The Highway: Turbulent Times 1918-28

The Highway h Turbulent Times: 1918 –28 g

Educational and social campaigning within the WEA and affiliated organisations in the NE, 1918 – 28

The Highway h Turbulent Times: 1918 –28 g

Educational and social campaigning within the WEA and affiliated organisations in the NE, 1918 – 28

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to all the volunteers, students, tutors and staff of the WEA. This project could not have happened without your incredible input. Thanks also to our excellent Social Media Volunteers who are students at Newcastle University.

Project Organiser: Dr Jude Murphy Design: Tommy Anderson (www.baselineshift.co.uk)

WEA 4 Luke Street London EC2A 4XW T: 020 7426 3450 E: national@wea.org.uk W: www.wea.org.uk F: www.facebook.com/weaadulteducation Twitter: @WEAadulted

WEA North East Joseph Cowen House 21 Portland Terrace Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 1QQ T: 0191 212 6100 E: northeast@wea.org.uk W: http://ne.wea.org.uk/ F: www.facebook.com/northeastwea F: www.facebook.com/turbulenttimes1918to28/ Blog: www.weainworldwar1.wordpress.com/ The Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) is a charity registered in England and Wales (number 1112775) and in Scotland (number SC039239) and a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (number 2806910).

Registered Office: Workers’ Educational Association, 4 Luke Street, London, EC2A 4XW.

Many thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund and to the Lottery players who ensure projects like this have excellent financial support.

We have had unstinting assistance from the various librarians, curators and archivists who we’ve consulted throughout the project: Tyne and Wear Archives; Gateshead Libraries’ Local Studies Section; the Lit and Phil; Durham County Records Office (special thanks to Jo Vietzke); Newcastle Libraries, (special thanks to Sarah Mulligan); Northumberland Archives; the Marx Memorial Library; the WEA and TUC Archives at London Metropolitan University (special thanks to Jeff Howarth); The National Archives; the Imperial War Museum; the Cooperative Archives; the Women’s Engineering Society and Institute of Engineering and Technology Archive (special thanks to Jon Cable); The Women’s Library at the LSE; University of Glasgow Library; the Library of the Royal College of Music; Tommy Anderson of Baseline Shift; The MIning Institute; NEEMARC, The Working Class Movement Library; and The People’s History Museum Archive. Thanks to Maureen Calcott and Dorothy Rand who each gave great advice drawn from their research.

Thanks also to those organisations who have helped us with educational support and/or venues: Tyne and Wear Heritage Forum; County Durham Forum for History and Heritage; Sunniside Local History Society; Women’s Engineering Society; Stanley Civic Hall; “The Venue”, Stanley; Beamish Museum (particular thanks to James Barton, Rosie Nichols, Sian Fox and Angela Bromage); Eboney Day Care; Newcastle City Librar y; Brunswick Methodist Church; Three Acres and a Cow; The Time Bandits; Northern Cultural Projects CIC (particularly Silvie Fisch, John Sadler and Rosie Serdiville); Gateshead Council (Saltwell Towers); Chopwell Community Centre; Prohibition Cabaret Bar; Ashington Life Centre; Red Hills Miners’ Hall; The Canny Chanters and Bethany Elen Coyle; Bensham Grove; Come and Sing; Westoe Travel; Bill Corcoran, Tyneside Irish Centre, Viktoria Kay; Ed Waugh; Dave Harker; Neil Taylor; Michelle Lindsay-Baharie and Robert Baharie; Graham Smith; Ruth Gowland; Amanda Quinn; Anthea Lang.

We were lucky enough to collaborate on an inspiring project with Higher Education Partners (project team: Daniel Laqua; Sarah Hellawell; Georgina Brewis; Mike Day and Jude Murphy): “British Ex-Service Students and the Rebuilding of Europe 1919-1926”. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Everyday Lives in War WWI Engagement Centre, and included Northumbria University; University College London; and the National Union of Students.

Particular thanks to Mavis Ho, who as Project Administrator has been the most efficient, patient, creative and supportive colleague anyone could ever hope for.

Contents 08

Introduction

45

Jude Murphy, Project Organiser

In a Flap! Attitudes to young women workers in the early 20th century

79

Tommy’s Lament

Tappy Lappy

Aaron Ernest Gompertz Pacifist, politician and champion of the disadvantaged through turbulent times

Robbie Rodiss

Tom Davie

106

Phil Cochrane

Liz O’Donnell

10

Before The Pitmen Painters: Chester Armstrong’s Ashington

80 48

Nigel Todd

The Hallmarks of a Minx Jude Murphy

81 14

Trick Question

50

Regina Blachford

Growing Up 1918–28

Quickening The Smouldering Flame: Music In The Tutorial Class Era. William Gillies Whittaker.

(1876–1944)

110

Joan Dawson

Elaine Pope

55

The Ballad of Philip Brown and Thomas Kenny Ann Alexander

82 16

Ghosts Of Orgreave

Women’s Rights to Human Rights Rosie Serdiville

Red Star over Russia.

Smoke and mirrors over the USA

111

Memories Of A Coal Miner Maria Hawthorne

Ronnie Stuart

58

Jude Murphy

Calling Time Ceinwen Haydon

112 86

Alfred’s Song

Philip Anthony Brown Sarah Reay

Ronnie Stuart

20

Harry Barnes Goes To Parliament

59

Brian Bennison

Popular Culture Elaine Pope

115 88

Conscientious Objectors

Two of the Lucky Ones Ceinwen Haydon

Phil Cochrane

23

Reading Rooms

66

Jude Murphy

32

The WEA after WW1 The Influence on Women and Children

I’m So Happy In 1924 Ann Alexander

67

Living Conditions in a Mining Community Post WW1

Our Street 2: WEA Turbulent Times – The 1926 Miners’ Strike

118

Tony Bulloch

1926 Women Kath Connolly

Liz Greener

Managing The Bloodless Wound – Post 1917 Gareth Rees

92

Summerland: Spiritualism and post-war remembrance

70

Soup Kitchen Susan Hathaway

Mary Pitt

Marjory Winnie

34

116 89

Turbulent Times in Little Moscow, where “Precocious Lenins” are known to dwell

126

Lynemouth: Ashington Coal Company’s Model Town Liz O’Donnell

Ronnie Stuart

38

Annie Errington – Russia 1926

72

Kath Connolly

40

44

Maria Hawthorne

The First Year of the Women’s Engineering Society: a snapshot through a North East Lens

73

Jude Murphy & Shiva Dowlatshahi

74

90 Years On Chris Gardiner

Fields Of Flodden

130 94

DADA Chopwell Reading Room Workshop Participants

Love Found and Lost 104

Conscientious Objectors in the North East during World War One The backgrounds to these men’s lives and beliefs Tom Davie

Bill Lawrence

134

Maria Hawthorne

Homes Fit For Heroes – Or A ‘Sop’ For Soldiers?

Hail The Conquering Hero

The Bridge Song Debra Milne & Steve Glendinning

Phil Cochrane

105

No Man’s Land Phil Cochrane

136

References

Introduction Jude Murphy, Project Organiser

This publication is a celebration of work undertaken on the Turbulent Times project, which explored educational and social campaigning within the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) and affiliated organisations in the North East 1918–28.

The same report praised the WEA’s approach to commissioning and developing courses and study circles built around the interests of its members that: ‘respond rapidly to the needs and demands of the time … The Association has lately organised classes and study circles, lectures and conferences for the consideration of 'the problems of reconstruction', 'industry after the war', 'women in industry after the war’, 'the League of Nations' and similar topics.’2

The name, The Highway, echoes that of the WEA’s newsletter which was sent out regularly to members from before the First World War through to the 1950s. It has only recently been revived as a regular publication for the present century.

Over the course of the past eighteen months, WEA volunteers, students, staff and partner organisations have undertaken historical research; written poems, stories and songs, performed in plays and films, made stunning textiles and visual art, developed online resources, publications, a pop-up reading room and exhibitions; and discussed the parallels between past and present.

This work has been underpinned by support from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

As the articles that follow will demonstrate, we focused on several key themes: • Women’s empowerment within the WEA and wider society.

• How were WEA members and affiliates involved in repatriation of people and regeneration of communities?

8 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

leaving age to 14 and aimed to extend tertiary education. The Ministr y ’s Adult Education Committee included famous figures such as R H Tawney and, crucially, WEA founder Albert Mansbridge. Its 1919 Final Report shows how access to lifelong learning – via WEA, Co-operative Societies, settlement houses, trades unions, even working men’s clubs – was viewed as a cornerstone in rebuilding a stable society in the wake of the cataclysm of the first industrial-scale war. Educational programmes in army camps had informed new ideas: ‘there is latent in the mass of our people a capacity … to rise to the conception of great issues’. The Report asserted that education was necessary ‘to save them not only from the repetition of such a world-war ... but … also from the obvious peril of civil dissension at home.’1

• What became of the Conscientious Objectors and other radical thinkers?

• Educational Campaigning and Reading Rooms.

Regarding the educational landscape, the Armistice of 1918 left a world and society in flux.

Despite being founded only fifteen years previously, The Workers’ Educational Association played a key role in shaping the educational and social policies that were central to post-war reconstruction.

Towards the end of the war, the Ministr y of Reconstruction commissioned a series of committees which helped inform the 1918 ‘Fisher’ Education Act. This raised the school

The Association’s influence on wider educational policy continued into the 1920s, as Sir William Henry Hadow’s Committees produced influential reports in 1926, 1931, and 1933 which advocated child- or learner-centred approaches and smaller class sizes. Principal of Armstrong College from 1909–19, Hadow was coincidentally a key figure and occasional Chair in the WEA’s Northern District.

Meanwhile, alongside this seat at the top table of educational reform, the WEA’s own internal debates were shaping concepts of adult education. The June 1919 edition of The Highway featured a piece, ‘Technical Instruction and Liberal Education: Commerce v Citizenship’, which raised a perennial question still relevant

today: should education be primarily for employability and social mobility, or for more general wellbeing? There were also tensions between the WEA and those in the Labour College Movement who deemed the WEA tutorial classes’ modelling of university approaches as reactionary. Yet a rare insight into an ordinary WEA class demonstrates that theirs was a democratic approach to a liberal education.

The Journal of a Third Year Class in Psychology held in Annfield Plain, County Durham in 1925– 26 shows a weekly pattern of class meeting, lecture and discussion, with students taking it in turns to write up collaborative class notes.3 The topics under discussion touched on controversial issues of the day, such as the question of innate racial characteristics and the nature of progress.

Of most interest here, though, is the group’s analysis of what made for a successful WEA class:

Psychology class numbered list outlining good learning environment

As the list shown in the image demonstrates, the emphasis was on a tutor who could inclusively guide discussions that catered for a wide range of abilities, and a class who were willing to participate, absorbed in the topic, and open to others’ opinions: ‘each member a thinker and a worker’.

These surprisingly modern attitudes bring us closer to our counterparts from almost a century ago. We hope that this book will do the same.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 9

Before The Pitmen Painters: Chester Armstrong’s Ashington Nigel Todd

In August 1938 an Ashington pitman published a book regarded by some as astonishing. How could an untutored coal miner from ‘the biggest pit village in the world’ write a book? And as it was an autobiography, what on earth could he have to say that would be of interest? Well, quite a lot as it turned out.

It wasn’t just any autobiography, either. Chester Armstrong, unusually, wrote about being a lifelong learner, weaving details of his family story, and his work as a checkweighman for the Ashington Coal Company, around a personal journey of discovery in literature, philosophy and sociology. Methuen, a leading British publisher, put the book on the market.

1

Pilgrimage From Nenthead related how Chester Armstrong had moved to Ashington as a child in 1881. He described a town whose 30,000 inhabitants by 1920 were mostly dependent on the Coal Company, and were living in often appalling housing and social conditions. Any relief from the drear y environment, hard work and uncertain pay, had to come from the people themselves. So they made their existence bearable through their trade union, churches and chapels, local societies and recreations, or in Armstrong’s words, ‘associational enterprise.’

10 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

For the young Armstrong, it was the Sunday Lecture Society, at the impressive Miners’ Hall, that sparked ‘a very real starting point’ to his learning adventures with a talk on evolution by the prolific secularist, Rationalist and feminist, Joseph McCabe. His appetite wetted, Armstrong eagerly sought education from disparate sources. These included Ashington’s vibrant Primitive Methodist scene, where he enjoyed weekly literar y ‘tutorials’ with some of the preachers, ‘fascinating’ intellectual encounters with a Newcastle Owenite Socialist draper y salesman, and a growing interest in the Independent Labour Party whose local library he helped to stock.

Aged 30 in 1898, Armstrong put his education onto a more formal basis as a prime founder of the Ashington Debating and Literar y Improvement Society, ‘a reading circle’ meeting weekly to discuss books. The Society flourished for the next 30 years, sustained by Armstrong as its secretary for 25 of them. Among those who attended meetings was Ebenezer (‘Ebby ’) Edwards who later became Labour MP for Morpeth, and secretary of the miners’ union nationally. Edwards also organised Ashington’s Labour College, but more of that later.

Much of Armstrong’s learning journey followed literature, as well as an episode of philosophical ‘pain’ that distanced him from religion. It was a delicate transition given the religious commitment of his ‘partner’ (‘I say partner, because I had already dispensed with that idea of overlordship involved in the marriage vows, which implies obedience on the part of the wife’). And in the context of changing times, and wider ideas, Chester Armstrong explored the new discipline of sociology, strengthening his view that ‘the Cooperative Movement …afforded an ample practical demonstration of my own social ideals.’

Armstrong, whilst valuing the life around him, was strongly attracted to the Co-op’s educational role, and had supported its efforts to establish a branch of the new Workers’ Educational Association in 1911. Several of the local WEA branch officers included Armstrong and members of the Literary Society. But with the impact of war time shift work, the WEA branch disappeared.

Elected to the management board of the Ashington Industrial Co-operative Society by 1914, Armstrong joined a group of mainly miners who were at the heart of the town’s commercial, political and working class life.

This was a Co-op that expanded steadily, paying dividends to its thousands of members of over one shilling in every pound spent in its local shops throughout the depressed 1920s, and was thought to account for 50 per cent of the town’s shopping trade by 1928.2 During the same decade, the Co-op’s education committee built up 22 children’s classes in Cooperation annually, a small lending book collection in the absence of a public library, courses in book keeping and commercial arithmetic, junior orchestras, lectures and weekend schools, clubs for teenagers and branches of the Co-operative Women’s Guild.

All of these developments took persistence and dedication. After all, Ashington’s people, poor as they were, had generated other competing attractions.

The town famously boasted 23 working men’s clubs for thirsty miners, along with cinema, music hall, religious groups, leek shows, bands, football, cycling, cricket and other sports, and of course gambling.3

John Jacques, as a young grocery assistant from a local mining family, was a success story for Ashington Co-op education. Jacques was sent to the Co-operative College in the early 1920s, subsequently becoming a College tutor. As chief officer of a co-operative society at Portsmouth, he revolutionised shopping by introducing selfservice supermarkets into Britain in the late 1940s.

Photo credit: National Co-operative Archive

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 11

It was likely that the Literary Society and the Co-op’s education committee, and Armstrong spanning both, acted jointly to bring well known speakers to Ashington to engage the miners and their families on social and economic questions. Fenner B r o c k w a y, t h e p e a c e campaigner, and Margaret McMillan, the nurser y education advocate, were popular visitors. The most enthusiastic supporter, however, was Harold Laski, a Socialist academic from the London School of Economics and an emerging Labour intellectual. Laski set aside part of each autumn to lecturing in mining districts and, through Armstrong and his contacts, visited Ashington every year during the 1920s– 1930s for a long weekend of lecturing.

A review of Armstrong’s book from the Co-operative News, 1938.

After the First World War, the Co-op began a difficult campaign to create an education and social framework for its members and their children, as well as for its workers. Staff education and training was taken ver y seriously, and included sending employees on courses at the new Co-operative College in Manchester. Ashington’s Co-operators were strong supporters of the College, keenly inviting the Principal, Fred Hall, and his colleagues to hold lecture tours in South East Northumberland.4

12 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Armstrong arranged for Laski to stay with the Literary Society’s Sam Snow (’and his three thousand books’), and the two could be locked in discussion until the small hours of the mornings. Laski’s letters conveyed his ‘dazzling time’ during his ‘annual weekend with the miners at Ashington’ where his meetings on a new social and economic order attracted ‘about 200 miners.’ His discussions with the Literary Society’s members ‘furiously smoking around a fire’ were intense and deep, and ’I frankly can rarely remember such talk.’5 As the 1920s unfolded, Chester Armstrong was asked by the Co-op education committee to

lead an adult study circle on sociology.

