeds as they just float away
But then the wind takes hold of those seeds
And they rise and quickly they soar
Like the spirit of all those old soldiers
Who believed that their war would end war

And when he saw them marching up Whitehall
I remember what old Arthur said
He said the donkeys are all wearing poppies
So I shall wear dandelions instead
Cos those lions were dandy young workers
Who those donkeys so cruelly misled
And if the Donkeys are gonna wear poppies
I shall wear dandelions instead

And when he saw them marching up Whitehall
I remember what old Arthur said
He said the donkeys are all wearing poppies
So I shall wear dandelions instead

Info by VFP member Aly Renwick, who served in the British Army from 1960-68.

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NEVER AGAIN: THE ACCRINGTON PALS

On 4^th August 1914, when Britain declared war on Germany, the size of the British Army was 247,432 regular troops. The next day Field Marshal Lord Kitchener was appointed Secretary of State for War and given the task of recruiting the numbers that would be needed to fight an industrialised war against another European imperial nation. With the war already begun, Kitchener needed a way to recruit hundreds of thousands of soldiers quickly.

Recruited from specific communities, the Pals Battalions were formed by exploiting the patriotic fervour that the war had aroused. Under Kitchener’s tutelage, but organised by local leaders like MPs, mayors, gentry and factory owners, the Pals were composed of volunteers eager ‘to teach the Hun a lesson’. Their strength was based on community spirit, because they were all friends, neighbours, relatives and workmates.

In the midst of a countywide anti-German propaganda campaign, eager young ‘king and country’ patriots flocked to enlist. In just five days in Liverpool, Lord Derby recruited enough volunteers to set up 3 Pals Battalions; Manchester, in two weeks, raised 4; Glasgow saw over a 1,000 Pals volunteering in a single night – from the Corporation Tramways Department. Within two months 50 Pals Battalions had been formed, or were in the process of forming.

The Accrington Pals were recruited mainly from that town and some from its neighbours – Burnley, Chorley and Blackburn. The mayor of Accrington, Captain John Harwood, had offered to raise a Pals battalion and recruitment began on 14^th September. By the end of the month over a 1,000 men had responded to form a battalion with a distinctive local identity.

Incorporated into the 31^st Division, the Accrington Pals, in February 1916, were ordered to France to take part in a ‘big push’ on the Somme. Their objective was to take the hilltop fortress of Serre, guarded by Germans of the 169^th (8^th Baden) Infantry Regiment. For a week before the ‘big push’ British artillery pounded the German lines, but they were well dug-in and only partially affected by the shelling.

On July 1^st 1916 at 7.20am, the Accrington Pals advanced into No Man’s Land to face their fate, as the Germans scrambled from underground shelters bringing machine guns and rifles to bear on their advancing enemy. The Pals were cut down like: ‘Swathes of cut corn at harvest time’. It was recorded that out of the 720 Accrington Pals who took part in the attack, 584 were killed, wounded or missing, at the end.

Back home in Accrington, there were initial reports of: ‘Success on the Somme’, before the true situation became apparent. Local papers were then filled with casualty lists and photos of the killed, wounded and missing. The next day it became clear that whole neighbourhoods had lost most of their young men – and in every street blinds were not drawn and church bells tolled all day.

Aware of the impact communities saturated with loss could have, the authorities soon realised that the Pals Battalions, which had started in a patriotic spirit of camaraderie and communalism, were now threatening to be a cause of anti-war sentiment. Conscription was brought in and then took over as the main source of recruits – and the local volunteering spirit of the Pals was lost.

The crucial lines in the song occurs at the end the fourth verse:

And they all went walking out towards the howling guns,
Talking and laughing, calmly walking on,
Believing in the lies that
Left them dying in the mud,
And they’re lying, lying, lying still –
The Accrington Pals.

The second last line suggests that the Pals [shot down] are lying still. But also that those who’s lies had led them to their fate – the politicians and the top brass – are also ‘lying, lying, lying still’. And never a truer word was said, as ‘the war to end all wars’ has only been followed by other wars / conflicts again and again and again – right up to, and including, our own time today.

The Battle of the Somme, which ended in a stalemate, was to last till near the end of 1916 and caused 610,000 British and French casualties – with the Germans suffering almost the same amount.

Small wonder that after the war the main cry of the veterans from all sides was: NEVER AGAIN!

Info by VFP member Aly Renwick, who served in the British Army from 1960-68.

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NEVER AGAIN: NO MAN’S LAND

Eric Bogle was born in the Scottish Lowlands and left school at the start of the 60s. He then worked as a labourer, clerk and barman, but also played in skiffle and rock bands, before he became known as a folk singer and songwriter. In 1969 Bogle emigrated to Australia and has lived there ever since.

Several of his most famous songs are about the futility of war and the loss that comes with conflict. The most prominent of these in Australia was ‘And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’. Written in 1971 this song tells of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) experience of fighting in the Battle of Gallipoli.

“In all, some 480,000 Allied forces took part in the Gallipoli Campaign, at a cost of more than 250,000 casualties, including some 46,000 dead. On the Turkish side, the campaign also cost an estimated 250,000 casualties, with 65,000 killed.”

The song became known around the world and this video of it was produced in Canada:

Eric Bogle tells how five years later he came to write ‘No Man’s Land’:

‘This is a song called “No Man’s Land”… or “The Green Fields of France” it was known in Ireland…
It’s a song that was written about the military cemeteries in Flanders and Northern France. In 1976, my wife and I went to three or four of these military cemeteries and saw all the young soldiers buried there.   And… couple of months later, I wrote a song called “No Man’s Land,” which is asking questions of a dead soldier…’

This version is sung in English and German by Bogle and Wachol:

Well, how’d you do, Private Willie McBride,
D’you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
I’ll rest for a while in the warm summer sun,
Been walking all day, Lord, and I’m nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
I hope you died quick and I hope you died ‘clean,’
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

CHORUS:
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o’er ye as they lowered ye down?
Did the bugles sing “The Last Post” in chorus?
Did the pipes play the “Floo’ers o’ the Forest”?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you forever nineteen?
Or are you a stranger, without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

Well, the sun’s shining down on these green fields of France;
 The warm wind blows gently, the red poppies dance.
 The trenches have vanished long under the plough; 
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now. 
But here in this graveyard it’s still No Man’s Land; 
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand 
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man. 
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can’t help but wonder now, Willie McBride, 
Do all those who lie here know why they died? 
Did you really believe them when they told you “the cause?”
Did you really believe that this war would end wars? 
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame, 
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain, 
For Willie McBride, it’s all happened again, 
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Bogle’s lyrics at the end of the chorus refers to the traditional Scottish song “Flowers of the Forest,” or “Floo’ers o’ the Forest,” which was written after the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513. Pipers will usually only play the tune at funerals or commemorations, because it is so strongly associated with loss in battle.

In Ireland many well-known folk groups, including The Clancy Brothers, The Fureys and The Chieftains, recorded this song. In Northern Ireland the song is sung by both Republicans / Nationalists and Loyalists / Unionists. The former because they see it as an anti-British establishment war song and the latter because in the graveyards in France there is a grave for a Private William McBride, who fought with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.

Before bad weather had brought a halt to the Somme offensive on 18th November 1916 the British and French attack had gained only12 kilometres of ground, but resulted in “420,000 estimated” British casualties – and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers had lost more than half their strength.

So, to Loyalists / Unionists the song symbolically recognises their ‘blood sacrifice’ for the British Crown in the First World War. It has been discovered, however, that 19 men named McBride, either W, Willie or William, died in the First World War. All were of Irish extraction, but most came from the south of Ireland.

Today, as we look back over 100 years to the start of the ‘Great War,’ it is good to see that this song has brought a measure of reconciliation to a still troubled and divided Ireland. The song also had a big impact across the world, having been sung by many groups and individuals, including a version recorded by Hannes Wader in Germany as “Es ist an der Zeit” (It is the Time).

