AGAINST THE TIDE - "Darling, I tried to stop it." WAR-RESISTERS IN SOUTH LONDON 1914-16 J.H.Taylor AGAINST THE TIDE WAR-RESISTERS IN SOUTH LONDON 1914-16 J.H.Taylor CONTENTS The Why and the Where Introduction 3 A south London triangle 5 Part I 1914 1. “No friends here” 13 Part II 1915 2. Still small voices 29 3. War and war reporting 40 4. Towards conscription 45 Part III 1916 5. Compulsion and resistance 51 6. The tribunals 62 7. In Bermondsey and Southwark 65 8. In Camberwell 77 9. A madness of persecution? 82 10. The question of motivation 85 11. One man defiant 88 12. The war goes on 92 13. Exposing ill-treatment 96 14. Serving hard labour 100 15. Dyce and Dartmoor 102 16. The numbers 105 17. Branch and centre 109 18. “True fellowship and sympathy” 117 19. Strength and impact 123 20. What did they know? 132 21. Sustained by local solidarity 139 22. Was it a turning-point? 142 Bibliography 147 Index 153 Acknowledgements 157 The Why and the Where 2 Introduction What follows is an act of recovery and homage: a salute across a century to some of the men and women who stood out against the tide of war between 1914 and 1918 and by their efforts sought to turn it aside. Specifically, it is about people who were active in the present London borough of Southwark. Here there were two centres of opposition. One was in Bermondsey in the north, around the Christian socialists Alfred and Ada Salter, who were both active at national level. Their part is well documented. Dulwich, the second and rather surprising centre in the south, is barely known at all. Long introductions, explaining what the writer has tried to do, are generally a bore, or best read afterwards. To be very brief, I have sought to present my research in context: in the context of the war and national politics, in the context of the home front and in the context of national campaigns against the slaughter. Inevitably for this background I have leant heavily on secondary material. I would like to acknowledge in particular Jo Vellacott’s masterly Bertrand Russell and the Pacifists, recently reissued under the less interesting title of Conscientious Objection. Hers is by far the most scholarly account of the No-Conscription Fellowship at national level – as well as being a wry social comedy of the often difficult relationship between Catherine Marshall, the Fellowship’s driving force, and her most illustrious collaborator. David Boulton’s Objection Overruled is valuable for putting the anti-war campaigners in the wider context of the labour movement; though it is badly short of references. For individual prison experiences I have drawn on Cyril Pearce’s heroic project of creating a national database of conscientious objectors from across the whole country, and on Ann O’Brien’s biographies of COs from Lewisham. For developments on the home front my debt is to Arthur Marwick’s classic account The Deluge and to Jerry White’s much more recent study Zeppelin Nights. Reliance on secondary sources means that simplifications and received ideas must sometimes creep in. For that I seek indulgence with the plea that it’s the new research that counts. Finally, a word or two about the local papers from which I quote extensively. There are three. The Southwark and Bermondsey Recorder, published at Dockhead, Bermondsey, covered Southwark, Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. The South London Observer, published in Church Street, Camberwell, covered Camberwell, Peckham and Dulwich. It’s an odd paper, in that it appeared twice 3 weekly – Wednesday and Saturday - with virtually the same news. I call it by its secondary title, the Camberwell and Peckham Times or CP Times since this is a reminder of its circulation area. For the same reason I refer in the text to the SB Recorder. The third paper is the South London Press, happily still with us. It had its office above the underground station at the Elephant and Castle. I have failed to find out anything very useful about any of the papers. But when one compares them the SLP, as I call it, stands out as a much more professional product. It’s a bigger paper with presumably a larger staff reporting over a much wider area – not only Camberwell, Peckham, Dulwich, Southwark and Bermondsey (though not Rotherhithe on the whole) but also Lambeth and sometimes Wandsworth to the west. It also treats the war very differently from the other two, as we shall see. March 2017. Corrected pdf version June 2017. J.H. Taylor has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. He is happy for his research to be used and reproduced, subject to an acknowledgement of the source. Cover image © IWM (Q31442) Daddy’s reply is based on that proposed by the miners’ leader Robert Smillie: “I tried to stop the bloody thing, my child.” 