THE CONSCRIPTION CONTROVERSY IN GREAT BRITAIN 0 0 ­ R.J.Q. ADAMS & PHILIP P POIRIER Despite the efforts of Lord Roberts's National Service League-and the covert support of the army-mandatory service was considered an extremist's nostrum in the years before August 1914. With the unpre­ cedented manpower demands of the First World War, a bitter conflict erupted between voluntarists and conscriptionists among British statesmen-settled only after the collapse of voluntary recruiting and the passage of the National Service Acts in 1916. For the remainder of the conflict Britain's leaders struggled with the question of how best to use these broad new powers both to send enough men to the trenches and to keep enough back to make munitions and necessary consumer goods. By 1918 Britain stared into the bottom of the manpower barrel. For a note on the authors, please see the back flap THE CONSCRIPTION CONTROVERSY IN GREAT BRITAIN, 1900-18 Also by R. J. Q. Adams ARMS AND THE WIZARD: Lloyd George and the Ministry of Munitions, 1915-16 Also by Philip P. Poirier THE ADVENT OF THE LABOUR PARTY LEONARD HOBHOUSE'S THE LABOUR MOVEMENT (editor) The Conscription Controversy in Great Britain, 1900-18 R. J. Q. Adams and Philip P Poirier OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS © R. J. Q. Adams 1987 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1987 Published in the United Kingdom by The Macmillan Press Ltd. Published in the United States and Canada by the Ohio State University Press Printed in Hong Kong Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Adams, R. J. Q. (Ralph James Q.), 1943­ The conscription controversy in Great Britain, 1900-18. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Military service, Compulsory—Great Britain— History—20th century. I. Poirier, Philip P., 1920- II. Title. UB345.G7A65 1987 355.2'2363'0941 86-16181 ISBN 0-8142-0430-9 To Susan and Carole Contents Preface and Acknowledgements ix Bibliographical Note xv 1 Victorian Legacy 1 2 Conscription Controversy 16 3 The Invasion Debate 33 4 The Lamps Go Out 49 5 The Politics of Coalition 71 6 Choosing Sides 93 7 Lord Derby Shows the Way 119 8 Does Anyone Suppose You Are 144 Going to Stop Here? 9 The Search for a System 171 10 Passchendaele 196 11 The Bottom of the Barrel 225 12 Epilogomena 245 Notes and References 253 Index 286 vu Preface and Acknowledgements The inhabitants of medieval Britain, like their continental neigh­ bours, were not strangers to enforced military service. The strength of feudal loyalties and oaths, at least for men above the class of serfs, frequently received their ultimate test in battle. The Anglo-Saxon Fyrd which fell at Hastings was composed largely of citizen-warriors, whose duty it was to defend the community in time of war. Once settled in their new home, the Norman rulers of England developed a hybrid form of feudalism, which stipulated that military service was owed by each freeman to his lord. The greatest lord of all, the King, held the power to enforce the ultimate demand for such service. The centralizing monarchs of the latter Middle Ages institutionalized a more comprehensive form of conscription, following the lead of Henry II. This clever and ruthless father of the Angevin line showed the way in the twelfth century with his Assize of Arms, which defined what was expected in time of war of each class of men.1 Modern times saw the tradition continued. The Civil War, for so long pictured rather romantically as the struggle between tyrannical monarchy and representative institutions, was, at least in part, a war fought between impressed armies. A portion of the men who fought on sea and land during the great imperialist wars with France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were also conscripted into service. From the mid-eighteenth century through the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the nation raised her armies through periodic militia ballots, which entailed the drawing of lots among the eligible male citizenry of each county to decide who would make up the shire quota. In the years immediately preceding the First World War, conscription enthusiasts never tired of reminding their fellow Britons that both Trafalgar and Waterloo were victories of conscript forces. The century after the defeat of Napoleon witnessed no general wars, and no large conscript armies were needed. There was little enthusiasm for compulsory service in the Victorian Britain of Peace, Retrenchment and Reform, and these years regularly witnessed the annual suspension of the Militia Ballot Act. The little wars of the last century were fought with small professional armies and large econo- IX x Preface and Acknowledgements mical navies, also manned by long-service volunteers. Compulsion simply ceased to be an issue of consequence in the time of Gladstone, Disraeli or Salisbury. Not until the early years of the twentieth century did a small and dedicated party of compulsory-service zealots, supported to a degree by other enthusiasts of other 'modern' ideas, again raise the issue. It is their history which is the initial subject of this book. The Great War, as it was termed by an entire generation, changed the lives of millions of men and women alive at that time. Its long-term effects, direct and otherwise, have altered the face of the earth and all its people. Among the many ways in which it altered political and social life in Britain during the 1914-18 period was that it thrust the once-obscure issue of conscription into the centre of political decision-making. For a time, compulsory service became the most crucial issue to be debated by Parliament, the press and the electorate. An examination of how that debate was conducted and concluded provides the subject of the second portion of this book. Once conscription became law in 1916, however, it was discovered that the complex issues of manpower provision and control were not settled. Because of the enormous demands for men both to fight a war of attrition and to work in the factories, mines and farms, it was necessary to learn how best to establish priorities and appropriately allocate the shrinking manpower pool. All the while, of course, the leaders of the British democracy were required to keep in mind the limits of tolerance of the electorate. Consideration of these questions occupies the final portion of this book. The Conscription Controversy came to be written under unusual circumstances. It is a kind of collaborative effort on the part of two men who never met - at the same time it is a tribute by one of the authors, myself, to the other, Philip P. Poirier. Dr Poirier died tragically prematurely in 1979, at the age of 59. He had been for twenty-seven years a member of the Department of History at the Ohio State University. A student of British politics and society in the early years of the twentieth century, he was the author of many books, articles and papers. In 1958 he published The Advent of the Labour Party, which was honoured with the Triennial Prize of the North American Conference on British Studies. More recently he edited a new edition of the long-out-of-print The Labour Movement by L. T. Hobhouse. A painstaking mentor, he would no doubt be pleased to be remembered as the teacher of a large and admiring Preface and Acknowledgements xi cadre of research students; many of these men and women have gone on to make their own marks in the historical profession. More than ten years ago, Philip Poirier became interested in the question of state control in Britain and planned a book examining the conscription issue in the period of the First World War. Taking issue with the pathfinding work of A. J. P. Taylor and Alfred M. Gollin, among others, he had concluded that the Freedom or Control thesis exaggerated the ideological importance of war socialism. He wrote in 1975: I believe I can show convincingly that the pressure of circumstan­ ces and the economics of scarcity made some men collectivists out of grim necessity but that the portrayal of Lloyd George and other ministers of state as interventionists in any ideological sense is almost wholly without merit. Even before publishing, in 1978, a study of Lloyd George and the evolution of Government control during his time at the Ministry of Munitions, I began work on a research project examining the question of state intervention during the early twentieth century, including an examination of the development of manpower policy under the three successive wartime cabinets. After Dr Poirier's death, I was asked by his literary executors, Dr Carole Rogel Poirier and Dr Richard Poirier, to take temporary possession of the large corpus of documentary materials, notes and papers he had collected and complete without restriction a broad work dealing with the conscription and manpower issues. An indefatigable and gifted researcher, he had gathered a monumental collection of data. This book is the result of combining the products of Dr Poirier's re­ searches with my own. The arguments and conclusions of Conscription Controversy - warts and all - are my own, and I accept full responsibility for them. Yet for reasons which must be obvious to all those who read these words, and despite the fact that he might have taken issue with some of the judgements reached herein, this book belongs as much to Philip Poirier as to me.