Info by VFP member Aly Renwick, who served in the British Army from 1960-68.

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NEVER AGAIN: CHRISTMAS 1914

In WW1 the trench system on the Western Front extended from the North Sea to the Swiss Frontier. Over the course of the war there occurred many local agreements, or truces, between the opposing forces. Sometimes, just to give each side a little peace, or to enable each other to gather up their dead for burial. But occasionally fraternization between opposing forces broke out from time to time in no man’s land.

The Christmas Truce of 1914 is the best-known example as, at various places across the front, the opposing soldiers mingled and friendly interactions took place between them. This was hated by the warmongers of both sides, but gave inspiration to those seeking peace. The film, ‘Oh What a Lovely War,’ had a scene depicting this truce:

‘Christmas 1914’ is one of the best songs about the truce. Mike Harding wrote it and this is what he said about it:

‘The First World War has dominated my imagination since I was a child. The stupidity of all wars was here made doubly stupid by the ineptitude of leaders who were prepared to see men die in millions in the mud, facing each other across a few hundred yards of barbed-wire and shell holes. Two great industrial nations had strutted on the stage of Europe striking warlike postures for so long that when a crazed student assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo it was too late for the fools to back down. And so the whole crazy steamroller got under way, supported as ever by the profiteers, the racketeers and the arms manufacturers.

Between 1914 and 1918 a whole generation was killed, gassed and maimed. Anzac troops were slaughtered at Gallipoli, Sikhs were blown to pieces on the Somme, Canadians were massacred at Verdun, Americans shot to bits at Passchendaele, volunteers from both the north and south of Ireland were killed in their thousands. And boys from villages and towns in every comer of England, Scotland and Wales were waved off at the station by mothers, wives and sweethearts never to retum, and if they did they were often mutilated, gassed or shell-shocked so that their lives were ruined.

When you see the old men at the Remembrance Day services it’s difficult to see them as the sixteen-year-old boys who lied about their age so that they could join with their pals in the Great Patriotic War. Like all wars, it produced heroism and courage on an incredible scale. While the fat brigadiers and generals were safe behind the lines, VCs and MCs were won by young boys and men facing the most unbelievable horrors.

… There was a sub-literature of the war, … diaries and journals that were kept by the ordinary footsloggers and Old Contemptibles. They give a picture of life in the trenches from the viewpoint of the common soldier. These diaries and journals are tremendously valuable for their sheer immediacy and for the light they throw on the Old Sweats’ way of life and death in the trenches. Three such journals that are well worth reading are Old Soldiers Never Die by Frank Richards, The Bells of Hell by Eric Hiscock and Tom Green’s Journal, to be found in the Imperial War Museum (when, oh when are we going to have a peace museum?).

The story of the first Christmas of 1914 that inspired me to write the song was one I found in Frank Richards’s book. The generals denied that it ever happened, fearful that the desire for peace might spread like an epidemic along the trenches, but the diaries and journals of the men who were there and the photographs that were taken on that historic occasion when men said ‘no’ to war and embraced their enemy prove beyond doubt that it did indeed happen’.

Christmas Eve in 1914

Stars were burning, burning bright
And all along the Western Front
Guns were lying still and quiet.
Men lay dozing in the trenches,
In the cold and in the dark,
And far away behind the lines
A village dog began to bark.

Some lay thinking of their families,
Some sang songs while others were quiet
Rolling fags and playing brag
To while away that Christmas night.
But as they watched the German trenches
Something moved in No Man’s Land
And through the dark came a soldier
Carrying a white flag in his hand.

Then from both sides men came running,
Crossing into No Man’s Land,
Through the barbed-wire, mud and shell holes,
Shyly stood there shaking hands.
Fritz brought out cigars and brandy,
Tommy brought corned beef and fags,
Stood there talking, singing, laughing,
As the moon shone on No Man’s Land.

Christmas Day we all played football
In the mud of No Man’s Land;
Tommy brought some Christmas pudding,
Fritz brought out a German band.
When they beat us at football
We shared out all the grub and drink
And Fritz showed me a faded photo
Of a dark-haired girl back in Berlin.

For four days after no one fired,
Not one shot disturbed the night,
For old Fritz and Tommy Atkins
Both had lost the will to fight.
So they withdrew us from the trenches,
Sent us far behind the lines,
Sent fresh troops to take our places
And told the guns “Prepare to fire”.

And next night in 1914
Flares were burning, burning bright;
The message came along the trenches
Over the top we’re going tonight.
And the men stood waiting in the trenches,
Looking out across our football park,
And all along the Western Front
The Christian guns began to bark.

In December 2015 Veterans For Peace produced the Ryan Harvey song about the Christmas Truce of 1914. This is the video sung by Fenya:

Info by VFP member Aly Renwick, who served in the British Army from 1960-68.

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NEVER AGAIN: OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR

As WW1 started the British Government quickly set up The War Propaganda Bureau (WPB) and appointed Field Marshal Lord Kitchener as the War Minister. He made a call for all men between 19 and 35 to enlist and the WPB issued a number of pamphlets, including ‘To Arms’ by Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The New Army’ by Rudyard Kipling and ‘The Barbarism in Berlin’ by G. K. Chesterton. The ‘Report on Alleged German Outrages’ claimed that the invading Germans were torturing Belgian civilians.

George Coppard volunteered for service in the early years of WW1 and, although only sixteen, he became a soldier in the Royal West Surrey Regiment. He later told about the heightened pro-war aggressiveness on the streets and his enlistment:

‘Although I seldom saw a newspaper, I knew about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo. News placards screamed out at every street corner, and military bands blared out their martial music in the main streets of Croydon. This was too much for me to resist, and as if drawn by a magnate, I knew I had to enlist straight away. I presented myself to the recruiting sergeant at Mitcham Road Barracks, Croydon.

There was a steady stream of men, mostly working types, queuing to enlist. The sergeant asked me my age, and when told, replied, “Clear off son. Come back tomorrow and see if you’re nineteen, eh?” So I turned up again the next day and gave my age as nineteen. I attested in a batch of a dozen others and, holding up my right hand, swore to fight for King and Country. The sergeant winked as he gave me the King’s shilling, plus one shilling and ninepence ration money for that day’.

The drumbeats of war increased and the WPB produced a steady stream of recruitment posters that began to appear everywhere:

Throughout the country an anti-German feeling was created allied to a patriotic ‘save Britain from the Hun’ atmosphere. Some women started to hand out white feathers, as a sign of cowardice, to any man they met who was not in uniform.

Even the Manchester Guardian newspaper issued this statement to their employees in August 1914:

‘A battalion is being raised composed entirely of employees in Manchester offices and warehouses upon the ordinary conditions of enlistment in Lord Kitchener’s army, namely, for three years, or the duration of the War. The Battalion will be clothed and equipped (excepting arms) by a fund being raised for the purpose.

We therefore desire to call the attention of all our employees between the ages of 19 and 35 years to the call of Lord Kitchener, which was emphasized by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, for further recruits, and, in order to encourage enlistment, we are prepared to offer to all employees enlisting within the next two weeks the following conditions: 1) Four weeks’ full wages from date of leaving. 2) Re-engagement on discharge from service guaranteed. 3) Half pay during absence on duty for married men from the date that full pay ceases, to be paid to the wife…’

Two leaders of the Suffragettes movement, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, struck a deal with the government that saw imprisoned suffragettes released from prison in exchange for the women’s help towards the war effort. There was opposition to this, as suffragette Anne Kenney later explained:

‘Mrs. Pankhurst, who was in Paris with Christabel, returned and started a recruiting campaign among the men in the country. This autocratic move was not understood or appreciated by many of our members. They were quite prepared to receive instructions about the Vote, but they were not going to be told what they were to do in a world war.’

Sylvia Pankhurst strongly opposed the pro-war stance of her mother and sister and with other women she set up the Women’s Peace Army that demanded a negotiated peace.