Beginning in 1922, as the only study circle of its kind in the country, the group met for 20 sessions in each of four years. Armstrong broke new ground in preparing the teaching and materials. As a victim of his own success, he was then asked to repeat the exercise from 1926–1929, this time with a group who had been in a Marxist economics class provided via the miners’ union. This economics and industrial history course was offered by the North Eastern Labour College. Ebby Edwards was seen as ‘the virtual founder of the College’, possibly explaining how the tutor came to recommend Armstrong’s sociology circle as a progression step. The Labour College group paid the same ‘assiduous attention’ as their predecessors, and most passed an exam set by the Co-operative College.6 One of Chester Armstrong’s and the Co-op’s achievements was to navigate the intense rivalry between the Labour Colleges and the WEA, both of whom sought funding and

Hard Times: Food kitchens, common during the 1926 miners' strike, sometimes ran out of money for food as this children's drawing from Pegswood, near Ashington, showed in The Labour Woman magazine, 1 September 1926. (People's History Museum, Manchester)

support from the trade unions and the Cooperative Movement. As it happens, the Northumberland Miners’ Association could be even handed with funding, and the same was true of the Ashington Co-op. Armstrong probably saw the two adult education movements as complementary, and whilst the Labour College was embedded with the miners’ union, he was keen that the WEA should be community oriented.

There was a renewed attempt to start WEA tutorial classes from 1921 involving the local Coop as well as the Club & Institute Union. It enjoyed little success until 1924 when a WEA branch was finally re-launched with 34 members. A course programme gradually got under way, offering evolution, geology and biology, and it was from among these WEA students, building on Chester Armstrong’s unrelenting efforts in the background, that the art appreciation class that was to transform into the famous Pitmen Painters emerged in 1934.7 Chester Armstrong was 70 years of age when he published his book. He had given up teaching, but not reading, and had even joined the Co-op’s new amateur dramatic group. Then he faded from public view, though one of his sons carried on his work. Living for another twenty years, Armstrong died near Ashington in May 1958.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 13

Trick Question Regina Blachford

Who remembers the trick question: Q: What was the largest single country before Australia was discovered?

It would be fair to still get the answer wrong if you looked at maps of the world without questioning the sizes of the UK or US against Africa, Australia or even Europe. It's not something you would have expected to need, but maybe it had seemed there was something odd about them, much like those ‘something and nothing’ nagging feelings and thoughts.

For example, if you've had that odd virus, that comes and goes, but it is still mostly hanging on, revealing itself in what could seem totally illogical ways, and you then wonder if it's a virus or just you. But then other people mention they have the same odd symptoms and then it's not nothing anymore, not just a gut feeling, because of the building anecdotal evidence. Yet proving it is is harder, or more usually, time either proves it or makes it go away. I am sure scientifically there are ways to eventually show that it once was there. In the midst of time people talked about gut feelings and at one point you would have been burned at the stake for being a witch for doing so. Or for following an age old herbal remedy. Thankfully today we can all be grateful to those apothecaries for hanging on to to this knowledge.

14 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

People study and learn in different ways, as has been pointed out many times, but seems to be more commonly accepted in 2018, and that is, if we assess someone or something in a way that only suits one criteria, we have set up a system where only those that can fit in will not fail.

There is no ‘one size fits all’, but there is some sort of commonality, and in my experience as an observant person, behaviours follow the same patterns no matter which religion, belief,

political inclination etc. That is, we are human beings, displaying the full array of human traits, good and bad, and when we try to baulk this, we soon fall foul of it in some way or other, as was amply displayed by Icarus! Who would have thought humans would have been able to fly then? How he was ridiculed for such a wild idea! Patterns of behaviour might possibly be seen as a fairly obvious statement to those that know, or trained academically in a certain area of knowledge, but they are of course topped by the strategists, who go on to manipulate human beings as well. Who are these strategists? Well often the ones in charge, often famously for leading armies into war, celebrated on plinths all over the world, mainly in fairly important places … even on our £5 notes.

In the past, how did the populace (that doesn’t have its nose in a library archive as it goes about its every day business, working hard) get their information about the world around them, other than from what is put in front of them by the media? Over the last century the newspapers have been partially ridiculed, but also relied upon to give us the in-depth details of the news, telling us we want to think or what we want to know about. Today’s equivalent is the mainstream media which tells us it is reporting the news, when in actual fact it’s reporting bits of the news, or more emotive news on the day when actual very relevant news to our lives is not being reported. For example, a topical favourite is the evils of plastic straws. They are very bad for the environment, but so was other bad news, which wasn't on the mainstream media, but instead captured on social media. We are very much in our own Turbulent Times.

So there we were in early 2018, ploughing our way through London streets looking for archives, libraries and museums, looking for more indepth evidence of Turbulent Times between 1918–1928. What we met were bombastically loud building sites on one hand, and shocking numbers of homelessness on the other, but with bright sparks of humanity in between as they

went about preparing our meals and changing our hotel rooms. My search was nothing sinister, just fabrics and clothing that would have been worn by the workers in 1918 and onwards, and in the museums I visited I found ..... not one jot.

I was hoping to note the differences of clothing worn between the haves and have nots at the time. It was conspicuous by its absence. I found plenty of new and lavishly expensive items for their time and still being produced through WWI.

100 years after the Armistice, how will we celebrate?

With banners, bunting and lines of militaria … Or shall we start unveiling what had been hidden away in archives and dusty corners?

But we knew that what we didn’t see wasn’t because it wasn’t there, it just wasn’t preserved, possibly to prevent people feeding their gut reactions. Maybe this was to paint a picture of past times being all shiny, beautiful? So 100 years after the Armistice, how will we celebrate? With banners, bunting and lines of militaria, with stands encouraging 14 year olds to join the cadets? Or shall we start unveiling what had been hidden away in archives and dusty corners, the places where the strategists didn’t think we’d ever make it to? 100 years on and the only difference between then and now is that more of the people are more educated whatever their background, and that we can partly thank the WEA for this, despite the struggle then! But we all know history repeats itself, because of those patterns of human behaviours, however we can add a little knowledge. So following our hearts and with the will of Icarus, eventually we can all aspire to a better life: by not forgetting history (no matter how much we're being distracted from our gut feelings) and the evidence.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 15

“Quickening The Smouldering Flame”: Music In The Tutorial Class Era William Gillies Whittaker (1876–1944)

Jude Murphy Today, when music education struggles with curricular and budgetar y pressures, it is fascinating to see the ways in which the WEA approached this subject in its early years. Its approach immediately after the First World War is particularly fascinating, as music might have been viewed as a surprising priority.

Two consecutive issues of The Highway from February and March 1918 featured articles on ‘A Tutorial Class in Music’ in which Newcastlebased William Gillies Whittaker described his endeavours to ‘conduct the first tutorial class in music organised by the WEA’.1

William Gillies Whittaker, image courtesy of University of Glasgow Library and the Pollitzer Family Trust

16 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

If Whittaker’s name sounds familiar, you may well have heard his arrangements of The Keel Row, Blow the Wind Southerly, or other selections from his once ubiquitous North Countrie Songs for Schools.2 Born in Newcastle’s Shieldfield to a not hugely affluent family (his father the illegitimate son of a farm labourer’s daughter, his mother an orphan from a respected Hexham family), Whittaker had from a young age played flute and piccolo and was a schoolboy organist at St George’s Presbyterian Church in Jesmond. At first encouraged by his parents to study the ‘useful’ disciplines of science and mathematics, by 1898 it was clear that his loyalties lay elsewhere and

he swapped to musicology at Armstrong College3, and remained there as a lecturer.

He went on to found the Newcastle Bach Choir in 1915; and throughout and beyond the Great War curated the Lit and Phil’s impressive music library. In 1930 he became Principal of the Scottish National Academy of Music.

Also a composer, folklorist, promoter of community singing and Northumbrian pipe music, he was a close friend of Gustav Holst, who valued and sought Whittaker’s opinions on The Planets, even while teasing him about his teetotal vegetarian regime.4 Whittaker was clearly a significant figure.

Though the Northern District WEA was not the first to deliver a music class (certainly Birmingham had held one in 1909) 5, it was an early proponent and, Whittaker indicated, the first to teach music via the organisation’s flagship tutorial classes. The WEA Newcastle Branch and Northern District Minutes6 show that Whittaker had led their classes in Music since at least 1914, and, starting on 21st January 1915, a course of four lectures held weekly at Burt Hall. The theme – fascinating within those first months of the war – was the modern music of Germany, Russia, France and Great Britain. The full course of lectures would cost 1 shilling or 6d for a single lecture – similar to the cost of a seat in the music hall 7 – and attendance was anticipated to be impressive as Newcastle Branch printed 500 tickets.

As the War neared its end, the Ministr y of Reconstruction’s Adult Education Committee gave over a short section of its 1919 Final Report – which clearly favoured a liberal arts education – to the provision of music in Newcastle WEA, which was aimed at ‘the production of intelligent and appreciative people who will take the same interest in music as intelligent readers take in literature’.8 This was advocated by Sir Henry Hadow, musician, leading light of the regional WEA, Principal of Armstrong College (and therefore Whittaker’s boss) and later the author of influential government reports which would shape educational policy up to and beyond WW2.

Whittaker was particularly traumatised by the quality of pianos available in many of the outlying districts: one required repair between every piece, “enough to upset the equanimity of even the most experienced sufferer”.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 17

By the time Whittaker wrote his Highway articles in February/March 1918, he had already taught three “sessions” (year-long modules of the threeyear programme), and so it can be assumed the tutorial class began in 1915. His account of the process is a rich insight into the tribulations of a music tutor of the time. For a start, he expected the “class would be rather different in personnel” from those involved in the usual WEA courses such as history or economics. The syllabus had to be developed from scratch and involved the surprisingly modern idea of consulting the students on what they wished to learn. However, unspecified “stern measures” had been required to convince participants they would need to do more than “pass a series of more or less pleasant musical evenings, at which a passive receptivity would be all that was required”.9 As there would be emphasis on musical structure (despite requests for more history and

aesthetics), rather atypically for the WEA it was agreed that a pre-entry exam in the rudiments of music would make the process of teaching topics such as musical keys, binary, ternary and sonata form much less arduous. Again, atypically for the Association, the time for group discussion was cut back after “two or three evenings with long, unproductive silences” as the group complained that “it was so difficult to talk about music”.10

problematic: arrangements of folksongs for the classical concert platform were clearly a form of expropriation, but he was an ardent promoter of local musicians such as singer Ernest Potts and Tom Clough, the ‘prince of [Northumbrian] pipers’.

Whittaker wrote fulsomely about Clough, a miner from Blyth who was the latest and greatest of several generations of piping Cloughs.13 When Clough was able to travel – usually during periods of unemployment or strikes – Whittaker and fellow folklorist Kennedy North would take him to London and even the continent to showcase his playing, and to broadcast it on radio.14 Whether or not Clough received recompense for these trips is unknown, though he routinely refused payment for teaching younger pipers.

Particularly fascinating from a modern perspective, when every mention of a song can be demonstrated via a weblink, are the practicalities involved in providing musical illustrations. Opportunities to attend relevant concerts in Newcastle were limited – Holst (even though he would occasionally perform here with Whittaker, notably at St James’s Park) viewed the town as a parochial musical backwater.11 Whittaker had to demonstrate at

the piano, to locate suitable vocalists to showcase opera and oratorio pieces (even a complete act from Gluck’s “Orpheus”) and to develop piano duet reductions of symphonic works: the focus was on Western ‘art music’ from 1650 to the contemporary era. Whittaker was particularly traumatised by the quality of pianos available in many of the outlying districts: one required repair between ever y piece, “enough to upset the equanimity of even the most experienced sufferer”. However, throughout the three years, students gained in confidence – some formed piano duet teams, others prepared violin solos and were able to share further illustrations, particularly with the help of the Bandmaster of the Northumberland Fusiliers, who loaned orchestral instruments for inspection.12 TWO PSALMS, first performance, St James' Park, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK – 18 July 1920 Gustav Holst – composer (on the right), William Gillies Whittaker – composer (on the left) James Oliver – conductor of the St Hilda Band, Edgar L. Bainton Photo: Newcastle Chronicle, Ltd Credit: Royal College of Music / ArenaPAL www.arenapal.com

18 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Throughout these years and into the 1920s, Whittaker was also among the august gentlemen and ladies of the so-called ‘first folk revival’. His relationship to vernacular music is

Whittaker took pride in the complexities of music created by Northumbrians outside of the classical milieu. In a sense this typified the patriotism and lack of class awareness of the first folk revival. He quoted a German musician, who commented: ““If your peasants can sing such songs, then the English must be the most musical race in the world.” My reply was: “Who told you that they weren’t?”15 Whether or not Whittaker ’s mediation was patriotic or paternalistic, it was well-intentioned.

The closing paragraph of his account of the tutorial class sums up his perception of the role of the WEA and adult education in promoting greater artistic engagement: “It is in the power of the WEA to exert a great influence on music in the future. The majority of so-called ‘unmusical people’ are only classed so because they do not know sufficient of the subject. Courses such as those possible under the auspices of the WEA are just what is required to quicken the smouldering flame.”16

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 19

Harry Barnes Goes to Parliament Brian Bennison

Harry Barnes had an early flirtation with politics when he was elected as a Newcastle City councillor for South Elswick in 1910, before standing down when he joined the Land Valuation Department of the Inland Revenue.

By 1918 he had become Assistant Food Commissioner for Northumberland & Durham and commanded the 2nd Volunteers Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers. Recognised as being ‘particularly interested in education work’1, he was on the Executive of the WEA, treasurer of the Joint Tutorial Committee of Armstrong College and a member of the Committee of the National Council of Adult Schools.

Newcastle’s city-wide two-member constituency of 1910 was re-configured into four single-seat divisions, one of which was East Newcastle. The general election of 1918 is remembered as ‘the coupon election’. A determination amongst most parliamentarians to see the war-time coalition government continue afterwards saw an agreement between the Liberals and Conser vative to specifically endorse those candidates favouring coalition. The letter from Prime Minster Lloyd George and Bonar Law, the Conservative leader, providing such candidates with their seal of approval was christened ‘the coalition coupon’.2

When the First World War ended Barnes embarked upon what he must have hoped would be a long and fruitful Parliamentar y career, but one that proved to be short and fitful.

In the eleven years from 1918 he was selected as a Parliamentary candidate seven times, stood in six elections but topped the poll only once.

In mid-October the Executive Committee of the Newcastle Liberal Association proposed that Major Harry Barnes be adopted as their candidate for the East Division. At a well-attended meeting, the recommendation was endorsed by a ‘large attendance unanimously and enthusiastically’.3 Barnes was acceptable to the coalition whips and would stand as a Coalition Liberal in the mainly working class division. The Labour candidate, William Hudson, was one of the two sitting members for the old Newcastle constituency and early press coverage made him the favourite, it being ‘thought that a Labour candidate should be returned as a matter of course’.4 Less predictable was the entry of a third

A few days after the signing of the Armistice a general election was called for the end of the year. As a consequence of the Representation of the People Act passed earlier in 1918 the franchise had been significantly, if not completely, extended.

In Newcastle the 40,000 or so people with a vote in 1910 swelled to almost 130,000 in 1918.

20 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Newcastle Journal December 13th 1918. Image copyright Trinity Mirror.

candidate who styled himself the ‘Discharged Ser vicemen’s Coalition Candidate’. John Thompson had volunteered at the age of 51 years and had seen active service from Mons to Aisna, before coming home to involve himself with the newly-formed National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers.

He had built up a public profile through this work. Although three candidates actually stood in the election, there was some unconvincing agitation via the press to get the mainstream parties to stand down and ensure a former serving soldier entered the House of Commons.