4 A south London triangle I One hundred years ago the present borough of Southwark, a rough triangle in shape - four-and-a-half miles of river frontage coming to a point five miles south just short of Crystal Palace - comprised three separate local authorities. Bermondsey, running along the south shore of the Thames from roughly opposite Canary Wharf to London Bridge, comprised Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. Rotherhithe, in the east, had a long maritime history. The Mayflower set out from here, as did Lemuel Gulliver. Almost a peninsula, its surface area - more water than land - was occupied in 1914 by nine linked wet docks and six timber ponds, which were operated by Surrey Commercial Docks. This was the home of London’s timber trade and of a substantial trade in grain and other foodstuffs. Greenland Dock, the largest, was a destination for trans-Atlantic liners, like Cunard. From it the Grand Surrey Canal fed south-westwards towards Peckham and Camberwell. Rotherhithe’s long waterfront was lined with wharves and docks, both wet and dry. Wharves, a flexible term, could mean an open quayside or (more usually), a warehouse of at least three-four storeys. A warehouse could be used merely for storage, or it could be a mill or a factory. Ship-building and ship-breaking yards had been numerous. Turner’s “Fighting Temeraire” was broken up at Beatson’s yard. Now barge-building and barge-repairing were more important. Much the same riverscape continued into Bermondsey, tall warehouses with cranes projecting in front making a canyon of the street behind. Here however there were no inland docks. The other difference was that the wharves were served not by ocean-going ships but by lighters to which goods were transferred at Surrey Docks. The frontage between Tower Bridge and London Bridge, dominated by the Hays Wharf Company, was known as “London’s larder,” but it was not just London’s. In the early years of the 20th century it was importing more than 50 per cent of the nation’s butter and 70 per cent of its cheese. Hays brought in both staple and high-quality foodstuffs from around the world and was a pioneer in cold-storage. It also operated a fleet of lighters. Goods were traded at the Home and Foreign Produce Exchange, next to London Bridge. Away from the river but conveniently near, Bermondsey had a concentration of food processing firms, employing mainly women. They included such household names as 5 Sarson’s, Crosse & Blackwell, Hartley’s, Peek Freans and Liptons. The other, much older specialism in the hinterland was leather, reflected in such locations as Tanner Street, Morocco Street and Leathermarket Street. The “larder” in fact extended further west along the river into Southwark. It was home to Borough Market, of course, then wholesale, and to Barclay, Perkins brewery, at one time the largest in London. Hop factors clustered around the florid Hop Exchange nearby. “The Borough,” it should be explained, was the ancient term for the historic area either side of Borough High Street. It was the starting point for the Canterbury pilgrims and until the 1750s hosted Southwark Fair, as depicted in riotous detail by Hogarth. From London Bridge the old municipal boundary rambled south-east. London’s first railway terminus was just in Bermondsey. Its construction and extension to Charing Cross is estimated to have made some 40,000 people homeless, the railway companies having no obligation to rehouse them. Borough High Street was in Southwark. So was the firm of W.T.Pink, which employed some 2,000 women making jam, pickles and confectionery on a large site at the junction with Long Lane. J. Sainsbury had its warehouse and factory further west, near Blackfriars Bridge. But this food-and-drink activity was submerged in a tide of other trades and manufactories that had grown in extent and variety as Bankside - once home to Shakespeare’s Globe and the Bishop of Winchester’s brothels - expanded towards the marshland further south. They included engineering - among them big firms like John Rennie, father and son, who designed the new London Bridge – as well as gas and electricity generation on the site of Tate Modern, hydraulic power, hat making, printing, and a host of small enterprises turning out an enormous range of products. The old borough of Southwark, like the new one, terminated by the Oxo Tower, opposite the leafy gardens of the Middle Temple on the north bank. Continuing south and east, it took in Blackfriars, Newington and Walworth – this last being the area round the Elephant and Castle, situated due south of London Bridge.