Backed by the establishment and the government, however, the tide in Britain was stridently pro-war and the journalist Horatio Bottomley went up and down the country attacking ‘the Hun’ and promoting enlistment into the armed forces. At one public meeting he talked about the ‘heroes’ he had recruited:

‘Every hero of the war who has fallen in the field of battle has performed an Act of Greatest Love, so penetrating and intense in its purifying character that I do not hesitate to express my opinion that any and every past sin is automatically wiped out from the record of his life.’

These public meetings often occurred at Music Hall venues and Bottomley, who was connected to the ‘John Bull Magazine’, made a large amount of money from his patriotic speeches.

The Music Halls themselves often promoted public displays of pro-war fervour in their acts. As portrayed in this scene from the ‘Oh What a Lovely War’ film:

The volunteer soldiers were trained and indoctrinated and then sent to the front to serve in the trenches. Compared to the General Staff, wallowing in the comparative luxury of safe base areas, junior officers had to share the hell of the front line. Some started to take issue with aspects of the war and a few developed kindred feelings for the soldiers they commanded.

These officers were typical products of their class; highly educated, articulate and confident. This officer disillusionment and fraternisation with the ‘lower orders’, in an organisation which had adhered rigidly to a class system, was often expressed in verse, producing much of the famous First World War poetry.

Siegfried Sassoon was incensed by the jingoistic support for the war back home. He attacked this attitude, especially as expressed in the music-halls, in his poem ‘Blighters’:

The House is crammed: tier upon tier they grin
And crackle at the Show, while prancing ranks
Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din;
‘We’re sure the Kaiser loves our dear old Tanks!’

I’d like to see a Tank come down the stalls,
Lurching to rag-time tunes, or ‘Home, sweet Home’,
And there’d be no more jokes in Music-halls
To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.

Siegfried Sassoon was known as ‘mad Jack’ to his men in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He was a model front-line officer, leading with such bravado that he had won a Military Cross. In 1917, recovering from war wounds in a British hospital, Sassoon wrote ‘A Soldier’s Declaration’:

I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolonging those sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.

I am not protesting against the military conduct of the War, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them. Also I believe that it may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realise.’

Sassoon’s declaration was published as a letter in ‘The Times’ and he was ordered to travel to Liverpool, where he angrily threw his Military Cross ribbon into the Mersey river. He fully expected to be court martialled, and hoped to use the process to focus attention on securing a quick end to the war.

Instead, a friend and fellow officer, Robert Graves, organised for him to appear before a medical board. The authorities were happy to go along with this and the board immediately sent him to Craiglockhart war hospital in Edinburgh as a shell shock case. This successfully curtailed Sassoon’s protest, suggesting that his anti-war views had come from someone suffering mental problems.

In Craiglockhart, which he nicknamed ‘Dottyville,’ Sassoon was to see at first hand the ravages that the war had brought to the minds of some of his fellow front-line officers. Sassoon wrote of the hospital:

‘The doctors did everything possible to counteract gloom, and the wrecked faces were outnumbered by those who were emerging from their nervous disorders… But by night they lost control and the hospital became sepulchral and oppressive with saturations of war experience… One became conscious that the place was full of men whose slumbers were morbid and terrifying – men muttering uneasily or suddenly crying out in their sleep …’

Sassoon clearly felt deeply about the suffering of his fellow soldiers and expressed anger against those who had caused it:

‘Shell Shock. How many a brief bombardment had its long-delayed after-effect in the minds of these survivors, many of whom had looked at their companions and laughed while inferno did its best to destroy them. Not then was their evil hour; but now; now, in the sweating suffocation of nightmare, in paralysis of limbs, in the stammering of dislocated speech. Worst of all, in the disintegration of those qualities through which they had been so gallant and selfless and uncomplaining – this, in the finer types of men, was the unspeakable tragedy of shell-shock; it was in this that their humanity had been outraged by those explosives which were sanctioned and glorified by the Churches; it was thus that their self-sacrifice was mocked and maltreated – they, who in the name of righteousness had been sent out to maim and slaughter their fellow-men. In the name of civilisation these soldiers had been martyred, and it remained for civilisation to prove that their martyrdom wasn’t a dirty swindle.’

After enlisting, George Coppard became a machine-gunner and fought at the battles of Loos, the Somme and Arras. He was awarded the Military Medal for gallantry before the battle of Cambrai, where he nearly died after his femoral artery was severed – a fellow soldier saved him by whipping out a bootlace and applying it as a tourniquet. After the war Coppard wrote the book ‘With a Machine Gun to Cambrai’ about his experiences.

In London in 1922, on the anniversary of Armistice Day, 25,000 unemployed First World War veterans marched past the Cenotaph in remembrance of the dead. To protest about their own plight, many veterans pinned pawn tickets beside their medals and George Coppard recalled:

‘Lloyd George and company had been full of big talk about making the country fit for heroes to live in, but it was just so much hot air. No practical steps were taken to rehabilitate the broad mass of de-mobbed men.’

In the ten years after the ending of WW1, pension boards examined over 100,000 cases of former front-line troops suffering from mental disorders. At the start of WW2 the British Government was still paying £2 million pounds a year to shell-shocked veterans of the First World War. Shell Shock then became known as Combat Fatigue in WW2 and in our own day it is recognised as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

At least in part, it results from the battle in the minds of soldiers, between the civilian ethos, where the worst thing you can do is kill another human being and the ethos of the battlefield, where you are trained for, and expected to do, just that.

So, nothing changes! Today the wars / conflicts go on and on – and while a few make money from them, many more are casualties. And a considerable number of today’s de-mobbed veterans, who are still seeking care after discharge, are on the streets, or in jail – tormented by PTSD because of what they have seen or done. While those who sent them off to war still treat them as inconvenient cannon fodder.

Info by VFP member Aly Renwick, who served in the British Army from 1960-68.

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NEVER AGAIN: FROM WAR-DOG TO PEACENIK

From Cromwell’s time to the start of the 19th century Britain’s rulers had sent their armed forces to fight in 10 wars against European rivals. The seven-year-war of 1756-63, which ended with the Treaty of Paris, was the world’s first global conflict with battles raging across Europe and many other parts of the world. The war saw Britain established as the principal colonial power, after seizing territory in Canada, America, India, West Africa and the West Indies from the French and taking Florida, Manila, Havana and Minorca from Spain.

The quest for empire, undertaken through state power and force of arms, went on apace. During Queen Victoria’s long reign, from 1837 to 1901, the British Army carried out the following campaigns abroad:

Anti-colonial revolt in Canada, 1837. Capture of Aden, 1838. First Afghan War, 1838-42. Against Boers, South Africa, 1838-48. Opium Wars in China, 1839-42. War in the Levant, 1840. War in Afghanistan, 1842. Conquest of Sind, India, 1843. Gwalior War, India, 1843. First Sikh War, India, 1845-6. Operations in South Africa, 1846-52. North-West Frontier of India, 1847-54. Second Sikh War, India, 1848-9. Second Burmese War, 1852. Eureka Stockade, Australia, 1854. War with Persia, 1856-7. North-West Frontier of India, 1858-67. Storming of the Taku Forts, China, 1859-60. Maori Wars, New Zealand, 1861-4. Operations in Sikkim, India, 1861. Ambela Expedition, 1863. Yokohama, Japan, 1864-5. Bhutan Expedition, 1865. Expedition to Abyssinia, 1868. Red River Expedition, Canada, 1870. Ashanti War, West Africa, 1874. Expedition to Perak, Malaya, 1875-6. Galekas & Gaikas war, Cape Colony, 1877. North-West Frontier, India, 1878-9. Second Afghan War, 1878. Third Afghan War, 1879. Zulu War, 1879. North-West Frontier of India, 1880-4. Transvaal Revolt or First Boer War, 1880-1. Bombardment of Alexandria, 1882. Expedition to the Sudan, 1884-5. Third Burmese War, 1885. Suakin Expedition, Sudan, 1885. End of the Nile Campaign, 1885. North-West Frontier of India, 1888-92. Operations in India, 1888-94. Siege & Relief of Chitral, India, 1895. Mashonaland Rising, East Africa, 1896. Re-Conquest of Egypt, 1896-8. Tirah Expeditionary Force, India, 1897-8. North-West Frontier of India, 1897-8. Boxer Rising, China, 1900-1.