There were two other candidates who did not stand and whose absence may well have contributed to the election of the victor. The lack of a Conservative & Unionist candidate was

inevitable given that Barnes had the explicit support of the local Unionist party, although there seems to be an implicit acknowledgement that the demography of the seat would have been problematic. The other missing candidate, if he had gone through with his original intention to stand, would have thrown a fascinating element into the mix. In early October a meeting of the British Workers’ League was told that Lieutenant Colin Veitch had agreed to become their candidate in East Newcastle. Veitch was a footballing hero on Tyneside, who was also involved with the Peoples’ Theatre and the Clarion Choir. When rumours first circulated that Veitch was to put his name forward there was an expectation that he would stand a good chance of being elected. But a month after being officially selected Veitch withdrew from the race.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 21

Barnes' message to electors emphasised the need to help the many thousands of men and women left stranded by the ebbing tide of war and to get to grips with the shortcomings in health, housing and education.

Barnes’ campaign was essentially a call to back a coalition led by Lloyd George, the man who won the war and the best person to deal with the issues of post-war reconstruction. A long ‘message to electors’ emphasised the need to help ‘the many thousands of men and women left stranded by the ebbing tide of war’5 and to get to grips with the shortcomings in health, housing and education. This would involve ‘political, social and industrial reforms of a magnitude hitherto unknown’ and if it was not to be hopelessly checked a spirt of co-operation and comradeship must prevail’.6 Operating from five committee rooms, Barnes took his message to lunchtime gatherings at factory gates and evening meetings in local schools, and there were favourable comments about his ‘stirring addresses’ and ‘straightforward speeches that carried conviction’.7 The thrust of the Discharged Servicemen’s campaign was that it would be of great assistance to a future coalition if a discharged soldier or sailor was to sit in Parliament. Attempts were made to cast doubts on the strength of Barnes’ identity with servicemen and his war record. At one stage a hand bill circulated calling him a chocolate soldier. Barnes – appearing as Major Barnes in his election literature – was able to counter these charges by pointing out his role in building up the Volunteer Force in Northumberland, joining as a private, becoming County Adjutant and recruiting men and money to the tune of

22 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

about £10,000. He had also been to the Western front, albeit on an educational mission.

Such predictions of the outcome of the election as appeared in the press began to indicate a close contest and mention was made of Barnes’ energetic campaigning. Reports of the declaration of the result spoke of the crowd being ‘surprised’ and ’taken aback’ before cheering. 8 Barnes won with a comfortable majority of almost 3,500 and took 58% of the vote.

Barnes, according to a local newspaper, ‘speedily found for himself a distinct place in Parliament.9 But he courted controversy when, in less than a year in the House of Commons, he resigned the Coalition whip and declared himself a ‘free’ or ‘independent’ Liberal. By the 1922 general election Barnes was firmly on the radical wing of his party and although adopted as the Official Liberal candidate, found himself up against Gilbert Stone standing as National Liberal, who with no Unionist opponent was able to call upon Tory help with the organisation of his campaign. The Labour Party had chosen J N Bell, Secretary of the National Amalgamated Union of Labour. Bell took the seat by majority of over 3000 with 43% of the vote.

Barnes was one vote short of 7000 with 30% of the poll, whilst Stone had 27%. Thus ended Barnes’ parliamentary career, which in hindsight was perhaps most notable for his appointment of Basil Bunting as his secretary.

Reading Rooms What were they?

Even before the nineteenth century, but with rapid expansion from the 1840s onwards, reading rooms were sources of local informal education that existed in Miners’ and Mechanics’ Institutes, Working Men’s Clubs, convalescent homes, welfare halls and settlement houses.

They could house anything from a handful of books to thousands of volumes, periodicals and

newspapers. Some sat alongside billiards tables in attractive rooms; others were more austere.

Plan of Lanchester Memorial Reading Room, 1923, RD/La 143/1756.

Reproduced by permission of the owner of the document and Durham County Record Office.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 23

Some provided sources of literature, science and philosophy to stretch the intellect. Others mainly provided newspapers so that the unemployed could search the Situations Vacant pages. Some even glued together the sports pages of these

newspapers to discourage gambling! All tell the story of an era when reading material was hard to come by, and the ways in which ordinary people were able to access what they could.

Former Thomas Wilson Reading Room, Low Fell High Street

Co-op reading room at Long Eaton, Derbyshire, 1928

Beadnell Fishermen’s Hut also known as ‘the reading room’.

Courtesy of www.citizan.org.uk

A reading room in a working men’s club (location unspecified), B T Hall, ‘Our Sixty Years’ (the 1922 history of the CIU)

24 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

The spaces in which these reading rooms were housed varied. There were rooms in Working Men’s Clubs or above Cooperative stores. There were quite grand purpose-built structures, like Thomas Wilson’s reading room on Gateshead’s

Low Fell High Street (now a bistro). At the other end of the scale, there were tiny multi-purpose buildings, for example, a fisherman’s hut in Beadnell housing books and heated discussions.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 25

Who used them, and why?

Reading rooms were used by a wide cross-section of the communities in which they were situated, with many workingclass readers.

Group of Murton Veterans in the reading room at Murton Rest Home, 14th July 1939. Box 335. DA455.

Reproduced courtesy of Beamish People’s Collection.

The unemployed used reading room newspapers to seek work. And some reading rooms were housed in buildings designed specifically for the unemployed.

Central Library New Bridge Street, Newcastle upon Tyne. Thompson and Lee c.1910.

Image from Newcastle Libraries’ Flickr, public domain, 050143

Jack Lawson wrote about his youthful reading materials, which helped him move from coal hewer to Labour politician and eventually a

peerage. His early education was gleaned from Boldon Miners’ Institute [‘nothing more than two pit-houses knocked into one]:

Didn’t I follow the literary trail, once I found it! Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian, I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade; George Eliot; the Brontës; later on, Hardy; Hugo; Dumas, and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally.

I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson’s ‘Seasons’, in Stead’s ‘Penny Poets’.

One was developed in 1925 by Blyth local Council and the NUWCM (National Unemployed Workers’ Committee Movement) but the Blyth News and Ashington Post of 31 December 1925 reported that a ban on political propaganda had led to a “Hitch Concerning Opening: Council Decline to Part With Keys. … Matters at Deadlock Stage.”

Until it was guaranteed, in February 1926, that the reading matter available was non-partisan, the centre would not be opened.

For a long period of time, users of reading rooms were mostly male. Prior to 1914, women needed two sponsors to join local libraries, but the absence of men during the First World War led to this requirement being dropped. This worked in favour of children too, as the mother’s signature alone was now considered sufficient guarantee.

Club reading rooms weren’t always dedicated to mutual improvement!

This Newbiggin club was investigated by the police, who found plenty of evidence that alcohol was being ser ved on the premises, but the reading room contained not one single book!

J Lawson, A Man’s Life, 1932, pp77-78 John James ('Jack') Lawson, 1st Baron Lawson, by Bassano Ltd, bromide print, 1928, NPG x85156 ©National Portrait Gallery, London, permission via NPG’s creative commons license.

26 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

The Morpeth Herald, 23 January 1920.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 27

Where were the Reading Rooms?

Reading rooms ranged from large town-centre Mechanics’ Institutes to tiny huts in rural outposts.

This map gives an indication of the diverse locations of reading rooms we’ve discovered so far. If you visit our Historypin project page: https://www.historypin.org /en/person/90880#projects you’ll be able to click on each pin to learn more about each venue and its history.

Our database is being regularly updated and we’re hoping to develop as comprehensive and detailed a list as possible showing all the places where ordinary people could access reading material at a time when it was in short supply.

Image courtesy of The People’s Collection, Beamish Museum, NEG27198

Ovingham Reading Room, decorated for the Silver Jubilee of King George V, 1935. The two gentlemen in front of the building are Henry Dixon (left), landlord of Adam & Eve pub across the river, and Eddie Marshall.

(Below) Railway Institute, Shildon, County Durham, 1913. First Railway Institute in the world, built in 1833 and housed a Library.

Take a closer look at our histor ypin collection and map – see web links above.

Do you know of any reading rooms which we’ve missed?

Do you h a v e i m a g e s o r further details we could add to our descriptions?

To tell us more, please add details to our survey by using the QR code or this link: https://www.surveymonkey .co.uk/r/9ZNHCD9

Image courtesy of National Railway Museum

28 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 29

Then, now and in the future Now you can access facts, images, sounds and literature via a swipe on a smartphone, are reading rooms irrelevant?

Some items can only be accessed via special licences, held by libraries and institutes, and books which might be outrageously expensive to purchase (even in e-reader form) can be borrowed for free. And there are significant social aspects – reading rooms are spaces for

people to come together and discuss ideas, and this is an aspect we’ll highlight through our project’s pop-up reading room events and exhibitions – see: https://weaturbulentttimes.wordpress.com for our forthcoming programme.

Late 18th century – Sunday schools develop, many promoted by Robert Raikes. Early attempt to provide free education to the poor, teaching reading to working children for whom Sunday was the only day off.

1840s onwards – Reading Rooms – independent or in working men’s clubs, miners’ and mechanics’ institutes, or Co-operative buidings – proliferate alongside greater industrialisation and (particularly after the 1880 Education Act) more widespread literacy.

1850 – Public Libraries Act. 1855 – Abolition of stamp duty on newspapers allows prices to be slashed.

Image © University library of Heidelberg, Germany

c300BC – c600AD – Libraries at Bergama and Alexandria, Repositories, not for common access. c700 – Lindisfarne Gospels and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People – Illuminated manuscripts were mostly for the clergy but Biblical excerpts would be read out to ordinar y churchgoers.

Copies produced in monastery scriptoria.

1870 – “Forster” Education Act sets the framework for universal primary education in England and Wales.

1918-1939 – “Fisher” Education Act raises school leaving age to fourteen, while the 1920s and 30s sees further proliferation of reading rooms particularly as spaces where the unemployed can gather to seek work, warmth and recreation.

1935 – Penguin books founded. Among many paperback publishers to democratise book-buying.

c1440 – Gutenberg develops the printing press, introduced to Britain by William Caxton in 1476, thus widening distribution.

1945 onwards – Increased levels of state education and public library provision.

c16th century onwards – Broadside ballads are accessible source of songs, stories, news and opinion.

1971-1989 – 1971 First email ever sent and Project Gutenberg begins the process of digitising books, while 1989 saw the launch of the World Wide Web.

c17th century onwards – newspapers come into being.

1989-present – Wikipedia launched 2001, Kindle launched 2007, iPad in 2010. Huge growth in online provision of data, literature and opinion, and development of engaging, multimedia ways of presenting this information.

c18th century onwards – some reading rooms start to disseminate religious and other books; some shepherds leave books for one another in wall nooks along droving routes. Shoemakers read newspapers to each other in workshops.

Present – Workplaces, clubs, hotels, bars and restaurants feature informal book-swap shelves.

The future? – Where do we go from here?

30 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 31

The WEA after WW1 The Influence on Women and Children Marjory Winnie In 1924, the retiring President of the WEA, addressing National Conference, stated, “Universal education of a high standard is necessary to make democracy real”.1 Apart from the savage upheaval in human terms, the First World War had a serious impact on WEA branches. Lack of money seriously curtailed tutorial class work. Grant-earning classes flourished and branches provided public lectures, short courses, socials, garden parties and gardening lectures, study groups and excursions, education conferences and drama productions.

J.G. Trevena, the WEA Northern District Secretary, realised the potential of one-year classes. He stated, “It would seem that in the future there will be a great demand for this kind of class.

These classes suit women’s needs best and also the needs of those who have not the time for the necessary reading so indispensable to the tutorial classes”.2 An earlier WEA pamphlet (1912) stated that of all the special efforts made by WEA, none was more important than the special effort taken on behalf of women, who should be encouraged to look beyond their own immediate sphere. It declared, “A nation will never rise much above the level of its women”.3

32 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Women’s sections were considered desirable because they could take special account of their needs. It was decided that part of WEA committees should comprise women members.

It was recognised that among working women there was a real hunger for knowledge and a fuller life. Women and men needed to stand together to fight ignorance and injustice.

Women’s sections should always be responsible to branches and maintain branch solidarity.

Special funds were raised by university women to support women students in the form of books and summer school scholarships. These included courses in Literature, Histor y, Economics, Philosophy, Psychology and Child Studies. University tutorial classes received some state assistance and were therefore open to inspection by the board of Education. Classes in dressmaking, needlework, home science and small study circles for women were also provided.

WEA funds suffered after the War as education became a victim of inflation and industrial depression. Northumberland and Durham Miners’ Associations could no longer afford to give grants to WEA and other members subscribed at old pre-war rates. By the end of 1920, the financial situation improved when grants came in from Durham County Council and Durham C.I.U. Now grants became the

main source of income and voluntar y contributions declined.

The objective of the second Constitution of the District, adopted in 1916, was: “To stimulate and to satisfy the demand of working men and women for education” and “generally to assist the development of a national system of education”. 4 The aim was to have real influence on government and people. It is generally acknowledged that the WEA had an influence on the passing of the 1918 Education Act (which became known as the Fisher Act). This Act raised the school leaving age to 14 and tertiary education was expanded.

Other features of the Act include the provision of ancillary services (medical inspections, nursery schools, centres for special needs pupils).

It was recognised that the state had a responsibility towards the children who had contributed to the war effort. 600,000 children had been withdrawn prematurely from education to work in mines, munition factories etc. As 300,000 children aged 12-14 years were employed, the Act proposed to allow them to work on Saturdays only. Physical problems resulting from children working included curvature of the spine, diminished height and weight and also cardiac issues.

In 1924 the final draft of the Children’s Charter for Great Britain was produced by The National Council of Women and The Save the Children Fund. The Charter is based on the principle that every child is born with the inalienable right to have the opportunity of full physical, mental and

spiritual development. If parents were unable to provide these opportunities, the community is bound to fulfil them.

The provisions of the Act were pre-natal care, care of mothers and children up to school age, children of school age, children in employment, delinquent children, children’s state departments, international conferences.

In 1923 the Declaration of Geneva stated that men and women of all nations, recognising that mankind owes to the Child the best that it has to give, declare and accept it as their duty that, beyond above all considerations of race, nationality or creed: 1. The CHILD must be given the means requisite for its normal development, both materially and spiritually.

2. The CHILD that is hungry must be fed; the child that is sick must be helped; the delinquent child must be reclaimed; and the orphan and the waif must be sheltered and succoured.

3. The CHILD must be the first to receive relief in time of distress.

4. The Child must be put in a position to earn a livelihood and must be protected against every form of exploitation.

5. The CHILD must be brought up in the consciousness that its talents must be devoted to the service of its fellowmen.

WEA Summer School, Durham 1921, photo courtesy of Tyne and Wear Archives

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 33

On April 30 1926 lockout notices were posted outside the collieries demanding an acceptance of a cut in wages and a longer working day and 1 million miners who were already struggling to live refused to accept the owners' demands and were locked out. A General Strike was called by the TUC in support of the miners beginning 3 May but was called off on 12 May, the Durham miners were out for a further 6 months. It was a long, hard and very bitter dispute but the strike was solid and by November less than 5% had returned to work. It stayed vivid in the collective memory of the Durham miners and their families for generations to come.

1926 Women Kath Connolly

As a WEA member from Durham and knowing of our close connections with the Durham Miners' Association any study of the 1920s would lead me inevitably to look at the Lockout of 1926 and in particular to the role of two women activists from Durham, Bella Jolley (Stanley) and Annie Errington (Sacriston) Garside in his histor y of the DMA (Durham Miners Association) tells of the long recognition of the importance of education for the benefit of the miners and their families in Durham. The value of education is displayed prominently on their lodge banners.

Photo: Kath Connolly

The greatest challenge to the women of the coalfield was trying to feed, clothe and care for their families over these long months.