Besides these conflicts, the Crimean War, 1853-6; the Indian Mutiny, 1857-8; and the Boer War, 1899-1902, involved the British Army in major warfare during this period. Troops also continued to be active in Ireland, especially during the Famine, the Young Ireland revolt of 1848 and the Fenian Rising of 1867.

Besides Britain, other western countries had also carved out colonial empires, but in the rest of (landlocked) Europe the primary role for most national armies was to provide a defence from any external threat. Conventional warfare was therefore the normal function, with colonial duty, entailing more irregular forms of warfare, tagged on. In island Britain, however, the main defensive role fell to the navy, leaving the army relatively free to concentrate on the task of conquest and subjugation overseas.

While the foot soldiers in the armed forces came from the poor and colonised, the officer corps, produced by the public school system, ensured the perpetuation of the status quo. In the 1870s the British Army’s primary role as a colonial force was affirmed in the Cardwell reforms, which strengthened the links between the officer corps and the government. It also brought new procedures, which improved logistics and helped to ensure the attainment of modern arms and equipment.

The linked-battalion system would see one of a regiment’s battalions away on Imperial duty while the second unit remained in Britain. This allowed flexibility for individual corps to develop their own techniques and procedures for waging colonial warfare. It also ensured there was, throughout the army, a shared experience of such methods. The second battalion, stationed in the UK, was handily available to use a refined version of this type of warfare against any protests, or actions, by the deprived back home.

The army’s history as a paid regular force can be traced back to Cromwell’s time, but its enduring character was forged, and its hierarchy strengthened, during the Victorian colonial wars. It was then that the British Army acquired its contemporary reputation among the armies of the major powers of the world as a ‘counter-insurgency’ force.

Little Englanders

Frank Percy Crozier CB, CMG, DSO, who was born in 1879, was, on both sides of his family, descended from officer-class soldiers who had a long record of service in Britain’s imperial forces. After schooling at Wellington College Crozier tried to follow this tradition, but his attempts to obtain a regular commission failed on medical grounds. So instead, he tried his luck abroad in the British Empire as a colonial adventurer and mercenary.

As a little boy it is possible that Crozier would have read ‘Pictures for Little Englanders,’ which was a Victorian book for young children. Under a sketch of Kitchener the soldier and Kipling the writer, the following lines were written:

Men of different trades and sizes
Here you see before your eyses;
Lanky sword and stumpy pen,
Doing useful things for men;
When the Empire wants a stitch-in-her
Send for Kipling and for Kitchener.

In the last years of Victoria’s reign England did send for Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, the ‘great warrior hero’ of Khartoum and the battle of Omdurman, who was then dispatched to South Africa. This time to deal with the Boers, who were mainly farmers with a active knowledge of the land, which they were utilising to wage a successful campaign of guerrilla warfare against the British. To break this enemy and stop supplies reaching them, Kitchener ordered the Boer homesteads to be burnt and the women and children, with some old men, were then herded into guarded camps to ‘concentrate and control’ them.

Like the concentration camps that were to appear later in various parts of the world, over 60,000 non-combatant Boers ended up in conditions that an Australian reporter called: ‘the criminal neglect of the simple laws of sanitation’. By the end of the war 27,927 Boer detainees had died – 4,177 were women and 22,074 were children, under sixteen.

In 1898 Frank Crozier had gone to Ceylon to become a tea planter, but he hurried to South Africa on the outbreak of the war there. He enlisted as an NCO in Thornycroft’s Mounted Infantry in Natal, but shortly afterwards obtained a commission in the Manchester Regiment and fought against the Boers in battles like Spion Kop and the relief of Ladysmith. From 1902 to 1905 Crozier served with the West African Frontier Force in northern Nigeria, and then in 1905-6 he was in Zululand. Six years later he came back to the UK in response to an appeal by some right-wing elements in the British establishment to ‘help Ulster’.

In 1912, the Liberal Government at Westminster had put forward a third Home Rule for Ireland Bill. At that time Ireland was not divided and the country as a whole was part of the United Kingdom. The Liberals had introduced two other Irish Home Rule bills in the past, which were both defeated – but this one was thought to have a better chance.

The Tories, however, viciously attacked it, because they thought it would weaken the Empire – and they also saw it as an opportunity to defeat the Liberals and evict them from office. The Tories then formed an anti-Home Rule alliance with right-wing elements in the British establishment, who were prepared to instigate and use violence to get their way. A prominent member was Lord Milner:

‘Milner helped in England to assemble military help and munitions for the UVF, and he cooperated with a group called the British League for the Support of Ulster and the Union, which was enrolling volunteers to go to Ulster to join the UVF if it came to fighting. He also tried to establish an organisation which could paralyse the government’s action before it reached Ulster, muster public support in Great Britain, Canada, Australia and elsewhere for the Ulster unionists, and secretly collect money from wealthy acquaintances to help arm and equip the UVF. Waldorf Astor and Rudyard Kipling subscribed £30,000 each to this secret fund, Lord Rothschild, Lord Iveagh and the Duke of Bedford £10,000 each’. [Divided Ulster, by Liam de Paor, Penguin Special 1970].

Like Kitchener, Lieutenant-General Sir George Richardson KCB was another ‘great warrior hero’, who on 14th August 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion, had led his Indian troops to the storming and looting of Peking. A veteran of the Afghan, Waziri, Tirah, Zhob and Kunnan campaigns, Richardson was now appointed commander of the UVF, which was threatening ‘armed resistance’ to stop Home Rule.

From Belfast to the Somme

The Liberal Government then ordered British Army units, stationed at the Curragh Camp in the south of Ireland, to move north and face down the UVF threat. However, in what became known as the ‘Curragh Mutiny’, some senior British Army officers held a secret meeting in Dublin and refused to obey. General Sir Arthur Paget, the British Commander-in-Chief for Ireland, sent a telegram to the War Office in London:

‘… Fear men will refuse to move. Regret to report Brigadier-General Gough and fifty-seven officers 3rd Cavalry Brigade prefer to accept dismissal if ordered north’.

The Liberals were so shaken by the scope and force of this officer-class revolt that they eventually backed down. Shorty afterwards Richardson, and other UVF commanders, oversaw an illicit consignment of 35,000 rifles and 2,500,000 rounds of ammunition, which were openly landed on the Ulster coast. These arms were shipped across from Germany, where observers thought that the UK was about to tear itself apart – and that this might therefore be an opportune time to engage in a European inter-imperialist war.

The Home Rule bill was then put in abeyance as Europe entered into the conflagration that would become known as the ‘Great War’. Earlier, during the Home Rule crisis, Lord Milner and his friends had also issued an appeal to serving army officers that they should resign their commissions in the British Army and go to Ulster to organize and command the UVF. When he heard the call, Crozier moved to Belfast and offered his services to the UVF. He was then given command of a Special Service Section – the ‘shock troops’ of this illegal Unionist army.

Crozier remembered: ‘sleeping with a pistol under my pillow guarding contraband mines, weapons and ammunition’. His mind, however, had doubts, as he later recollected:

‘We of Carson’s army have been the victims of an ill-defined objective. Was it to be Dublin Castle, a battle against British soldiers, or nationalist Irishmen, or a bit of both? Who could tell? Who could guess? We were merely hired mercenaries, paid to do as we were bid.’ [A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land, by Frank P. Crozier, Cape 1930].

When he was transferred, along with the other UVF men, into the 36th (Ulster) Division of the British Army to fight in WW1, Crozier’s dilemma was lifted:

‘It is August (1914). The sky is clear, with not a cloud to be seen. The world war is on us, mobilisation has begun. The Atlantic rolls on to the rugged rocks of Antrim as it has always done, despite the pending upheaval and the worried thoughts in the minds of men and women. I find … that the Belfast brigade of the Ulster Division is complete. My West Belfast irregulars have become the 9th battalion Royal Irish Rifles … Now all is changed within a flash. Ireland is united against a common foe. Our task is manifest, our duty clear. “Allons,” is our cry’.

Unionists in the north were urged to fight by Sir Edward Carson, telling them it would help stop Home Rule and, elsewhere in Ireland, men were persuaded to fight by the leader of the Irish Party at Westminster, John Redmond, who told them this could guarantee Home Rule. George Gilmore told how he had seen in Belfast a recruiting poster that said ‘Fight Catholic Austria’. He carefully removed it and then took it to Dublin where he pasted it up again, next to another recruitment poster, which said ‘Save Catholic Belgium’.

In recruitment drives for ‘the great adventure’ much was made of ‘the rights of small nations,’ which required ‘saving from the Hun’. Across Ireland, about 150,000 men enlisted in the British Army – to join the 70,000 Irish soldiers already serving. By the end of 1915, the 10th and 16th Irish Divisions and the 36th Ulster Division had joined other British Army units in the conflict – many were to die in the great battles, like the Somme or at Gallipoli.

India, which was then ruled by Britain, also provided great support for the UK during WW1. The then undivided country contributed 1,105,000 personnel to serve under the British flag. Indian soldiers fought in France, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Aden, East Africa, Gallipoli and Salonika. They were awarded 9,200 decorations, including 11 VCs, and over 60,000 of them died in the fighting. Indians at home bought War Bonds and sent 170,000 animals and 3,700,000 tons of stores and supplies for the war effort.

Propaganda & War

In Britain there had always been a fair amount of admiration for the German people and their culture and literature. That began to change in the late Victorian period, especially after the Prussian victory in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–71. Seeing Germany as an increasingly powerful imperial rival, negative comments about the country now began to appear in Britain. By the early 20th century anti-German feeling was being stirred-up in papers like the ‘Daily Mail’, who in one story bid their readers to refuse service from Austrian or German waiters at restaurants – because they might be spies.

After WW1 started the Allied Powers quickly produced propaganda depicting the Germans as ‘Huns’ – capable of infinite cruelty and violence – and an anti-German mood, fuelled by Government propaganda, swept across Britain. This led to some riots, with assaults on suspected Germans and the looting of shops and stores owned by people with German-sounding names. Even pets were not exempt, with the English Kennel Club renaming the German Shepherd breed of dog, the ‘Alsatian’.

Rudyard Kipling, the great raconteur and supporter of empire, helped this anti-German feeling. In the first year of the war his poem ‘All That We Have And Are’ was published in The Times:

For all we have and are,
For all our children’s fate,
Stand up and take the war,
The Hun is at the gate!

Kipling’s son John had poor eyesight and his father pulled a few strings to get him a commission in the Irish Guards. In 1915, Second-Lieutenant John Kipling was killed during an assault on the German front line at Chalk-Pit Wood. Later, Kipling wrote these bleak lines on behalf of his son:

If any question why we died,
tell them, because our fathers lied.

But this, due to personal sorrow, was the only lapse in Kipling’s support for the war. Kipling later wrote: ‘There are only two divisions in the world, human beings and Germans’.

As the war progressed this anti-German mood became so strong that, ironically, the British royal family were affected – and advisors strongly counselled them to change their surnames. Consequently, in 1917, King George V issued a proclamation declaring that he and all the other descendants of Queen Victoria were changing their [German] names – be they Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Battenberg, Saxony, or Hesse – to Windsor.

A more intensive anti-German mood was whipped up among the soldiers going to fight ‘the Hun’. Crozier, in his book called ‘A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land’, wrote about the training of his battalion for the WW1. Describing the British soldier as ‘A kindly fellow’ he then added ‘it is necessary to corrode his mentality’. Crozier continued:

‘I, for my part, do what I can to alter completely the outlook, bearing and mentality of over 1,000 men … Blood lust is taught for the purpose of war, in bayonet fighting itself and by doping their minds with all propagandic poison. The German atrocities (many of which I doubt in secret), the employment of gas in action, the violation of French women, the “official murder” of Nurse Cavell, all help to bring out the brute-like bestiality which is necessary for victory. The process of “seeing red” which has to be carefully cultured if the effect is to be lasting, is elaborately grafted into the make-up of even the meek and mild … The Christian churches are the finest “blood lust” creators which we have, and of them we must make full use’.

No doubt with God on their side, it was then transit to France and the War. Crozier described the first casualty his unit experienced: ‘I see our first man hit. He is a boy of nineteen years of age. A bit of stray high-explosive shell gets him in the leg. It was almost an accident, for had he left me five seconds earlier he would have missed it. White, calm, uncomplaining, he calls for a cigarette and is carried off on a stretcher by four stalwart veterans of the Rifle Brigade. He is never to return, for amputation follows. Such is war. Constant training for a whole year and then just one day in the line! This is attrition!’

Crozier then told of the experience of him and his ‘West Belfast irregulars’ manning the front-line trenches: ‘We go in to the trenches for four days, while the weather becomes atrocious. It is notorious that French trenches are seldom good and these are no exceptions. Because there is no revetting, walls of fire and communication trenches fall in, so-called dugouts collapse, and telephone wires connecting companies and brigade become non-effective, consequent on the landslide. The men are up to their waists in mud and water. Rats drown and rations cannot be got up’.

As time went on and he rapidly moved on up the command structure, Crozier also described his experience of an attempted advance, or ‘big push,’ on the Somme:

‘Suddenly the air is rent with deafening thunder; never has such man-made noise been heard before! The hour has struck! 7.30 a.m. has arrived. The first wave goes over, “carrying the creeping barrage on its back” … At last our minute, our own minute arrives. I get up from the ground and whistle. The others rise. We move off, with steady pace … I glance to the right through a gap in the trees. I see the 10th Rifles plodding on and then my eyes are riveted on a sight I shall never see again. It is the 32nd division at its best. I see rows upon rows of British soldiers lying dead, dying or wounded, in no man’s land. Here and there I see an officer urging on his followers. Occasionally I can see the hands thrown up and then a body flops to the ground. The bursting shells and smoke make visibility poor, but I see enough to convince me Thiepval village is still held, for it is now 8 a.m. and by 7.45 a.m. it should have fallen to allow of our passage forward on its flank …

My upper lip is stiff, my jaws are set. We proceed. Again I look southward from a different angle and perceive heaped up masses of British corpses suspended on the German wire in front of the Thiepval stronghold, while live men rush forward in orderly procession to swell the weight of numbers in the spider’s web. Will the last available and previously detailed man soon appear to do his futile duty unto death on the altar of sacrifice?

We march on – I lose sight of the 10th Rifles and the human corn-stalks, falling before the Reaper. My pace unconsciously quickens, for I am less heavily burdened than the men behind me, and at last I see the light of day through the telescopic-like avenue which has been cut for our approach. We are nearing the fringe of the wood and the old fire trench. Shells burst at the rate of six a minute on this trench junction, for we have been marching above Elgin Avenue and alongside it.

My adjutant, close behind me, tells me I am fifty yards in front of the head of the column. I slacken my pace and they close up to me. “Now for it,” I say …, “it’s like sitting back for an enormous fence.” My blood is up and I am literally seeing red. Still the shells burst at the head of Elgin, plomp, plomp – it is “good-bye,” I think, as there is no way round. “This way to eternity,” shouts a wag behind. Thirty yards ahead now, still a shell – plomp – a splinter flies past my shoulder, and embeds itself in the leg of a leading man behind. He falls and crawls out of the way, nothing must stop the forward march of the column. “Lucky bastard,” says one of his pals, “you’re well out of it, Jimmy, good luck to you, give them our love, see you later”, and so the banter continues. It’s the only way. The blood swells in my veins. God is merciful, and it almost seems as though he chloroforms us on these occasions.’ [A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land, by F. P. Crozier, Cape 1930].