34 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

The greatest challenge to the women of the coalfield Photo: Kath Connolly was tr ying to feed, clothe and care for their families over these long months. In 1928 Ramsay MacDonald wrote to a Seaham Councillor, 'we These things shall be: a loftier race do not know how these splendid women in the Than e'er the world hath known shall rise coalfields have been managing to keep their With flame of freedom in their souls houses together during the last 4 or 5 years, we And light of knowledge in their eyes. stand paralysed in front of their heroism’.2 (Co-op and Methodist hymn) The task of raising money to feed the families The Durham miners had helped finance the was taken up by the Labour Women’s Committee work of the infant WEA and worked in close cofor the Relief of Miners Wives and Children led operation with Durham County Council in

by Marion Phillips, the Chief Women’s Officer of promoting the development of adult education the Labour Party. Over the course of the lock out facilities in the colliery villages. A review of WEA they raised £310,000 a modern-day equivalent in the 1920's concluded the miners were the in excess of £17.9 million, 3 a remarkable backbone of the movement both as students achievement at a time of considerable hardship (one third of tutorial class students) and as with so many people unemployed, on short time County Councillors in helping to finance the and on low wages. This was done in all sorts of WEA.1 And yet there is little reference to their ways: regular weekly collections at factory gates, struggle in the HIghway editions of 1926, this trade union and church appeals flag days, socials, article is something of an attempt to redress this: garden bazaars, choirs, concerts, the sale of

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 35

miners' lamps and children's collecting cards.4 The children came up with ingenious ways of money raising; ‘humble backyards turned into concert rooms’.5

opted onto Durham County Council's Education Committee, a position she held for 50 years.

In the 20s most working class women left school at 14 with only a very elementary education. Still denied the vote, they were nevertheless encouraged by organisations such as the Women's Labour League (later known as Labour Women's Sections) and Women’s Cooperative Guild to stand for election to the local School Boards and as Poor Law Guardians.

There was a belief that as working class women, and knowing of the hardships, they would treat the poor as brothers and sisters not as paupers and their work was like housekeeping for a very big difficult family.8

There were 346 Women’s Relief Committees across Britain (116 in Durham) trying to mitigate the worst distress, distributing food and donated clothes. This entry to a children's competition in the Labour Woman demonstrates the impact that opposition to the miners' struggle for a fair day's pay had on the whole community, even the children.

Bill and Bella Jolley on their wedding day

Children’s competition in Labour Woman.

The winner from Northumberland

An interview carried out by Maureen Callcott with Bella Jolley (1970), illustrates the life of a Labour activist in the 20s. Like so many activists she was heavily involved in all of the various parts of the Labour Movement. She joined the very active Stanley ILP after hearing Keir Hardie speak following the Stanley Pit Disaster of 1909.

She and her husband Bill had been taught to read and write by the WEA and recognising the great value of education they went on to more advanced studies in Philip Brown's WEA University Tutorial Class.

The Jolleys attended Summer Schools at Hatfield College, Durham and were great friends of WEA tutor Dainton. Bella was a member of the Cooperative Women's Guild, Labour Women’s Section, elected as a school governor and Poor Law Guardian and appointed a magistrate. Before her election as a County Councillor she was co-

36 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

remembers her as a very warm but formidable woman who would not take no for an answer.

Bella had earned the trust of her community and with the necessary organisational skills she was centrally involved in the organisation and distribution of food, clothing and other resources in Stanley during 1926. The Labour Women's Advisory Council was already running the child welfare centres across the county so they were able to give the children free milk and food as well as helping expectant mothers. 6 Marion Phillips tells us that poverty amongst the miners' families was pitiful.7 Two days each week Women's Section secretaries like Bella would go by bus to the Miners Hall in Durham and bring back food and clothing which had been donated from across the country. She tells us that she would put three women's coats on and carried more on her shoulders. "We cadged everything and someone said there's nee baby clothes left in Stanley, Mrs Jolley's got them all." As a Poor Law Guardian she would sit every day to assess the amount of relief due to the women and children, "just in -kind mind, no money". Her grandson Bob Harrison fondly

Education in these organisations was always seen as essential if working class people were to play a part in improving the lives of their families and communities.

Education in these organisations was always seen as essential if working class people were to play a part in improving the lives of their families

and communities. The WEA ethos was to encourage its learners to question and challenge, their debates would lead to a greater understanding of the political and economic world they were living in. The Co-operative Movement too placed great emphasis on their education programme; the Jubilee publication of Annfield Plain Industrial Co-operative Society, the first to affiliate to the WEA, tells us that the men (and women) who were involved in Cooperation had a strong belief in education for their class and they also 'realised education is the natural ally to co-operation'.9 Scholarships were offered so that working class women could attend WEA summer schools at the University and residential summer schools for Labour Women at Cober Hill, near Scarborough. Tests for the award of scholarships to the latter were held in the Miner's hall at Redhills . Subjects were challenging and often far removed from their own domestic lives; Labour's Foreign Policy, Colonial Policy, the general political situation and of course the general reading of their monthly magazine 'Labour Woman'. In 1928 the resolutions presented to the Durham Advisor y Annual Conference of Labour Women demonstrated an understanding of the wider political situation as well as issues that directly impacted on their own lives in Durham; the employment of child labour in India, the evils of unemployment and an ongoing campaign which challenged the practice of forcing married women teachers out of employment.

Women like Lisbeth Simm, Hilda Trevena, Ethel Williams had always played an important role in North East WEA but they had decades to wait until women were more fairly represented on Durham County Council. Despite their political education and obvious ability in organisation, electioneering and campaigning, with 4000 members across the county in 126 Labour Women's Sections, by the Second World War there were still only two women Labour County Councillors.10

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 37

Annie Errington – Russia 1926 Kath Connolly Another Durham woman actively involved in the Miners' Wives and Children Relief Committee was Annie Errington, when we consider the limited travel experience of a miner's wife from Durham – perhaps the occasional trip into Newcastle or Durham City, the story of her visit to Russia is even more remarkable.

On August 27 1926 Annie Errington the twenty – two year old Labour activist from Sacriston and the Durham Labour Women’s Advisory nominee, left London for Russia as part of a 19 strong delegation of Labour women. Annie had played a prominent role in the emerging Durham Advisory Committee; she was elected Treasurer of this county wide organisation of Labour

women in 1926 and became President in 1927. As a miner's wife as well as a member of the Chester-le Street Board of Guardians she would have had an extensive knowledge of the hardships being endured in Durham.

The deputation to Russia was part of the mammoth effort to raise money for the Relief of Miners Wives and Children (see article 1926 Women).

The Labour women were all miners’ wives: Right Mrs Chester (Yorkshire), Mrs Johnson (Northumbrland), Mrs Eddishaw (Notts), Dr Marion Phillips, Mr A.J. Cook, Mrs A.J.Cook, Mrs Errington (Durham), Mrs Green (S.Wales). Mr Cook and Dr Phillips saw them off.

Leaving London for Russia August 27,1926, returning October 16,1926

38 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

As guests of the Russian trade unions their aim was to explain the conditions in the mining areas, raising awareness of the hardships being endured because of the Lockout and give thanks for the help that Russian workers had already sent to the British miners.

This was also an opportunity to learn something of the life and conditions of ordinary Russians.

Travelling by train in the former Czarina's car, their journey took them thousands of miles across this huge country from Leningrad in the north through the Caucasus to Georgia and Titlus and for the most part they slept in the train carriage throughout their journey. (In photo back Mrs Johnson Northumberland, in front of her Mrs Errington) The party held lunchtime meetings in the factories and we are told they had an enthusiastic welcome

The deputation to Russia was part of the mammoth effort to raise money for the Relief of Miners' Wives and Children. wherever they went; 10,000 turned out for them in Moscow, there was much cheering and support for the women. Reports in Labour Woman tell us the women were most surprised by the extensive knowledge that the ordinary worker had of the mining crisis and their eagerness to get first-hand accounts from the women's delegation. ‘Contrar y to the British Press, Russian workers were not coerced into giving to the British miners, 'they were with them heart and soul in their great struggle’. (Mrs Green, Abertillery, S Wales)1 On her return Annie shared her experience with local groups and Labour Party branches across the North East who were eager to hear first- hand of her impressions of post-revolutionary Russia. The photograph of this women's delegation to Russia is now displayed, rightfully, amongst the men in the Committee Room at Redhills.

On the steps of the railway carriage

Post script Seventy years later while hosting Russian students from our twin town Kostroma my aunty Lily Fyfe told them how they were so grateful for the help the mining families had in 1926; she remembered how as a child from a mining family, she had walked from South Pelaw to Red Rose School, Chester le Street and had been given a pair of Russian boots.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 39

The Times of 15th February 1919 reported a WES meeting that day at Caxton Hall 4, and a Provisional Council Meeting was held at 46 Dover Street in London on Tuesday 4th March 1919. The Provisional Council attendees included Lady Katharine Parsons, Lady Shelley Rolls, Margaret Dorothea Rowbotham (of the innovative all-female Tongland works), and Miss (later Dame) Caroline Haslett, who would be the first Secretary of WES.5 Other than debating the appointment of Council officers, the most significant discussion considered ‘qualifications … necessary for membership … it was more or less impossible at the present moment to make any definitive statement.’ This would prove a thorny issue down the years, with the Society vacillating, in step with societal pressures, between membership (a) for only the fully qualified and (b) open to anyone working in the engineering sector. Of course, this issue tended to divide women at least partly by social class.

The First Year of the Women’s Engineering Society: a snapshot through a North East Lens Jude Murphy & Shiva Dowlatshahi Not long after the Armistice, there was a new scramble to mobilisation as women came to realise that their engineering and mechanical jobs – indispensable during wartime – would soon evaporate. In 1915, the Munitions of War Act encouraged the replacement of male factory workers with female ‘dilutees’ (a term reflecting perceptions of lower skills), but it was passed only with a government promise to the Trades Unions that male jobs would be reinstated when men returned from the Front. The Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act (1919) would ensure that this promise was honoured.

The Woman Engineer: Vol.1 no.7 Jun 1921 – Parsons turbine

It has been a strange perversion of woman’s sphere – to make them work at producing the implements of war and destruction and to deny them the privilege of fashioning the munitions of peace.

Lady Katharine Parsons1

40 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Although several women’s organisations (such as the Women’s Service Bureau) lobbied against the Act, it was evident that female engineers and mechanics who had developed their skills during the war would ideally need their own association – the Women’s Engineering Society (WES). In the early vanguard of this movement were Rachel Parsons and her mother Lady Katharine – respectively the first and second Presidents of the Society.

Lady Katharine Parsons (1859–1933), wife of North East-based engineering giant Sir Charles Parsons, was an avid campaigner for women’s suffrage and the first female member of the North East Coast Institution of Engineers and

The Woman Engineer: Vol.1 no.5 Dec 1920 – Tyneside foundry

Shipbuilders. Much of her work for WES was undertaken from her family homes at 6 Windsor Terrace, Newcastle, and Ray Demesne, Kirkwhelpington. Rachel Parsons (1885–1956) was encouraged by her mother to become an engineer, and in 1910 she was the first of three women to study Mechanical Sciences at Cambridge. In 1914 she became a director of C A Parsons in Newcastle, overseeing an increasingly female workforce which specialised in searchlight equipment. Family firm or not, this was a major achievement at the time, and from 1915 the Ministr y of Munitions employed her to train women workers.2 By 5th December 1918, Rachel was circulating a letter which declared she was Honorary Secretary of a Special Committee (Engineering) of the National Council for Women. Membership was offered at 1/-, with the aims of working towards ‘the admission of women into all suitable Institutes of Engineers … equal opportunities with men to all technical schools … [and] utilising their skill in all reconstruction work.”3

By May 19th 1919, an application to the Board of Trade was in place for a Licence to register the Women’s Engineering Society with limited liability.6 Locally, the Shields Daily News of 31st March 1919 noted that Lady Katharine Parsons of WES (North East Branch) would be at home at 6 Windsor Terrace to meet women interested in engineering and allied trades.7 In a letter to Miss Haslett, Lady Katharine declared: I had quite a busy afternoon on Wednesday …

About 20 people and all the Press reps: they were a mixed lot of people most of them poor type wanting jobs; but 2 or 3 better educated who will most likely join. They bought the leaflets and talked for ever. … “I was busy from 2 to 6 and am doing it every Wednesday.”8 Her tone implies that she favoured lobbying mostly on behalf of more educated engineers.

This resigned attitude to the fate of the ordinary factory hand is borne out in a previous letter.

Though apparently sympathetic, she had no

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 41

women could become astonishingly so successful, it would be interesting to know what degree of skill they would reach if given a full engineering apprenticeship.’17

It has been a strange perversion of woman’s sphere – to make them work at producing the implements of war and destruction and to deny them the privilege of fashioning the munitions of peace. suggestions for ‘my new parlourmaid at Windsor Terrace [who] was in munitions for 3 years and loved it. She said it was such a free life after service.’9 Further correspondence with Miss Haslett shows Lady Katharine shocked at the lack of awards given to ‘the girls’ in the Drawing Office at Parsons Works.10 Apparently only one had been given to a female employee in 1918, and Miss Haslett noted that in her previous role at the Ministry of Labour ‘female tracers were placed in the same categor y as regards Awards as Canteen Workers.’11 If even the family firm was slow to recognise female achievements, this was going to be an uphill struggle. The Restoration Bill went through its various Committee stages, albeit with some revisions and concessions. Miss Haslett noted ‘It seems a great difficulty now to get new members. Most of the people who come to the office now say they feel that engineering for women is practically hopeless and have in most cases decided to take up some other sort of work.’12 Nevertheless, there were glimmers of hope from the Loughborough Training College and the Tongland factor y, and a 1920 list of members of the Newcastle and District branch

42 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Regardless of more philosophical questions, the Restoration Bill gained Royal Assent on 15th August 1919. WES carried on resolutely, and in December 1919 published the first issue of its quarterly journal The Woman Engineer, price 3d, and with an optional subscription for the following year of 1/2d including postage.18 Predictably, given the family’s influence, early issues were rich in North Eastern material such as Lady Parsons’ December 1920 article about ‘An Old Tyneside Foundry’, and many advertisements for the likes of Parsons Marine Ltd.

of WES suggests a not entirely forlorn situation.

There were twenty 1/- (fully subscribing) members – four from Blackhill in Co Durham, seven from Gateshead, three from Ryton, two from Sunderland, and one each from South Shields, Prudhoe, Bensham and Cramlington.13 On 9th July 1919, Lady Katharine gave a highprofile address, Women’s Work in Engineering and Shipbuilding During the War, to the NorthEast Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders. After emphasising the dangers and hardships experienced by munitions workers, including explosions and working within prime air raid targets, she stated that in 1918, 90% of munitions workers were women. Far from being capable of only repetitious work, many were setting and grinding their own tools, designing repairs to guns, setting up jobs from drawings and calculating safety parameters using logarithms and slide rules.14 Not only this, women had proven to be as capable as their male counterparts with much briefer training: It was a remarkable admission, that women with their short experience should be deemed capable of assisting employees in the difficult task of speeding up production in their own special profession.15

Credit: Vol.1 no.1 Dec 1919 – WES aims.

She added, ‘a short intensive training will turn out a sufficiency of useful workers … a prolonged apprenticeship not being necessary, at any rate for women whose working years will generally be much shorter than those of men.’16 Whether this was her belief or a political compromise is uncertain. However, in a written response to Lady Katharine’s speech, James Driver of the Loughborough Technical School commented ‘if after a few months training, some

By 1925, there was a parting of the ways between WES and Lady Parsons, but this is to take us beyond the Society ’s inception year and must await inclusion in another article. Suffice it to say that for the first few years after the War, some of the strongest advocates for female engineers hailed from the North East: sadly, unless we can find some class notes from an Industrial History class of the time, we can probably only speculate whether or not this was ever discussed within the WEA.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 43

90 Years On Chris Gardiner Maude lived in Byker in twenty six Her mother died young and left five kids So Dad did the cooking after work on the ships A hard life for all with a bed to share In Albion Row, Violet’s home life was hard With the coalhouse and toilet in the back yard She’d go out with a candle, her hand round the flame But the bitter east wind made her life dark again In twenty six we needed to fight Preserving our dignity and rights We struggled along in the streets of Tyneside But never lost sight of our pride Lucy lived in Park Lane, down in Gateshead A family of seven, living in one room Head to toe, sleeping in a desk bed She got married, no place of her own In twenty six we needed to fight...

Preserving our dignity and rights We struggled along in the streets of Tyneside But never lost sight of our pride I, Daniel Blake, not a scrounger or thief I paid my dues, never a penny short I don’t tug the forelock, I’m a man not a dog Just what do you want me to do?

Ninety years on, we need to fight...

Preserving our dignity and rights We struggle along in the streets of Tyneside And I, Daniel Blake showed the truth of it all

44 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

In a Flap!