The ordinary soldiers often called any front-line commanders, who aggressively pursued the war, ‘thrusters’ or ‘war-dogs’. Crozier quickly gained this reputation, for ordering actions like raids on the German trenches:

‘All raids are very much alike. Each man knows his part. As we only require one prisoner on each occasion, and as more are a nuisance, all other enemy soldiers encountered must be put to death. What are our weapons? The pistol, the rifle, the bullet, the bayonet, knuckle-dusters, hook knives with which to rip up, daggers for the heart, butchers’ knives for the throat, the bomb for random work, once the prisoner has been extracted and bags of ammonal thrown into the dugouts, served up with time fuses, to blow whole companies to smithereens. Tear gas bombs to cause temporary blindness, egg bombs charged with deadly poison to pulverise the lungs and stop the breathing complete the outfit. We moderns are extraordinarily unkind to each other in war – and in peace!

On each raid one prisoner is brought back, while many Germans die, our losses being nil. These three successful raids, on the top of the Thiepval epic, stimulate the battalion to such an extent as to place it on the very topmost rung of the war-ladder. Prisoners, trophies and blood are the only true producers of that strange wild mentality which is necessary for war’.

At least Crozier was honest about events and did not try to conceal what was happening. He was also ready to depict those occasions, often during a big push, when desperate situations, like those on the Somme, threatened to escalate into mutiny:

‘… A strong rabble of tired, hungry, and thirsty stragglers approach me from the east. I go out to meet them. “Where are you going?” I ask.

One says one thing, one another. They are force marched to the water reserve, given a drink and hunted back to fight. Another more formidable party cuts across to the south. They mean business. They are damned if they are going to stay, it’s all up. A young sprinting subaltern heads them off. They push by him. He draws his revolver and threatens them. They take no notice. He fires. Down drops a British soldier at his feet. The effect is instantaneous. They turn back to the assistance of their comrades in distress.

It is now late afternoon. Most of my officers are dead and wounded. I send for twelve more who have been held in reserve, to swell the corpse roll. Other reinforcements arrive only to be thrown into the melting pot for a similar result. The Germans launch an overwhelming counter-attack which proves successful. They win-to suffer later. At 10 p.m. the curtain rings down on hell. The cost? Enormous. I have seventy men left, all told, out of seven hundred’. [A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land, by F. P. Crozier, Cape 1930].

Keeping Men Fighting – by Punishments & Executions

To secure instant obedience for an order like going over the top – even when that meant an immediate wound or death – the Top Brass insured that the training and indoctrinations of the soldiers was hard and extensive. During the war, however, the High Command frequently felt that not all soldiers were showing enough spirit for their sacrificial task and decided further punishments should be made.

From 1914 to 1918, over 300 soldiers in the British Army were executed by firing squads of fellow soldiers after courts-martial – thousands of others had similar convictions for desertion and cowardice commuted to terms of imprisonment. [Further details in: Shot at Dawn, by Julian Putkowski and Julian Sykes, Wharncliffe Publishing Ltd 1989].

Most of these cases resulted from what was to become known as ‘shell shock’ and one commander tied men suffering from this condition to the barbed wire protecting the trenches – to ‘install backbone’ and act as a warning to others. Harry MacDonald, a soldier in the West Yorkshire Regiment, serving in the front line at the Somme in 1916 was a typical example.

Earlier, MacDonald had served at Gallipoli before being sent home with frostbite. At home, now recovered, his pregnant wife became ill and he requested compassionate leave. When this was refused he went absent, but was quickly caught and posted to the front in France. At the Somme, MacDonald was buried alive by earth when an enemy shell exploded near him.

Suffering mental stress from his experiences and worried about his wife and unborn child he reported sick, but met with an unsympathetic attitude from the army medical staff. Afterwards, Harry MacDonald slipped away from the front and was absent without leave for a month before being arrested by the Military Police at Boulogne. After a court-martial, he was shot by a firing squad of fellow soldiers at Louvencourt on 4th November 1916.

In 1917, the Labour MP Philip Snowden raised in the House of Commons the case of MacDonald’s widow, who, because of the manner of the soldier’s death, had not received any pension. Snowden’s appeal was turned down by the Government, but when the records of MacDonald’s trial were released by the Public Records Office for public scrutiny in late 1993, a sheet of paper was found written by a senior British officer: ‘I recommend that the sentence [shot at dawn] be carried out. I don’t think that the fact that a shell burst near a man should be admitted as an excuse for desertion.’

That statement was written and signed by the now General Sir Hubert de la Poer Gough, who two years previously had been the ringleader of the Curragh Mutiny in Ireland. After his promotion to General, Gough had been given command of the Fifth Army in France, where he quickly gained a reputation for arrogance and bad management. This contributed to the high casualty rate among his soldiers and Gough was finally disgraced when his depleted and demoralised troops were broken by a German offensive in early 1918.

Twenty-six of the soldiers shot at dawn were from Irish regiments and others executed were recruited or conscripted from the Irish community in Britain. Patrick J. Downey from Limerick volunteered for ‘the great adventure,’ joining the 10th Division, which fought at Gallipoli and suffered heavy losses while landing at Sulva Bay. Downey, a 19-year-old private in the 6th Leinster Regiment, could not adjust to life at the front and was given 84 days of Field Punishment Number 1, during which he was tied in an X formation to a gun carriage wheel.

When Downey’s cap fell into the freezing mud near his tented camp, the soldier was ordered by an officer to put the sodden cap back on his head. After twice refusing, Downey was charged with ‘disobedience’ and hauled before a Field General Court Martial, which sentenced him to death. Senior officers, worried about ‘the conditions of discipline in the Battalion,’ approved the death sentence and Downey was executed by a firing squad near the Greek port of Salonika in December 1915.

Four of the executed soldiers, J. McCracken, J. Templeton, J. Crozier and G. Hanna were serving with the 36th Ulster Division. Frank Percy Crozier, a non-related namesake, had personally recruited James Crozier in Belfast, assuring his worried mother that he would look after her boy. At the front, during a harsh winter, the soldier, feeling unwell, left his post without telling anyone and walked to a field hospital.

For being absent without leave the 18 year-old soldier was court-martialled and sentenced to death. The night before the execution, his friends plied the young soldier with drinks:

‘James Crozier’s guards wanted him to walk the short distance to a small garden where the firing party was waiting. The young rifleman was too drunk to move, and he had to be carried out into the open space. By now he was practically unconscious. Bound with ropes, he was attached to the execution post. His battalion formed up on the open road close to the garden. Screened by a wall, they wouldn’t see the execution but would hear the shots. Crozier’s namesake Frank Percy Crozier, the man who recruited him and promised his mother he’d watch out for her son, was now preparing to watch him die. Frank Crozier later recalled how the prisoner was secured to a stake 10 yards from the firing squad. “There are hooks on the post; we always do things thoroughly in the Rifles. He is hooked on like dead meat in a butcher’s shop. His eyes are bandaged – not that it really matters, for he is already blind.” Then James Crozier was shot. “A volley rings out – a nervous volley it is true, yet a volley. Before the fatal shots are fired I had called the battalion to attention. There is a pause, I wait. I see the medical officer examining the victim. He makes a sign, the subaltern strides forward, a single shot rings out. Life is now extinct.” The firing squad, made up of men from his own regiment, shot wide, so James Crozier was killed by a bullet fired by a junior officer. After the shooting, as Frank Crozier recalled, life resumed as normal. “We march back to breakfast while the men of a certain company pay the last tribute at the graveside of an unfortunate comrade. This is war”.’ [Stephen Walker, Belfast Telegraph, 25th October, 2007].

Frank Crozier, who had by then been promoted to Colonel, recommended that the death sentence be carried out. But afterwards, he then tried, unsuccessfully, to get James Crozier’s death recorded as a battle casualty.

Frank Crozier also told about a time when, on separate occasions, an officer and a rank-and-file soldier had both gone AWOL from the front. When found and detained, the officer was pardoned and sent back to his unit to serve on, while the ordinary soldier was tried, sentenced and shot at dawn. Crozier clearly felt that both should have been dwelt with in the same way.

Both volunteer and conscript soldiers found themselves in the front line. For rank-and-file squaddies on low pay, conditions were unsanitary, the food paltry and they were kept in line by harsh punishments – and the threat of something worse if they dared to protest. This abuse, combined with the brutal fighting, provoked numerous uprisings by fed-up foot soldiers and Crozier commented on the soldiers who injured themselves to get away from the fighting:

‘Evidently men in other places have taken to blowing off their fingers to escape service in the line, as all self-inflicted “accidental” wounds of any sort are to be made the subject of legal proceedings against the wounded. Our sergeant-major, an excellent soldier, throws a bit of brass into a brazier. It is a detonator! It explodes and inflicts damage on his hand! He goes to hospital, is tried by court martial and reduced to the rank of sergeant. Returning at once, I make him acting sergeant-major, which is not the same, though the best I can do, as, although he receives the pay of a sergeant-major, he will lose his rank and pay if wounded. His family will suffer. War is stern. The innocent as well as the guilty must suffer’. [A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land, by F. P. Crozier, Cape 1930].

Many of the shot at dawn executions occurred just before a ‘big push’, to help ensure the remaining soldiers would obey the order to ‘go over the top’. After the war, Crozier tried to explain his attitude about the WW1 executions:

‘I should be very sorry to command the finest army in the world on active service without the power behind me which the fear of execution brings … Those who wish to abolish the death sentence for cowardice and desertion in war should aim at a higher mark and strive to abolish war itself. The one is the product of the other.’ [A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land, by F. P. Crozier, Cape 1930].

The Wars – after the War to End all Wars

After the end of WW1 many European countries were left ruined and in turmoil, with armed clashes breaking out between right and left political factions. In Britain, army units were rushed to Liverpool and Glasgow in 1919 to curb industrial protests and tanks and troops were deployed at key points across both cities. British soldiers were also used in Winston Churchill’s ‘undeclared war’ against the Russian Bolsheviks.

Frank Crozier spent some time in Lithuania training their army to fight against the communists. Osbert Sitwell, who had also served in the trenches in France, had a poem published in ‘The Daily Herald’ mocking Churchill by suggesting he had these imagined thoughts:

I think, myself,
That my new war
Is one of the nicest we’ve had;
It is not a war really,
It is only training for the next one,
And saves the expense of Army Manoeuvres,
Besides, we have not declared war;
We are merely restoring order –
As the Germans did in Belgium,
And as I hope to do later
In Ireland…
[Daily Herald, 22nd July 1919].

In Ireland and India the mass of the populations were becoming increasingly hostile to British rule. Many Indians had expected positive moves towards ‘self-governing institutions’ as a reward for the men and money they had supplied for Britain’s war effort. Instead, new repressive measures were introduced and in 1919, five months after the end of the ‘Great War’, outraged people across India joined mass protests against the coercive Rowlatt Act, which brought in internment without trial and introduced no-jury courts for political trials.

In the city of Amritsar British troops entered the Jallianwala Bagh, a garden enclosed by high walls, and started firing into the mass of Indian people who were taking part in a peaceful protest meeting. The order to fire was given by WW1 veteran, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, and his men continued shooting for over ten minutes, firing 1,650 rounds directly into the crowd. Many of the heavy bullets passed through the bodies of their first victims to claim others beyond. When the firing had ceased thousands of men, women and children lay dead or wounded. Brigadier-General Dyer later said that: ‘For me the battlefield of France or Amritsar is the same’.

After the end of WW1 there were general elections in Britain and Ireland. The Sinn Féin party won by a landslide in Ireland and started to set up a republican administration, but this was banned by the British and many of the new Sinn Féin MPs were arrested and jailed. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) then began a campaign of armed resistance.

Republicans, however, knew they could not defeat Britain’s forces in battle. So, they set out to make the country un-governable instead. Michael Collins, using information from a network of agents inside the colonial administration, directed a ruthless and highly efficient campaign of guerrilla warfare – that proved difficult for the British forces to defeat.

As the conflict started to attract international attention, Britain realised that it was in danger of losing the propaganda battle, especially after the ‘Great War’ in which they had claimed to fight for ‘the rights of small nations’. So, Britain refused to recognise the conflict as a war and, in an attempt to criminalise the freedom struggle, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) was increasingly used as the front-line force. With British soldiers, except in areas of high IRA activity, kept in the background.

The British Government then decided to augment the RIC with units of more ruthless men, Subsequently, many unemployed WW1 veterans in Britain were recruited by their establishment, re-trained, and then sent to Ireland in an attempt to crush Irish nationalists. Ex-officers joined an elite force called the Auxiliaries, while ex-rank and file soldiers, desperate for work and adventure, were signed-up and sent to Ireland – where they became known as the infamous ‘Black and Tans’.

These units were billeted in RIC barracks and were expected to provide a cutting-edge for forthcoming repressive operations. The RIC Divisional Commissioner for Munster, Gerald Bryce Ferguson Smyth, called his men to a meeting at the Listowel police barracks and told them that the British Government had instructed him to implement a ‘new policy’, which he enthusiastically outlined:

‘I am getting 7,000 police from England. If a police barracks is burned, the best house in the locality is to be commandeered. The police are to lie in ambush and to shoot suspects. The more you shoot the better I will like you … No policeman will get into trouble for shooting any man. Hunger strikers will be allowed to die in jail – the more the merrier. We want your assistance in carrying out this scheme and wiping out Sinn Féin’.

WW1 war-dog Frank Crozier was now back in Ireland and in July 1920 he was made the commander of the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Crozier and his men guarded Kevin Barry before his execution, but, as the RIC ‘new policy’ was quickly put into operation, Crozier stared to become disillusioned. Especially after Martial law was declared in areas thought to be sympathetic to the IRA and Sinn Féin.

Because then, with the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries in the lead, the armed forces again took up a counter-insurgency role and launched a campaign of aggressive actions against the Irish people in those areas:

‘Perhaps the biggest single act of vandalism committed in Ireland by British forces, including the police, took place on 11-12 December 1920, when Cork city’s centre was sacked and burned … Cork, of course, was only one of many areas to suffer under the policies which motivated police and military excesses. Florence O’Donoghue noted that in “one month these ‘forces of law and order’ had burned and partially destroyed twenty-four towns; in one week they had shot up and sacked Balbriggan, Ennistymon, Mallow, Miltown-Malbay, Lahinch and Trim…”.’ [The Irish Police, by Séamus Breathnact, Anvil Books 1974].

The ‘unofficial’ – but officially organised and directed – state terrorism of the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries did spread fear, but in the end only hardened Irish nationalist sentiment and increased IRA support.

Another unintended consequence happened in 1920, when soldiers in the Connaught Rangers mutinied while serving in India. Most men of this Irish regiment of the British Army were WW1 veterans and some became disturbed by accounts of the Anglo / Irish conflict back home – especially about the activities of the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries. Some soldiers said they did not want to do in India what ‘the Tans’ were doing in Ireland and these feelings came to a head when a number of the troops refused to ‘soldier on’ till the Black and Tans were removed from Ireland.