Attitudes to young women workers in the early 20th century Liz O’Donnell The word ‘flapper’, usually associated with the boldly unconventional ‘bright young things’ of the ‘Roaring 20s’, was applied to much younger women before the Great War. The way its meaning changed through the first quarter of the twentieth century, as seen in local newspapers, reveals much about attitudes to young, independent women at a time of incursions into previously male-only strongholds.

Flappers had emerged in popular culture as the younger sisters of the ‘New Woman’ of the late 19th century and a later cartoon suggests that the young bird definition was widely accepted. 4

The most convincing theory regarding its origins is that it came from a hunting term, flappers being young wild ducks which had not yet learnt to fly properly.1 In 1905, an article portrayed flappers as girls not old enough to put up their hair, but eager to enter society, warning against premature exposure to adult society, which would ruin their complexions and rob them of their youth.2 A tongue-in-cheek advertisement from 1914 portrays them as pert but essentially innocent: The father of a young lady, age 15 – a typical ‘Flapper ’ – with all the self-assurance of a woman of 30, would be grateful for the recommendation of a seminary (not a convent) where she might be placed for a year or two with the object of taming her. It is not education she requires, she has too much of that already.3

Daily Mirror 29 August 1916. Copyright Trinity Mirror.

Created courtesy of the British Library Board.

The outbreak of war disrupted established gender norms, generating anxiety about the impact on young women’s morals. The flapper as a mischievous and reckless flirt became an

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 45

father was unknown, so she put the baby out to nurse and returned to office work, where she was again ‘openly flirting with a married man.’

Such girls only joined the union to get their war bonuses, which they spent on chocolates, blouses and going to the pictures.

Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 31 July 1915. Copyright Johnston Press. Created courtesy of the British Library Board.

established stage-type and its use extended to single females in their late teens and early twenties. In a typical ‘flapper joke’, ‘Anything for a Change’, a naval officer wonders why his girlfriend ‘chucked’ her previous boyfriend.

‘Flapper’s’ reply underlines her frivolity: ‘Change of colour. I’m sick of khaki!’5 More derogatory was the association with loose and predatory behaviour, bluntly stated in a lecture about combatting venereal disease in the Durham Miners’ Hall. The flapper was ‘[o]ne of the greatest national dangers of today’, declared the lecturer, urging the formation of women patrols to address the problem.6 Indeed, the earliest use of female ‘police officers’ was to patrol parks and dark alleys near to army camps.

The unease provoked by the invasion by young women into previously exclusively male employment during the war was often disguised as humour. In ‘Overcoming the Scent’, a lifetime non-smoker was now ‘puffing away at a strong cigar ’ because the smell of scent used by flappers in his office ‘made him sick’, whereas smoking ‘merely gave him a headache.’7 As war

46 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

drew to a close, an editorial in the Shields Daily News, ‘The Flapper’s Future’, accused them of behaving as though they were ‘in a rest home instead of engaged on work with a grimness that war demands’. Poor time-keepers who expected the ‘widest liberty’ in tea-making, flappers were instructed to banish ‘love epistles and stupid talk’ from office hours or they would find no place in the ‘stern competition’ sure to follow war.8 Even The Cooperative News carried an article, ‘The Problem of the “Flapper”’, in February 1918, accusing young female employees of a ‘mania for pleasure and excitement [which] outweighs ever y other feeling… bounded by selfindulgence.’9 ‘Clad in the very height of silly fashion, low-necked blouses, skirts just reaching below the knees – barely decent for growing girls of 16 or 17 – lockets and chains, bangles, wristlet watches, and other…utterly worthless jewellery’, they showed no interest in serious matters – even the daughters of life-long cooperators! Their conversation was coarse and morality non-existent; a girl of 17 who had a baby could not claim child support because the

The following week, a correspondent hit back, defending hard-working girls who would justifiably feel a deep sense of injustice at the opinions expressed.10 After all, these ‘flappers’ were little more than children who, with the ‘exuberance of…youthful spirits’, were only showing their pretty necks and ankles in ‘the springtime of life.’ Their reasons for joining the union were unimportant because membership would begin their trade union education. Purity and virtue was not a strictly female characteristic but a ‘matter of temperament and character rather than sex.’ ‘We must come down off that rocky pedestal, both as regards the men and the girls,’ the letter concluded, ‘if the vote is to be of any use to us.’

‘Clad in the very height of silly fashion, lownecked blouses, skirts just reaching below the knees... lockets and chains, bangles, wristlet watches, and other... utterly worthless jewellery.’

The end of the war saw letters in the press attacking flappers for taking clerical jobs from unemployed men when they ought to be at home learning to be good wives and mothers. 11 ‘Now what I should like to know’, retorted ‘MT’, ‘ is how would England have fared during these last few years, had it not been for these “flappers”…doing men’s work?’ while ‘Flapper’ remarked, ‘Not all girls can stay at home. I am

one of a family of 8, and my 3 brothers are in the army. Does he expect my mother to keep 5 grown-up girls at home, doing nothing useful?’12 Describing them as flappers diminished the crucial role played by women workers during the war.

Accordingly, a ‘furious shaking of powder puffs and fierce brandishing of curling tongs’ was reported in the civil service, in reaction to a June 1919 decree that time must no longer be wasted by flappers managing their hair or manicuring, and the fact that ‘the cheery rattle of the tea-cup is no longer heard in Government places where women work.’13 A combination of ridicule and outrage against the exploits of flappers persisted into ‘their’ decade – the 1920s. Describing them as ‘frivolous, scantily-clad, jazzing… to whom a dance or a new hat was of more importance than the fate of nations’, a lecturer at the Institute of Hygiene in London blamed them for depriving the country of its best potential mothers.14 A list of ten ‘Don’ts for Flappers’, included avoiding dance halls ‘where “dipping” and other low-class antics are tolerated’, and remembering that make-up and daring frocks were ‘the hall-marks of the minx’.15 In 1928 male and female franchise was equalised for the first time and the 1929 election became known as the ‘Flapper Election.’ Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson, addressing the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries, said she was not surprised that so many of her male colleagues were afraid of the ‘flapper vote’ because everyone knew that their working life was really run by their secretaries!16 The use of the term ‘flapper’, then, altered in response to the increased visibility of young women in the public sphere. Seen as a threat to conventional society, especially after the outbreak of war, flappers became associated with irresponsibility and loose morals. Applying the word to young working women allowed critics to undermine their contribution to the Home Front and strengthen attempts to force them back into domestic roles when the war ended.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 47

The Hallmarks of a Minx Jude Murphy

48 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 49

Growing Up 1918-28 Elaine Pope

The first world war created a surplus of widows and unmarried women, women whose previous expectation had been to be a wife and mother, they now had to earn their own living and provide their own home.

Amongst these women was my grandmother Bella, not alone because of the war but legally separated from a philandering husband. At a time when most women would have “put up, and shut up’’ she made the decision in 1912 to leave this situation with her daughter Marjorie, then aged 2 years old. There was a huge stigma attached to this action, even though she was not in the wrong. The aftermath of the war meant she was no longer that unique and she chose to be known as a widow to avoid the judgement of society because after all ‘men were men’ and women were expected to accept their behaviour as part of their role in a patriarchal society. What is very clear from family stories, is just how strong and independent both she and the daughter she raised alone were, they were both early ‘feminists’.

Bella was the daughter of a forgeman and granddaughter of a keelman and she managed in 16 years to change their lives from living in a working-class area of Heaton to living in a new middle-class area in Whitley Bay. As a young

50 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

single woman at the end of the nineteenth century and encouraged by her father, Bella had left Tyneside and worked in Birmingham, Wisbech, King’s Lynn and High Wycombe before returning to Heaton. This experience gave her the knowledge that a better life was possible and this is what she worked towards. Her strength and determination as a lone parent was admirable.

In 1928 Marjorie was 18 years old so the period of Turbulent Times 1918-28 was a formative time in her life.

Due to the separation she lived in 11 different homes, with family, with friends, in lodgings and in rented flats. Until, when in 1928 Bella had eventually saved enough money from her wages as a manageress of a branch of Tobacconists, in St. Nicholas Street, Newcastle, to buy a newly built semi-detached house in West Monkseaton for the sum of £500. Her memories of these different homes varied, she was particularly happy when they lived in Windsor Terrace, South Gosforth and when they borrowed a house in Alnmouth from a family friend and spent a number of blissful summers there, including attending the village school. Lodgings were not always so happy, one landlady who cared for her while her mother was at work, was particularly unkind. Out shopping one day she dropped her doll and was not allowed to pick it up, she was distraught when her mother came home, words were spoken and they left to stay with an aunt in Heaton. She had few toys and the loss of her only much-loved doll, still reduced her to tears over seventy years later.

got all their spellings correct and another 6d for correct sums, Marjorie took the 1/- home for a number of weeks and the offer was dropped.

She particularly liked days when the sea was rough and her teacher Miss Crisp who lived on St. Mary’s Island and who had to row herself across to the mainland, could not get to school, as that meant extra painting. After leaving school she took part in a national essay competition run by a Daily Newspaper, as she had a need to prove she was intelligent, she didn’t win but got a highly commended certificate. In later life although she was proud of the education I received, there was always a tinge of regret because she knew she could have achieved more given the opportunities.

This itinerant lifestyle however was responsible for creating a ver y self-contained and selfsufficient young woman.

Bella and Marjorie, 1920

These constant moves also meant that her education was very disrupted, during her 9 years of formal education she attended five different schools, in Heaton, Arthur’s Hill, South Gosforth, Alnmouth and Whitley Bay. She failed the matriculation exam which she took alone due to yet another move. It was a traumatic experience which stayed with her all her life, the teacher in charge rang a hand bell every 15 minutes and announced how much time was left, she always felt she had been denied a chance of a better education because of this. The secondary school she attended after this was Park School in Whitley Bay. As an encouragement to pupils one of the teachers gave 6d a week to the child who

The Pledge

Coming from a Temperance family Marjorie signed the pledge in 1919 aged only 9 years old and only drank in later life if she considered it to be medicinal, so Sanatogen Tonic Wine or Guinness because it ‘‘Is good for you’’ were allowed and a small sherry at Christmas.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 51

She left school in 1924 when jobs were difficult to find and remembered the embarrassment and discomfort of queueing outside the National Assistance Office.

Lowe and Moorhouse, Newcastle.

(NCL collection downloaded)

Lowe and Moorhouse, Departmental Sunday Outings

with men. Her mother told her to apply for a job at the Fever Hospital in Walker, not something she wanted to do but at that time you did not argue with your parents, so she walked through the fields to Walker turned around and walked back and told her mother all the jobs had gone.

Scripture Exam Certificate

She attended Sunday School until she was 19 years old, regularly winning prizes in scripture exams, usually novels with a moral or bibles. By 1930 she had trained as a Sunday School teacher.

Shortly before she died she admitted to me that she was actually not a believer and had originally joined the Baptist Church for the amateur dramatics and the choral singing.

She left school in 1924 when jobs were difficult to find and remembered the embarrassment and discomfort of queueing outside the National Assistance Office mostly

52 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Her mother’s next idea was a commercial course, so she attended evening classes 1924-25 and studied Arithmetic, English, Geography and Shorthand, she completed the course but particularly disliked shorthand and never applied for any secretarial jobs. Though she always wrote a very good letter and was clear and business like when making a phone call.

The City Hospital for Infectious Diseases, Walker. (NCL collection downloaded)

L-R: Miss Mack, ?, Eleanor Liddle, and Marjorie

Course Books and Certificate

While taking this evening course she was also apprenticed to a milliner in Whitley Bay, a job she enjoyed and a skill that never left her. One of her tasks was to take hats to the two elderly ladies who lived in ‘Monks Haven’ a house overlooking the sea at Cullercoats. Her employer would give her 2d, the return tram fare, she would go by tram but return on foot, with any unpurchased hats and buy herself a 1d bar of chocolate with the remaining money.

Having decided she liked shop work, she moved in 1925 to Lowe and Moorhouse a department store on the corner of Northumberland Street and Blackett Street, Newcastle.

Centre: Miss Franks Departmental Buyer At the Beach, 1925

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 53

Despite a difficult early life and her perceived lack of education, my mother was an intelligent self-educated woman. Her interests were many and varied, she was a choral singer, enthusiastic amateur actress, tap and ballroom dancer, golfer, swimmer and tennis player. She was also a keen historian and handed on to me 300 years of oral family history, being particularly proud of her family’s Newcastle Quayside origins. In later life once she had the opportunities she was an independent traveller who made friends where ever she went.

Nonetheless, the tactics they used and the causes they espoused on the road to 1918 would inform political action throughout the C20th. In particular, the internationalist perspective of those who struggled for women’s rights would ultimately lead to the concept of human rights.

Montmartre

Despite a difficult early life and her perceived lack of education, my mother was an intelligent self educated woman... a keen historian... particularly proud of her family’s Newcastle Quayside origins.

54 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Rosie Serdiville

The Campaign for Women’s Suffrage had an impact far beyond that immediately evident in 1918 (when some women finally got to participate in the electoral process). Universal suffrage would take another ten years of hard work by thousands of women.

Hiking, 1927

Marjorie was now contributing to the family finances, her pay packet was handed to her mother and she received money back for travel, lunches and a little pocket money. The extra money meant that they started taking holidays and a trip to London in 1924/25 to visit the British Empire Exhibition left a huge impression. It instilled in her a huge interest in other cultures and a desire to travel abroad, which was not actually achieved until 1969 with a first trip to Paris.

Women’s Rights to Human Rights

Those tactics had not been original or unique to feminism; the suffrage movement honed rather than invented them. Women had proved to be innovative publicists, drawing attention to their cause with a wide variety of actions: everything from ballooning to bombing was put to use.

They refined old ideas: the Chartists, for example, had made use of mass demonstrations and the power of petition and lobbying had been a feature of the anti slavery debate.. But a new climate of legality made the latter far more powerful options in the hands of women. Badly treated as the suffrage demonstrators routinely were, they did not face armed dragoons simply for gathering in public.

The belief that everyone, by virtue of her or his humanity, is entitled to certain human rights is relatively recent. It took the final catalyst of World War II to propel the idea onto the global stage and into the global conscience, drawing on the experience of the earlier League of Nations (founded in 1920). The League, born out of the struggles for social justice and equality, was designed to ensure that conflict on the scale of World War One could never happen again.

The women involved in these developments were not always active suffragists but their perspective was shaped by an awareness of the suffrage debate. They had learned how to win.

Take Eglantyne Jebb, for example. The daughter of a well-off family with a strong social conscience and commitment to public service, she trained as a teacher. A year's experience in a Primary School convinced her that this was not her vocation but it did leave her aware of the impact of poverty on the young.

Wartime work in the Balkans reinforced her understanding. By 1918 it was clear that the children of these countries were suffering appallingly from the effects of the war and the Allied blockade (which continued into the 20’s).

The Fight the Famine Council, was set up in 1919

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 55

to persuade the British government to lift the restriction.

Eglantyne used shock tactics to make her point - handing out leaflets in London’s bustling Trafalgar Square showing two emaciated children. So disturbing were the images that she was arrested for breaching the peace. Duly convicted, her fine was paid by her judge: the first donation to the charity she went on to found, Save the Children.

Women’s Freedom League propaganda image of Alison Neilans in 1910, rather appropriate for the General Secretary of the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene.

A devout Anglican, Eglantyne asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to donate church collections to the relief effort. Rejected (the Archbishop did not want to appear too political) she turned her attentions to Rome. The Pope

56 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

was clearly less worried about appearances. He interviewed her for two hours, then contributed £25,000 of his own money. And delivered international Catholic support for the fund.

In 1923, she drafted a Children's Charter for the League of Nations which would be adopted by the United Nations in 1959. It was the founding document behind the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Duly convicted, her fine was paid by her judge, the first donation to the charity she went on to found, Save the Children.

Recognition of Women’s rights took longer.

It was not until 1993, 45 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted that the UN confirmed that women’s rights were human rights. That this statement was even necessary is striking – women’s status as human beings should have never been in doubt. That concept too is new. It was not until they obtained a Privy Council ruling on the subject in 1929 that British women were legally defined as ‘persons’.