Frank Crozier also became increasingly opposed to what he regarded as unlawful activities by some of his men and he attempted to exercise some control over his Auxiliaries – by arresting some and suspending others for committing atrocities and looting. In February 1921 he dismissed 21 of his Auxiliaries after they had taken part in the raids on Trim and Drumcondra. His superior, Henry Hugh Tudor, the head of the RIC, then ordered the 21 Auxiliaries to be reinstated and Crozier resigned in protest.

Crozier, now in civvy street, found it difficult to find employment in his line of work and he turned to politics, running as the Labour Party candidate for Portsmouth Central in the 1923 general election. When he lost Crozier then tried writing and lecturing to earn a living. Crozier told how, in WW1, he’d ordered his troops to machine-gun allied Portuguese soldiers who were fleeing the Germans. He also wrote about the many other unofficial killings carried out by him, or other officers and NCOs.

Crozier said that the rank-and-file soldier: ‘seldom oversteps the mark of barbaric propriety in France, save occasionally to kill prisoners he cannot be bothered to escort back to his lines’. He then described how he himself had shot a young British officer who had broken and ran: ‘Never can I forget the agonised expression on that British youngster’s face as he ran in terror.’ In a book, candidly called ‘The Men I Killed’, Crozier tried to explain that action:

‘Oh, I know you will ask why I killed that British subaltern. The answer is more obvious than easy. My duty was to hold the line at all costs. To England the cost was very little. To Colonel Blimp in his club and Mrs Blimp in her boudoir the cost was nothing. To me? Even if the effort did mean murder, the line had to be held’. [The Men I Killed, by F. P. Crozier, Michael Joseph 1937].

The establishment did not like crozier’s descriptions of the ‘Great War’, mainly because he did not obscure the reality of the conflict, or throw a cloak of honour and glory over it. So attempts were made to discredit him and these increased in the 1930s after Crozier, like Siegfried Sassoon, had joined the Peace Pledge Union.

Frank Crozier went on to become an admirer of Mahatma Gandhi and supported the League of Nations Union, which wanted a permanent peace agreement among countries based on the provision of a means to settle disputes, ensure mutual/collective defence and the observance of international treaties.

In August 1937 Crozier died suddenly and ‘The Times’ rejected two brief tributes sent to them from the Peace Pledge Union. Instead they printed an obituary described as ‘ungenerous’ by his widow, which stated: ‘General Crozier, making no allowances for “political expediency”, proved difficult in a series of trying situations and resigned over a question of discipline’.

What ‘The Times’ could not stomach was that one of their war-dog heroes not only wanted to tell the truth, but also now, had turned to peace. After all, from an establishment point of view, Frank Percy Crozier had an unblemished war record – as the ‘Time Magazine’ pointed out:

‘In 1914 he joined the Royal Irish Fusiliers with the rank of Captain. During the next five years he won the D.S.O., C.M.G., C.B., Croix de Guerre with palm, was mentioned seven times in despatches, left the War a Brigadier’.

Crozier’s journey from war-dog to peacenik had been long and torturous. He had believed in war, but turned against it when he saw others use it for gain, or power. And, based on what he had seen and done in war, it was a measured belief in peace he ended up with. It is a journey many others who have served have taken since, including members of Veterans For Peace today.

Frank Percy Crozier had served most of his life as a mercenary and regular soldier in the service of his country. Before his death he explained what his life as a warrior for Britain and the Empire had taught him:

‘It is perfectly clear to me, that in the future, if a rumour of war is ever hushed or noised around, the peoples of the world must all rise up and say “No,” with no uncertain voice …

My own experience of war, which is a prolonged one, is that anything may happen in it, from the very highest kinds of chivalry and sacrifice to the very lowest form of barbaric debasement …
Many people were happy in the outbreak of 1914 – I was one of them. I am now chastened, as I have seen the suffering.

I shall, of course, fight again if I have to, in defence of my country; but I advise other and wiser methods than war for the settling of disputes.

I knew, in 1914, that I must either get on or get under. Dug-out officers, more particularly senior ones, welcomed war. To them came power and pay without any danger … Munition makers and caterers, clothiers and countless other people welcomed war. There will always be some who put profit before patriotism.
Youth sprang to the call but, thank God, British youth always will, if guided. Let us guide our youth to the hard battle of peace’.

Info by VFP member Aly Renwick, who served in the British Army from 1960-68.

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2018 ANNUAL GATHERING: FILM NIGHT “WAR SCHOOL”

Get free tickets here: EVENTBRITE TICKETS

Premier of the film WAR SCHOOL directed by Mic Dixon.

Date: Thu 8 November 2018

Time: 18:45 – 20:45 GMT

Location: Prince Charles Cinema, 7 Leicester Place, WC2H 7BY

The UK government is conditioning its citizens to support a war-based foreign policy and is enticing our children into the Military. Armed Forces Day, Uniform to Work Day, Camo Day, National Heroes Day – in the streets, on television, on the web, at sports events, in schools, advertising and fashion – the military presence in UK civilian life is increasing daily. The Government has a comprehensive action plan and is spending over £100m targetting the education system and promoting public support for its war machine.

A resistance movement is growing. Ben Griffin went from gun-obsessed child to SAS zealot, now he is leading a Veterans for Peace march to the Cenotaph. Quaker Sam Walton unearths the new government strategies and risks prison in his determination to do something about it. Through veterans’ testimony, archive and observation War School tells the untold story of Britain’s century of perpetual war and the developing resistance to the new tide of militarism.

Screen 2

Doors 18:45
Intro 18:55
Film 19:00
Ends 20:25
Q&A 20:30
Exit by 20:45

Get free tickets here: EVENTBRITE TICKETS

This event is part of the Veterans For Peace UK Annual Gathering

2018 ANNUAL GATHERING: AGM

Date: Friday 9 November

Time: 0900-1700

Location: William Penn Room, Friends House, 173 Euston Road, NW1 2BJ

0900 – Registration

1000 – 1030 VFP UK Review of the Year (Phil Clarke)

1000 – 1230 Annual General Meeting

1230 – 1330 Lunch

1330-1400 Election

1400-1500 Neutral Country, panel and discussion (Ed Horgan, Ben Griffin, Phil Clarke)

1530-1630 Regional Groups

1700 Closed

2018 ANNUAL GATHERING: BAND NIGHT

Date: Friday 9 November

Time: 1900 – 2300hrs

Location: The Water Rats, 328 Grays Inn Rd, WC1X 8BZ

Come along to the Veterans For Peace band night at the famous Water Rats venue in Kings Cross.

Come and see our musicians;

Jim Radford (Britain’s youngest surviving D-Day veteran)
Fenya (who released our christmas single)
James Toler (VFP USA)
and Batang Kali (VFP UK’s own band)

Please spread the word via mouth and social media.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1023445611155985/

NEVER AGAIN: INFORMATION

During WW1 the soldiers and the public were told that they were fighting “The war to end all war”. After the armistice those soldiers and the public took up the slogan Never Again. They were determined that future generations would Never Again experience the horror and pity of war.

It is disappointing that 100 years later, having engaged in numerous conflicts around the world, our country is still resorting to warfare when other options are available.

Every Remembrance Sunday we walk to the Cenotaph in London under the banner Never Again. As a reminder of what has gone before and with a determination that Never Again will our children or future generations inflict on others or experience themselves the horror and pity of war.

We think the slogan Never Again could be more widely used by the public and so we are promoting the slogan in the run up to Remembrance Sunday.

We are publishing a series of articles under the heading Never Again, that will focus on the human costs of the First World War and highlight the many conflicts we have fought since ‘The war to end all wars’.

Members of VFP UK will be out on the streets in the run up to Armistice Day displaying our Never Again banner and engaging with the public.

We have produced a clothing range with Never Again on the front and the numbers 1918-2018 printed on the back which feature the list of wars that Britain has fought since the “war to end all wars” finished in 1918. All money raised goes towards funding our Annual Gathering which culminates with our ceremony at The Cenotaph on Sunday 11 November 2018.

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