Suffragists had long been involved in anti trafficking initiatives and in arguing for humane treatment of sex workers. The Association for Moral and Social Hygiene (AMSH) was formed in 1870 by Northerner, Josephine Butler to combat the Contagious Diseases Acts. It rapidly turned its attention to combating the sexual abuse of women and children. By the 1920s its General Secretar y was Alison Neilans, an associate of Silvia Pankhurst and a member of the Women’s Freedom League.

During the war, Dr Ethel Williams joined the Workers Educational Association (WEA) as a tutor setting up women's health courses all over the North East of England. After the war her activism centred on issues of health, social welfare education and international relations, reflecting the domestic priorities of many suffrage campaigners after 1918. There may have been relatively few female MP’s in Parliarment during the postwar years but they were responsible for hundreds of pieces of legislation which had a direct impact on womens lives. And they were not afraid to tackle embarrassing or unsettling issues. In Newcastle Ethel Williams was amongst the first to establish residential care for people dealing with mental illness.

Neilans understood poverty: she had become the family breadwinner at the age of 12 when her father died.

Freedom from sexual violence and exploitation, enshrined in our modern view of rights, was another of those disturbing matters and had, in fact, long been a feminist campaign issue.

The AMSH were unusual in their perspective: they did not hold women responsible for their occupation, arguing for regulation of the trade rather than abolition. Alison Neilans defined prostitution as ‘a vice not a crime—a moral offence not a legal one’. The women of AMSH believed prostitution was best opposed through public education. They lobbied, sat on public commissions, and changed public opinion through informal letter-writing and personal persuasion. Other groups, notably the National Vigilance Association, also conducted outreach efforts at railway stations and ports, rescuing girls from potential traffickers.

These women were also aware of a wider context. When the International Diplomatic Emigration Conference planned to place restrictions on young women travellers they protested:

‘better treatment of women emigrants should be seriously considered to insure that no harassing restrictions should be laid on the personal freedom of adult women and that no restrictions should be made for such women that do not apply to all emigrants without respect to sex’.

AMSH were highly effective, in part because they were not afraid to go public with their views, backed up by plentiful evidence and proposals for change. The League's 1927 Report sold out within a few weeks of its publication, a rare feat for what was in essence an international policy document. More importantly, it galvanized international co-operative action. The International Labour Office's efforts to regulate immigration and labour legislation helped close some of the gaps in through which the trafficking trade operated, and greater cooperation was fostered between national governments.

Mass demonstrations, eye grabbing publicity stunts, making use of political networks, making public issues personal by telling individual stories: they’re all techniques we take for granted these days. I could rabbit on about how well women organised but Julia Ward Howe (author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic) summed it up better than anyone I know: "When I see the elaborate study and ingenuity displayed by women in the pursuit of trifles, I feel no doubt of their capacity for the most herculean undertakings."

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 57

Calling Time

Popular Culture

Ceinwen Haydon

Elaine Pope

Is that right, sir? Football, not a woman’s game? Nor war neither, but without munitions, where’d you brave and bonny soldiers be? Left high and dry, I’d say. If I might be so bold.

While you were gone, sir, munitions girls worked skanky shifts. Sulfuric acid turned skin yellow and hair green in toxic factory air. With risk of fire, explosions too; see, you boys weren’t the only ones.

Let outside after our stints, we kicked balls, scored goals and grazed our shameless knees in muddy shorts. Canary Girls, at liberty to play, got bloody good. Some, like Spartan’s Bella Reay, got great.

Our novel female games, sir, they entranced the Toon. Happen our shows raised cash sore needed for wounded and widows, and hungry fatherless children. All of us winners, for one afternoon.

Sir, you lads are back now, some at least. Those blessed with two legs run, arms akimbo, back onto the pitch, don team stripes. Try to forget they’ve ever been in France, in hell.

Now, good Mr Watt has taken stock and queries what positions we working girls should take, with our quick wits and light feet. Good lasses will choose to stay indoors and make their men look great.

Watt and the Board have formed a view: our football’s too professional. Not right for godly women, the British Empire’s daughters, skilled in knitting Army kit, from vests to woollen socks.

So, use of St James’ sacred turf, our green and pleasant ground, will be withdrawn from ladies.

We must desist from making exhibitions of ourselves, serve at home, and stick to wearing frocks.

Football’s not a woman’s game, sir, or so you say.

After WW1 when young women were being derided by the press as ‘superfluous women’ and ‘cigarette smoking hoydens’, popular culture was feeding them a diet of romantic fiction, make-up tips of the silent movie stars, like Gloria Swanson and Bebe Daniels along with strictures of acceptable behaviour for young ladies.

This is nothing new, there are centuries old texts on behaviour for women but the 1920’s is at the centre of a mass media explosion. There were articles with titles like ‘Bad Taste’ and ‘The Dangers of being a Sport’, also cartoons on the subject of etiquette, one in particular advised working girls not to fall asleep in public as this looked unattractive and was only acceptable for invalids and infants.

NOTES Frank Watt. Secretary of Newcastle United FC (December 1921): ‘The game of football is not a woman's game and though it was permitted on professional grounds as a novelty arising out of women's participation in war work and as a novelty with charitable motives. The time has come when the novelty has worn off and the charitable motives are being lost sight of, so that the use of the professionals' ground is rightly withdrawn. The women's games have developed into commercial concerns and the expenses they reckon it would cost to play would not have left much for charity.’ Quoted on: http://spartacus-educational.com/Fdickkerrs.htm

58 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Canary Girls Women worked in the munitions factories in WW1 (munitionettes). Some were known as the Canary Girls because prolonged exposure to sulfuric acid caused depigmentation, turning their skin bright yellow and their hair green or gingercoloured. This toxicity was a serious health hazard.

Bella Reay A star footballer from Cowpen, Northumberland.

Bella worked as a munitionette during WW1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bella_Raey

There was a boom in the publication of illustrated weekly papers, with titles like Eve’s Own, Peg’s Papers, Woman’s Weekly and Woman’s Life costing just pence they were aimed mainly at working class women and concentrated on serialised fiction, cheap and simple dressmaking, make up and advice. They led on to Mills and Boon romantic fiction in the 1930’s, when there was a huge need for escapism during the Depression. Interestingly many of these articles, romances and advice columns are written by men or men using female pen-names.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 59

Within two weeks in 1918, the articles in one of these weeklies seem to change significantly, from titles like “An Office Dress for One Pound” and “Wireless Work For Girls’’ in February to “The Bag Bazaar I Planned’’ and ‘’Children of Adoption’’ in March. It feels as if the message to woman is changing away from paid employment and back to home and community responsibilities.

like the media hype surrounding ‘Fifty Shades of Grey ’ recently. Though the theme of wilful women being brought to heel was hardly new, Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew was four centuries earlier.

In 1922 Good Housekeeping was launched, costing one shilling it was approximately six times more expensive and aimed at middle class female readers, with more thought provoking articles like ‘Should Wives Have Wages?’ by Violet Bonham Carter, daughter of Lord Asquith.

A subject that is regularly resurrected, nearly a century later.

This was an extremely exciting decade, for new technology and changes in fashion.

December 24th 1922 saw the first radio broadcast from the Newcastle station 5NO, they were the 3rd British radio station to start public broadcasting, following on from London and Manchester a month earlier. By 1927 the first ‘Talkie’ had arrived with Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer.

Hemlines got shorter as did hair, restrictive corsets gave way to flat straight lines and a certain androgynous style.

A hundred years on and there seems very little difference, women’s magazines and newspapers are mostly still obsessed with the same subjects and now we have the addition of numerous television channels and social media. These obsessions about how women should look and behave have not altered and in fact in many ways seem to have worsened, with the acceptance of body shaming of celebrities. At least the actresses who lent their names to make-up tips in the past were treated with a certain amount of deference.

The type of phrases used to describe women at this time inspired the following song.

Surplus Girls In 1919 The Sheik by E.M. Hull was published and filmed in 1921 starring Rudolph Valentino, it was immensely popular, selling over 1million copies even before the film was made. It actually introduces the concept of ‘rape fantasy’ and was described in the press as ‘poisonously salacious’ which probably increased its popularity, rather

.... when young women were being derided by the press as ‘superfluous women’ and ‘cigarette smoking hoydens’, popular culture was feeding them a diet of romantic fiction, ..... along with strictures of acceptable behaviour for young ladies.

60 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Surplus girls, you’re the two million surplus girls, Who’ll never know a fulfilled life, being a wife, Your heart must be breaking, you’re really missing something.

Surplus girls, what will you do, Just wipe your tears and hide your fears, Make yourself a life, you’ll never be a wife, You lonely surplus girls.

Husband hunters, you’re the desperate husband hunters, You’ll have to improve your looks, read good books, Just keep on trying, you’re really missing something.

Husband hunters, what will you do, Just paint your face, get in the race, Go the extra mile, with the come-hither smile, You desperate husband hunters.

Old maids, you’re the unwanted old maids, A sad and lonely life is yours, because of wars, Alone with cats and knitting, you’ve really missed something.

Old maids, what will you do, No dreams, live within your means, *Just cos you’re alone, no need to moan, You unwanted old maids. *x2

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 61

Popular Personalities’

If, through inability to trace the present copyright owners, any copyright material is included for which permission has not specifically been sought, apologies are tendered in advance to proprietors and publishers concerned.

Sport

Theatre

Mercedes Glietz, 1900–1981

Luisa Tetrazzini, 1871–1940

Swimmer

Italian Coloratura Soprano

The first English woman to swim the English Channel in 1927.

Sport

Theatre

Helen Wills-Moody, 1905–1998

Gracie Fields, 1898–1979

Tennis Player

Singer and Actress

Won Wimbledon 8 times and won 2 gold medals at the 1924 Paris Olympics.

She was a cotton mill half-timer (half day at school and half at mill) a job she gave up in 1910 aged 12 after her first professional singing appearance.

Sport

Theatre

Joyce Wethered, 1901–1997

Jose Collins, 1887–1958

Golfer

Music Hall Star

English Ladies Golf Champion for 5 consecutive years in the 1920s.

Sport

Theatre

Suzanne Lenglen, 1899–1938

Violet Loraine, 1886–1956

French Tennis Player

Musical Theatre star

Won 31 championships between 1914–1926.

Retired in 1921 on her marriage to Edward Raylton Joicey.

Died in Newcastle.

Explorers

Film

Gertrude Bell, 1868–1926

Mary Pickford, 1892–1979

Writer, Traveller, Archaeologist and Cartographer.

Actress

Involved by the British Government, because of her vast local knowledge in the creation of the Kingdom of Iraq.

‘America’s Sweetheart’ – Founder member of United Artists in 1919.

Explorers

Film

Rosita Forbes, 1890–1967 Travel Writer and Explorer

Clara Bow, 1905–1965

First European woman to visit Kufra Oasis, Libya 1920–21. Her reputation was somewhat tarnished in the 1930s when she wrote about her meetings with Hitler and Mussolini.

‘The It Girl’ made 46 silent films and 11 talkies before retiring after marrying. Symbol of the ‘Roaring Twenties.

62 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Actress

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 63

Artwork: Elaine Pope

64 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 65

I’m So Happy In 1924 Ann Alexander

Living Conditions in a Mining Community Post WW1 Mary Pitt

I’m so happy with my washing machine Gets the clothes clean, works like a dream I love using my Electrolux Runs over the floor, it’s not a chore I’m so happy that I don’t need a maid She’d only steal the silver It’s a good life, being a wife In 1924 I’m so happy I’ve a husband at home I’m not alone, no need to roam I got a man just as soon as I could Spinsters must toil for a living He goes to work and brings the money to me After his tea, falls asleep on the settee But it’s a good life, being a wife In 1924

Chorus: Doo bee woppy woppy doo bee doo waa Doo bee doo waa, doo bee doo waa It’s a good life, being a wife In 1924 Sometimes when I get a little bit bored I dream of a change in my life I could be a flapper in a dress with a fringe I would learn all the new dances Or I’d go out and be a suffragette Join the wrong set, go out on a protest Think I’ll just stay at home, being a wife In 1924 Chorus x 2

Sing freely so that the words fit.

Singers can add their own bits to the chorus

NOTE: After the end of WW1 it was more difficult for middle-class women to get servants, so ‘Ideal Homes’ magazine was published to give information to these women about housework and the new labour saving machines which had been invented. I researched this song by reading extracts from back numbers of ‘Ideal Homes’.

66 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Annfield Plain first appeared as a small settlement in the 16th century whose growth is attributed to the development of the coal mining industry and being situated on the Pontop and South Shields Branch of the North Eastern Railway Line. In 1896 Annfield Plain became an Urban District Council composed of the parishes of Colliery, Kyo and Greencroft and most of the able-bodied men were employed in the coal mining industry.

Annfield Plain Urban District Council had its own Medical Officer of Health (MOH) who monitored and identified issues that affected the causes of ill health in the local community. To gain insight into the lives of this mining community I reviewed the annual reports of the M.O.H. These reports looked at housing, waste disposal and water purity as well as birth, death and infectious disease rates – all vital areas of concern which required improvement.

Providing an adequate number of houses was just as much a problem then as it is today. There was not only a need to increase the number of houses available to cover an increasing population but to reduce the number of houses that were already overcrowded. A number of houses were sub-standard and therefore would need to be demolished. Not all houses had

access to their own water supply and disposal of human waste was a major problem. The table shows the yearly changes in sanitary facilities.

The provision of sanitar y conditions varied across the area. Improvements could only be made when houses were replaced or repaired.

The more primitive method, i.e. the ash closets and ashpit privies depended on the manual removal of household and human waste onto a horse drawn cart. Collection of this waste was haphazard – the men carried out this work reluctantly, often missing some areas altogether.

Eventually the “Inspector of Nuisance’s” took over the management and allocated individual men to an area. Since Annfield Plain was situated on high ground (700 feet above sea level), the water purity and drainage were good. However, in dry weather the use of water closets proved to be a problem. The water supply was diminished as water quickly drained away to the lower ground affecting the use of water closets.

The M.O.H. constantly monitored environmental needs to improve the health of his community.

The outcome of his initiatives was assessed by looking at local statistics that applied to the individuals in his area. One area that was taken note of each year was infant mortality. It was higher than the county mortality rate. Initially, I

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 67

The ability to absorb disabled ex-soldiers into an appropriate job within the coal mining industr y on their return home was impossible. The National Scheme for Disabled ExServicemen 1919 (the King’s Role) encouraged employers to employ 5% of disabled exservicemen – an impossible aim in a heavy manual industr y. found that the M.O.H. attributed the main cause to “want of knowledge and sometimes carelessness on the part of the mother in feeding her child, and the absence of a due sense of the importance of absolute cleanliness and exactitude in the preparation of food.” In 1923 the M.O.H. recognised that mothers do not get sufficient rest during their child bearing years

68 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

whilst caring for the shift working coalminers in a household that may be overcrowded and had unhygienic surroundings. These facilities resulted in babies being born deformed, debilitated or prematurely. The included table shows information collected on a house inspection circa 1928.

A Nursing Association was established to provide professional nursing in the home. In this pre-NHS period, one nurse was provided and supported by voluntar y subscriptions. The Midwives Acts of 1918 and 1926 provided stricter guidelines that ensured women should have a qualified midwife present during childbirth – the salaries of two midwives were subsidised by Durham County Council. School Clinics and Maternity and Child Welfare Clinics became available.

The coal crisis of 1921 caused a major financial crisis in the community. There was an urgent need to provide adequate nutrition for preschool children and those of school age. The school authorities responded with the help of parents and volunteers. Financial help was also received from the local authority and various other sources. This system was so successful that school attendance improved during this period resulting in all children having an adequate level of nutrition. The weather during this period was good and the striking miners spent time caring for their allotments and their conduct was excellent during this period. The implication being that there was no rise in crime committed by the unemployed men who had more time on their hands.

children who did not get the vote in 1918. In many cases their husbands had lost their lives fighting for their country during WW1. These young women had sole responsibility for maintaining a household and providing for a family.

requested that they be given paid training for suitable work and continued until paid employment was found. This request was refused, and severely disabled ex-servicemen were left unsupported and dependant on voluntary schemes.

The ability to absorb disabled ex-soldiers into an appropriate job within the coal mining industry on their return home was impossible. The National Scheme for Disabled Ex-Servicemen 1919 (the King’s Role) encouraged employers to employ 5% of disabled ex-ser vicemen – an impossible aim in a heavy manual industry. The Miner’s Federation of Great Britain recognised the difficult work situation for this group and

I reviewed the reports of the M.O.H. over this decade and chose items that I believe provided a picture of life in this community. It reflects the hardship that families in this community experienced on a day to day basis and how the people came together to sur vive the 1921 coalminers strike. Since this period the coalmining industry has gradually declined until it finally disappeared altogether.

Water closets 1912

1914

1916

1919

1922

W.C.’s

417

601

655

676

1258

Ash closets

1007

1034

1054

1048

1280

Ashpit Privies

1376

1267

1263

1253

500

Ashbins (moveable)

nil

nil

nil

30

51

Progress in the provision of adequate toilet facillities

Address: 8 Pontop Rows, Annfield Plain Rooms: 3 (Ground Floor: 2 First Floor: 1) Inhabitants: 6 Adults Rent: 5/Water Supply-source: Consett:

Other important issues were not covered by the M.O.H. There was the issue of votes for women.

In 1918 Parliament passed an Act allowing women over the age of 30, who were householders to vote. In 1928 there was a change allowing women over the age of 21 to vote. In the area covered by Annfield Plain Urban District Council, there were many young widows under the age of 30 caring for their

Arrangement to prevent contamination: tap in kitchen, no sink Closet Accommodation: Privy Yard: uncovered midden Arrangement for Refuse and Ashes: foul midden Access to first floor by a steep stepladder. Poultry in street. Demolished 1930

An example of living conditions

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 69

Summerland: Spiritualism and post-war remembrance

This was the world which Helen Duncan grew up in. She was born on 25th November 1897 in Callander, Scotland, the third child of Isabella and Archibald Duncan. She was named Victoria Helen McCrae MacFarlane, as was the usual practice, within a few weeks of her birth she was baptised into the Scottish Presbyterian Church.

For the first seven years of her life she was no different to her brothers and sisters. At the age of 7 she began to show signs of her psychic ability.

These were always met with a rebuff.

Liz Greener

Helen eventually went to work at a jute mill in Dundee but later worked as a nurse. It was here in Dundee that she met her husband, Henry.

They were married in 1919 and went on to have 3 children.

At a particularly difficult time in my life I felt the need to attend church. I am not a particularly religious person so I cannot give an explanation as to why. There are a few churches nearby, of different faiths: I decided to go to the local Spiritualist church. Craghead Spiritualist Church is a local church with a small congregation. It was very welcoming and all the congregation greeted each other as though they were part of a big family.

Craghead Spiritualist Church, photograph: Liz Greener

Craghead Church was opened on 1st January 1933, however it was in the early 1920s when the idea of the church was first conceived.1 It was agreed that the members of the church would have a fund to build their own church. They saved money from their well-attended meetings.

A young local medium, Hunter Selkirk became

70 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

well known. Initially they held home circles but eventually they became too large so local halls had to be booked.

During and after World War I Spiritualism became very popular, attracting hundreds and thousands of the population. By the end of the war ver y few families had escaped the experiences of loss, either immediate family or friends and neighbours. This was a time of national grieving and because it was so widely felt Spiritualism found a large and ready audience.

Celebrity endorsements such as those of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge helped to increase spiritualism’s popularity. Both had lost loved ones during the war and they believed that spirit communication was developing in much the same way as electricity and radio waves. Lodge, who had lost his son Raymond in Ypres in 1915 wrote a book “Raymond” based on communication with his son in which he described “Summerland” where Raymond was now residing and continuing to live his life without all earthly worries.

However, there were many who denounced this craze described in an anonymous letter written to the Courier in 1919:

‘There is one here with a message for John, Is there a John present’, F C Yohn, c1920, Library of Congress DLC/PP-1935:0006.

“Mothers and friends of fallen soldiers resorting to table rapping, creakings, automatic writings through the medium of planchette, Ouija, heliograph etc in the hope of once more communicating with their loved ones……..” as quoted by Susie Grogan .2 Many people accused mediums of being aggressive quacks who were the mouthpiece of the Devil himself and preying on the delusional.

Many critics suggested that this belief in the afterlife was a menace, further suggesting that those who believed in such roguer y were ‘gullible imbeciles.’

It was during this period that many small churches were established. After the war many meetings were held in people’s homes: home circles, as they were called. Several members of Craghead Church have told me that during the period after the war the children would go knocking on neighbour’s doors and tell them there was going to be a meeting that night. Once all the members were in the home the door would be locked and the children would sit outside, on guard, in case the local police officer should arrive.

By the end of the war very few families had escaped the experiences of loss, either immediate family or friends and neighbours. This was a time of national grieving and because it was so widely felt Spiritualism found a large and ready audience.

The Duncans had weekly home circles where they had regular attendees, Helen went on to further develop her psychic abilities. In spiritualist circles she was well known for her materialistic abilities, for being one of the most tested and hounded mediums and for becoming Spiritualism’s martyr. Those who witnessed her materialization seances still testify that she was genuine. She was investigated by the British Psychic Research Association on many occasions.

Helen Duncan was well known in the press as being someone who was accused of fraud and her trial eventually reached the Old Bailey (1944). After her trial Parliament created the Fraudulent Mediums Act (1951). Helen Duncan was the last person to be convicted under the Witchcraft Act (1735).3

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 71

Fields Of Flodden

Love Found and Lost

Maria Hawthorne

Maria Hawthorne

The sun was sinking in the sky as Branxton Church I did pass by When on the breeze a maiden’s cry came from the field of Flodden.

“What care I for ties with France or England’s conquering advance?

Of happiness I lost my chance – that fateful day at bloody Flodden.”

Love was all I had and that was taken sudden from me Now I’m left alone in this forlorn and dismal place With just the mem’ry of the day when I first saw your loving face.

I looked from whence the sound had came and glimpsed a woman slight of frame “Come close, my dear and say your name and what brings you to Flodden” “Who’ll provide for the table now? Mend the thatch and yolk the plough?”

She implored of me with furrowed brow upon the lonely field of Flodden.

‘Twas then I heard a strange sad sound. A Highland voice from the battle ground.

The haunting song echoed around the quiet field of Flodden.

“Có o'm faigh mi biadh air bòrd, Thréig mo shòlas 's m'àilleachd neòil Thréig mo stiùir, mo ràmh, 's mo sheòl, Dh'rimich saoidh nan dualan òrbhuidh” (Translation: Who will provide me with meat for my table? My happiness and my fair complexion have gone. My rudder, my oar and my sail have gone. My flaxen-haired warrior has departed.)

“All women shared the same dread plight. Our menfolk forced to march and fight.

King James, King Henry, both had right to slaughter men at Flodden.

King James’ men held Flodden Hill. Lord Surrey crossed the River Till With bows and billhooks ready to spill innocent blood on the field of Flodden.

“The Highland war cries rent the sky. The English archers gave reply With arrows raining down from high above the field of Flodden.

The Scots pikes gleamed o’er the battle cries shrill. The hail of death poured was the archers’ skill.

Those dying screams – I hear them still upon the silent field of Flodden.”

Said I, “Four hundred** years of blame have passed since that clash in freedom’s name.

Say gentle maids how can you claim such memories of Flodden?”

Came no reply – no one was there. An eerie stillness filled the air.

For those long dead souls, I knelt in prayer - sweet rest all ye who fell at Flodden.

Commentary I had the original idea over a year ago, being inspired by evening visits to the battle site. The project gave the song a focus and facilitated its completion. It occurred to me that someone walking there in the 1920s could not fail to connect to a huge battle and be moved by the

72 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

futile waste of lives. So, the story took shape and I decided to give the narrator a spooky experience.

This allowed me to tell the story from the viewpoint of the women on both sides and also gave me an excuse to slip in a little bit of Scots Gàidhlig. ** Substitute 500 to bring the song up-to-date.

Love was what I found, so let me tell you my sad story We vowed ‘til death us part but world events they were to blame And though we two were joined as one, we never shared a common name.

Love was what I sought – escape from hunger and from squalor Proud innocence of youth, we dared to think of liberty But now I pray that God exists, of earthly cares you are now free.

Love was what I craved – so full of promise and of passion To hold you in my arms and feel your form against my breast But helpless mortals on this earth we’re beaten down with all the rest.

Love was all we had amidst the turmoil and the struggle Twixt war and poverty, you kept me strong and made me brave Now in my dreams I come to you and lay my flowers on your grave.

Love was what I lost and now I fight to heal my sorrow Caught in twilight world where soul and body have no bound The battle rages in my head, then desolation all around.

Love is what you need so let it shine in every corner Walking hand in hand through fields of hay or streets of grime And love will conquer fear and hate – withstand the turbulence of time.

Commentary This is not the song that I wanted to write. I wanted to write a sentimental love song. But I heard the tune and faint lyrics inside my head during the first session at Prohibition. They came strongly the next day during quiet moments and it felt as though someone was trying to tell me their story. I had looked at some poetry but it didn’t help, and anything I tried to think up was simply drowned out by the lyrics above. They were so loud inside my head that I had to keep

stopping to write them down. The whole song was complete within an hour. I can put my own interpretations on it and I would be interested to know what others read into it. It is certainly a story of young love, no chance to marry and no chance to rise above circumstances. I have since discovered that the area around Prohibition was a notorious slum with the highest death rate in the UK – so who knows what our creative minds can tap into?

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 73

Conscientious Objectors in the North East during World War One The backgrounds to these men’s lives and beliefs Tom Davie Alice Lucas became one of 17 women candidates who stood on the 14 December 1918 in the first British general election to be held after World War One. She had replaced her late husband as Conser vative candidate in the Kennington constituency and declared in her manifesto that if elected she would make sure conscientious objectors would remain in prison, “...until it is impossible for them to snatch the jobs which are rightfully the reward of our returning heroes.”

Lucas won 3,573 votes (32% of the electorate vote) but 1,132 less than Henry Purchase the Liberal candidate, a radical and member of the New Reform Club whose rallying call was, ‘peace, retrenchment and reform.’1 If Alice Lucas’ petition had come to fruition the surviving conscientious objectors (there were 16,500 recorded in total in the UK during the war) would have remained serving time in prison (often with hard labour) or in non combatant military service while discharged soldiers, seaman and aircrew would have found employment or re-employment in the new ‘land fit for heroes’. Fortunately for the societies that they did come back to, her wish did not come

74 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Mahatma Ghandi declared, “I object to violence because when it appears to do good the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent”.

true; the large majority made major contributions to the communities they lived, worked and served within.

Of course some of the conscientious objectors did not sur vive the war. Aubyn Harrison Pumphrey a Millwright from Stockton on Tees perished of flu as did John George Winter of Cornsay Colliery while John Stephen White, a Gateshead jam manufacturer died of diabetes.

Pumphrey, Winter and White were just three of the 362 conscientious objectors from the north east of England who had declared their refusal to fight. For the majority of them it was for political, religious or moral reasons that they chose this decision. Only one I discovered, Edward Pinkerton, a Labourer from Newcastle declared his motivation not to fight as in his own words being, “one of the slackers.” 2 In my article on Aaron Gompertz for the ‘Highway ’ and my selected blogs for the Turbulent Times 1918–1928 project I have focussed on what happened to these men after World War One.3 But we cannot ignore their original convictions or backgrounds as these informed their post war legacies. Much more work is being done and should be undertaken further so that not one of these single souls’ lives is forgotten, but it is an immense complex task.

As I have often found, the recorded lives of these men written in various publications and websites, contradicts those in others; though the Imperial War Museum, Peace Pledge Union, Society of Friends et al are doing excellent work to create accurate and dependable accounts.

What I have found consistently while researching north east of England conscientious objectors is the definite correlations between their stated religious, political and moral conviction at Tribunals with the subsequent work, social activities and political roles that they pursued after World War One.

The declared reason for their conscientious objection to World War I When exploring the lives of these men it is interesting to note (when declared) their religious convictions. Many came from Christian denominations traditionally associated with pacifism and non conformism – Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Plymouth Brethren et al. Less came from the ‘established’ religions denominations – Church of England, Roman Catholicism, Judaism etc.

Only six conscientious objectors gave their grounds for refusing to fight as moral/ atheist/agnostic. Likewise there are a large number of men where the motivation has not been recorded within the Pearce Register of conscientious objectors and as their stories unfold the reasons may hopefully become known.

Data by reason for objection to war

Quaker – 108 (29.83%); Wesleyan – 16 (4.42%); Primitive Methodist – 15 (4.14%); Church of England – 11, Plymouth Brethren – 11 ( 3.04%); Congregationalist – 8 (2.2%) Methodist – 6 (1.66%); IBSA – Jehovah Witness, Presbyterian – 5 (1.38%); Christadelphian, Unitarian, Jewish – 4 (1.10%); Roman Catholic – 3 (0.83%), Baptist, Friends Mission, International Brotherhood, Peace Ser vice, Non – conformist 1 (0.28%), Religious (but not defined) – 155 (42.82%) Moral – 3, (0.83%), Agnostic – 2 (0.25%); Atheist – 1 (0.28%)

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 75

Political protestation to war The complexities of defining political protestation for refusing to fight is made more challenging by the fact that fundamentally members of the Non Conscription Fellowship (NCF), who made up 17.96% of the political objectors, would have (as affiliates) been members of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) which equates to 7.46% of the region’s 362 conscientious objectors. Others were more general in their declarations to Tribunals stating themselves as ‘socialist’ or ‘trade unionists’ or were part of radical groups as highlighted below such as the Union of Democratic Control (UDC) which by the end of the war had 10,000 members and appealed for a full examination of the war and its aims in public and within Parliament.

Of those who did agree to non combatant duties many served in ambulance units (16.02%) while a smaller number returned to civilian life to work in previous or new roles under the Pelham Committee scheme (that identified men who could be exempted from military service if the deemed jobs were of national importance) especially in shipyards, mines and farms. Men like Mark Simpson and Bertram Samuel Joice, Miners/Hewers in Hebburn and Coundon, and Kenneth Richardson Pumphrey (brother of Aubyn Harrison Pumphrey) who returned to his agriculture studies.

Location of conscientious objectors by city, town and village

Political protestation to war

NCF - 65 (17.96%); ILP – 27 (7.46%); Socialist – 10 (2.76%) Trade Unionist – 5 (1.38%); Union of Democratic Control (UDC) – 4 (1.10%); Socialist Labour Party, International Arbitration for Peace Association, Quebec Radicals – 1 (0.28%) My research has found that 16.57% were ‘Absolutists’ – refusing on political, religious or moral grounds to do any war work at all. I have found that such men when recruited into the Non Combatant Corps (NCC) refused to serve behind the lines, even to make or repair uniforms or cook food in military barracks, as any of this and much more, contributed to the war effort and filled the bellies of men who would be subsequently massacred on the battlefields, drowned at sea or killed in the air.

76 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

There is an extensive spread of objectors across the region from large cities to hamlets. It is not surprising that large conurbations such as Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland and Darlington had greater numbers of declared conscientious objectors but medium sized towns such as South Shields and Stockton had significant numbers too. Yet in contradiction only one man Alfred Myers from near Loftus lived within the proximity of Middlesbrough who had no men exactly from that municipality declared as refusing to fight.

Newcastle (64); Darlington (43); Stockton (28); Sunderland (26); South Shields (22); Gateshead (20); Bishop Auckland (11); Durham, Spenymoor (8); Hartlepool (s), (New) Shildon (6); Boldon (including East and West and Colliery), Stanley,

Image: Courtesy of the Peace Pledge Union

Whitley Bay (5); Ferryhill, Hebburn, Norton on Tees (4); Birtley, Byker, Chester–Le–Street, Jarrow, Morpeth, Seaham and Harbour (3); Barnard Castle, Blaydon, Blyth, Chopwell, Cornsay Colliery, Crook, Haydon Bridge, Hexham, Leadgate, Low Fell, Middleton on Teessdale, New Silksworth, Rothbury, South Moor, Trimdon Collier y, Tynemouth, Wallsend, Westgate, Willington Quay (2); Acklington, Allendale, Alnwick, Ashington (Hirst), Backworth, Beamish, Bedlington, Berwick, Blackhill, near Consett,

Carlin How, near Middlesbrough, Chatton, Choppington, Consett, Coundon Grange, Crawcrook, Dawdon, Dunston, East Stanley, near Crook, Esh Winning, Felling, Fencehouses, Haltwhistle, Howdon–Le–Wear, Hurworth Moor, Lanchester, Marsden, Medomlsey, near Consett, Monkseaton, North Shields, Pelaw, Rowlands Gill, Seaton Deleval, Stocksfield, Sunniside, near Tow Law, Swallwell, Tanfield, Tantobie, Tyne Dock, Westfield, Whicham, Willington (1).

‘Unknown’ (29).

Conscientious Objectors certainly did not risk their lives in the same way as soldiers, sailors and airmen, but they often suffered indignity at the time of World War One and beyond. Some were broken physically and mentally by the treatment they received in prison and ostracised in the communities they returned to. Yet almost in contradiction many were welcomed back, respected and lauded during the turbulent times that followed World War One. They gained sanctuary, anonymity, wealth and honours, that at their time of their stated conviction to pacifism at Tribunals, they may never have imagined.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 77

Conscientious Objectors certainly did not risk their lives in the same way as soldiers, sailors and airmen, but they often suffered indignity at the time of World War One and beyond. Some were broken physically and mentally by the treatment they received in prison and ostracised in the communities they returned to. Yet almost in contradiction many were welcomed back, respected and lauded during the turbulent times that followed World War One. They gained sanctuary, anonymity, wealth and honours, that at their time of their stated conviction to pacifism at Tribunals, they may never have imagined.

Alfred Herbert Dobbing from Sunderland was imprisoned in Newcastle and Durham yet went onto to teach in Great Ayton in Yorkshire and became for many years Principal of Brummana School in Lebanon while Robert William Ridley a Solicitors Clerk from Gateshead became an active branch member of the WEA and Secretary of the Tyneside International Arbitration Peace Committee. Such examples are not unique as my other research and blogs for the Turbulent Times 1918 - 1928 project have demonstrated.

Tommy’s Lament Phil Cochrane For most of my life I've been treated as scum, though I had a voice you considered me dumb.

You tried to avoid me by crossing the street; I was the chaff to your wheat.

The erection of a slate stone in Tavistock Square, London in 1994 commemorates all conscientious objectors.

The period of 1918–1928 were part of a temporary lull in major hostilities but a time of political upheaval, economic suffering and significant societal change. Uncertainty continued and though new orders were formed and old alliances ended, war and hatred continued. As Mahatma Ghandi declared, “I object to violence because when it appears to do good the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent”.

I may not be able to write so well; I may not be able to read; none of that matters inside this hell as long as I'm able to bleed.

A land fit for heroes is what we were told; that we would be cared for until we grew old, yet we were expected to still do our bit in factories and foundries and down in the pit.

I may not be able to walk so well; I may ache whenever it's wet; none of that matters inside this hell as long as I'm able to sweat.

This seam is so narrow my nose scrapes the coal as I lie on my back in this torrid hellhole, a voice cries out "Fire!', the call comes too late, no saving us now from our preordained fate.

I may not be able to talk so well; express all the thoughts n my head; at least I know now that there isn't a Hell, thank God that I'm finally dead.

A hundred years later and little has changed; we dreamt of a world that would be rearranged, but you were the problem we never could solve, so we lie in our graves and we slowly revolve.

78 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 79

Tappy Lappy

Ghosts Of Orgreave

Robbie Rodiss

Joan Dawson

So tappy, lappy 1 scuttling. Avoiding any chew 2 Black dark cold wet morning. Fore shift for we few Darting left, peering right. Check those hidden kneuks3 Make certain there's no strikers, all wearing steel capped beuts 4 It's hard to be a black leg, a scab, a profiteer But moneys tight, me rent is due and then of course there's beer I know that they'll be waiting when I leave the pit They'll all be hoying 5 clemmies 6, jeering as I shift 7 A scarf around me face. Slinking down yon lane Its tappy, lappy quickly to hide my families shame What will they say in future years, about the likes of me Will they understand my plight and write things caringly Or will the howls of hate, that echo in this lane pass from man to child, a legacy of their pain So tappy, lappy I will run, towards the warm embrace Of suffocating darkness to vanish without trace...

1.

Tappy Lappy = Tip Toe (Durham vernacular) 2.

Chew = Trouble 3.

Kneuks = Corners 4.

Beuts = Boots 5.

Hoying = Throwing 6.

Clemmies = Stones 7.

Shift = Jump

In 1926 my father was a lad Sent to the Welfare when they couldn’t buy bread Just nine days in May, and the General Strike was done But his father was a miner, and the miners battled on.

And the times they were a-changing, but changing for the worse As the owners cut their wages, demanding more for less The government beside them set up a Special Force To undermine the strikers, and starve them back to work.

Chorus And in those turbulent times of austerity and greed The rich were getting richer, while the poor were on their knees But as they lined their pockets, their souls were left to bleed ‘Cos you can’t get enough of what you don’t need No, you can’t get enough ...... of what you don’t need The century goes on, there’s a time of peace and hope As people come together, working for the common good But the politics of profit, politics of us and them Soon come back with a vengeance ... and the miners strike again And though they’re meant to keep the peace, the police are made to fight Prepared for one last battle, a medieval rout With horses, dogs and batons they charge the unarmed men To teach them a grave lesson, so they’ll never strike again Chorus And now the strife is over, people are subdued Within a global workplace, where market forces rule It’s each man for himself, each woman left to try Battened in our own life, fed trivia and lies While fifteen hundred billionaires unfettered stalk the world Siphoning off its riches, giving nothing in return But on the streets of Orgreave ghosts still haunt the town Demanding truth and justice, refusing to lie down Chorus x 3 And in these turbulent times of austerity and greed The rich are getting richer, while the poor are on their knees But as they line their pockets, their souls are left to bleed ‘Cos you can’t get enough of what you don’t need No, you can’t get enough .... of what you don’t need Turbulent Times (repeat)

80 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 81

Red Star over Russia.

Smoke and mirrors over the USA Ronnie Stuart Since being a psychology undergraduate in the 1980s I have had a fascination with Russian and Soviet visual culture and propaganda art. More recently I have been compulsively drawn into watching mainstream American cable news, and social media output on the Trump administration. The Turbulent Times project has provided the opportunity to consider the changing face of mass communication, and its impact on people's ideas, attitudes and behaviours around political issues in their times.

clubs. A single poster could have an impact greater than thousands of leaflets and newspapers.

1920s campaign putting the emancipation of women and their changing roles at the centre of the revolutionar y effort. The propaganda campaign aimed at women also articulated disapproval of the paranja, the full body robe worn by women in the Muslim Central Asian Republics, as demonstrated by the poster “ Women, take part in the elections to the Soviets!” (1920s, Unknown artist). Many Muslim subjects, who viewed this as an expression of foreign soviet imposition, resisted this message.

This perceived interference in national/ religious identity was countered using rousing images of multiracial solidarity towards the revolutionary effort, as demonstrated by Stepan Karpov ’s “Friendship of the People” oil painting transformed into a lithogragh in 1923/4.

The last two examples demonstrate the Party’s efforts to grapple with the vastly different cultures they were attempting to unite under the evolving

Women! Take Part in the Elections to the Soviets!

Tashkent, 1920’s. © Tate, London 2018.

United States of Soviet Russia, whilst advancing it’s own ideals of emancipation and equality.

Source material. Red Star over Russia, a revolution in visual culture 1905 to 1955. Edited

by Matthew Gale, Natalia Sidlina, Dina Akhmadeeva. Tate Publishing

Red Star over Russia.

1918 to 1928 In October 1917 the Bolsheviks swept to power in Russia. Over the next 10 years the aim was to gain and retain control over the vast area between the Baltic, and the Sea of Japan to the east. The leaders of the revolution understood the need to spread their message over thousands of miles of territor y, to a largely illiterate population. The party immediately launched a communication campaign using the mass media of the day. The message - of the transfer of power from the Tsarist elite into the hands of peasants and workers – was disseminated via colourful, visually powerful and optimistic multilingual posters pasted up in streets and railway stations, on factory walls and in workers

‘The Emancipated Woman is Building Socialism’.

Strakhov-Braslavsky, Adolf Yosypovych, 1926. © Tate, London 2018.

Adolf Strakhov ’s 1926 poster “Emancipated Woman: Build Socialism!” uses a limited palette and strong features to emulate familiar grandiose Tsarist sculptural art. It contributed to an official Friendship of the People (Soviet Republic). Stepan Karpov, 1923–1924. © Tate, London 2018.

82 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 83

Smoke and mirrors over the USA, the current use of mass media channels to influence American citizens.

A Harvard University study reported on by the Washington Post on 19th May 2017 confirmed that mainstream media reporting on the 1st 100 days of the Trump presidency had been negative in ratio of 4:1. The study defined negative coverage as “ stories where the actor is criticized directly”, or “stories where an event, trend or development reflect unfavourably on the actor”. The Washington Post makes the assessment that “When you do controversial things – which polls show a huge amount of things Trump does are – you get criticised by certain people”. It reported that there hadn’t been many big legislative success during the 1st 100 days, and that “Trumps penchant for controversy and the objective disorder in his administration tend to fill the gap”. And “when you promise amazing things and the results contradict the promises it’s difficult to cover that as a win”.

In October 2017 President Trump put his election success down to the power of social media. In an inter view with Fox Business Network he said “I doubt if I would be here if it weren’t for social media”. He acknowledged that social media provides a “tremendous platform”, saying “when somebody says something about me, I am able to go bing, bing, bing, and I take care of it”. He recognised the power of his use of twitter as a new and direct communication channel for his own views as president, saying “Tweeting is like a typewriter- when I put it out you immediately put it on your show, it’s up”.

Using this direct and immediate channel President Trump has succeeded in driving the news cycle across the major TV networks in the USA, who tend to report immediately on the content and then dedicate panels to interpreting the messages. Much airtime and print is also dedicated to fact checking. An article by David A. Graham in The Atlantic’s Politics & Policy daily

84 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

round up published on July 5th 2017 reported on a Nyhan and Riefler study from the university of Exeter which analysed the impact of fact checking on Trump supporters. They concluded that Trump voters are not impervious to truth.

When confronted with false claims they acknowledged that he was wrong. The researchers concluded, “Individuals may be willing to change their minds about the facts, but we do not observe changes to the candidate whom they support”.

The positive face of modern social media leading to an interesting snippet of research about a media scandal during the 1926 General Strike.

I wanted to include something about British use of mass media a century ago, so put a call out via social media to ask about coverage of the 1926 General Strike at the time. Just hours later my (limited) social media contacts had produced a gem, the digital archive resource at libcom.org. It includes an archive of The British Worker, a journal published by The General Council of the TUC over the course of the Strike.

Issue 2 (May 6th 1926) reported on a police raid on the presses of the British Worker/ Daily Mail aimed at silencing the message of the strike’s progress. The warrant from the Home Secretary required the seizure of “any document calculated to impede measures taken for the maintenance of essential services”. Copies of Issue 2 were taken to the City Commissioner whose approval was required before the presses could run. The Leader of the Labour Party was quickly informed of what was happening (by members of the General Council), and after “ a short consultation” word arrived at Carmelite Street that the press could roll. The paper reported that the waiting crowd of supporters cheered, the police moved off and the crowd sung The Red Flag. 320,000 copies were distributed by an informal network of supporters.

The similarity in the mass media approaches used by the Soviets in 1918/ 28 and the current USA administration is the use of strong emotional messages to appeal to a largely uneducated audience.

Working class people’s desires for improved opportunities, education and wellbeing are used by powerful parties who are able to manipulate mass media channels.

As are their fears (of unemployment, poverty and “the other”). A major difference is the fast pace of the news cycle around the world in the current digital media era.

Conclusion “We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated – I love the poorly educated.” – Donald Trump, Las Vegas campaign speech (February 24, 2016) The similarity in the mass media approaches used by the Soviets in 1918/ 28 and the current USA administration is the use of strong emotional messages to appeal to a largely uneducated audience. Working class people’s desires for improved opportunities, education and wellbeing are used by powerful parties who are able to manipulate mass media channels. As are their fears (of unemployment, poverty and “the other”). A major difference is the fast pace of the news cycle around the world in the current digital media era.

I find the prospect of living in “the post truth era” disturbing and frightening. It is too easy for educated liberals to dismiss Trump’s Rust Belt supporters as stupid. In my view they are being cynically manipulated. Poor educational opportunities have produced a population which is literally ignorant, over many generations.

Interestingly in December 2017 the Pew Research Center in America reported that “The share of Republicans who hold negative views of the effect of colleges and universities has grown significantly since 2015. Whereas Democrats have consistently held positive views of the effect of colleges on the USA.” So can we conclude this is not an accident?

Democratic values which have been built over the 20th century across the world are currently under attack. This article has demonstrated that Social media can be used by those in power to manipulate, but can also be harnessed by individuals to share knowledge quickly and democratically. As with all powerful tools, the impact can be for the good or evil, depending on who is wielding it. The values of the WEA in delivering accessible education for all are surely as relevant and vital now as they were 100 years ago.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 85

Alfred’s Song Ronnie Stuart I have lived in the North East for over 30 years. I moved up in the mid 1980s, and supported the 2nd national UK miners strike of the 20th Centur y, which opposed the pit closure programme being implemented by Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government. I have lived in Chopwell since 2002, and am fascinated by it’s histor y as one of the proud, socialist “Little Moscow” villages of the 20th century.

My Turbulent Times song is written from the perspective of a young miner, Alfred. He is remembered in the Durham Mining Museum’s web archives as one of the many miners who lost their lives to the pit over the century. Alfred was just 16 years old when he was involved in an accident at the pit on 5th August 1924.

He died of the injury to his back on 6th August.

I have tried to imagine his life. As a child his community were sending their men folk to the war, as well as working hard to provide the vital coal supply to fuel the war effort. I imagine like most of his friends and male relatives Alfred started work very young, around age 10, just as the war was ending. At this time the miners of Chopwell (and all the working people across the country who had sacrificed so much to the war) deserved the peace, education and prosperity they had been promised and expected. Instead, when the nine-day General Strike was called on May 4th 1926, Chopwell's miners had already been out for a year in a dispute that began over wage cuts and working hours.

86 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

When he died in 1924 Alfred would have been surrounded by bitterness and hardship, but also the sense of hope and solidarity as his community led the struggle against oppression.

The song hears him tell our generation about his community’s struggle in 1926, from the grave.

Chopwell Miners Institute had a Reading Room, set up and run by their own community to enable them to gain an education, but the girls and boys and men and women involved in the struggle were uneducated and poor. The only weapon they had was to withdraw their labour, and suffer the consequences of increased poverty and hardship in their effort to secure a fair wage, working hours and conditions.

In Chopwell in 2017 a local Regeneration Group was established. Our aim is to work together as a village to identify our common goals and work together to achieve them. Since April 2017 the group has gained over 80 members, has developed a website (Chopwell.org), has a facebook page with 450 followers, has set up a Community Orchard, and is planning a bicycle repair course for unemployed people. And we have great plans for 2018 and beyond! The final part of the song see’s Alfred recognise and rejoice in this new sense of community action in his beloved Chopwell. These years we live in are as turbulent as those experienced by Alfred and his community, so we do well to listen and learn from their strength, fellowship and commitment to the cause of social justice and equality.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 87

Conscientious Objectors Phil Cochrane

Our Street 2: WEA Turbulent Times – The 1926 Miners’ Strike Tony Bulloch Education Co-ordinator WEA County Durham

“The purpose of this present board assembled here today is not to cast aspersions but let you have your say.

Explain why you remain content to skulk behind the lines avoid the chaos of the front and sample vintage wines.

Unperturbed whilst enemies, marauding evil Huns, crucify your comrades and ravish Belgian nuns.

Imagine if those tortured souls, deprived of virtue, life were people whom you loved the most, mother, sister, wife?

Surely then your blood would boil in righteous indignation overwhelm your principles with thoughts of swift castration?”

“I fear I am an only child my mother, she’s long dead, as to my wife I must confess we sleep in separate beds.

I did once have an Auntie Lil, a woman quite morose, she seldom sent a birthday card so we were never close.

I don’t dispute the tragedy

88 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

of blood that has been spilled, the futile slaughtered sacrifice, the mass graves freshly filled.

I’ve never been an orator, in ethics I’m not skilled, the simple truth is, gentlemen, I object to getting killed.

And that remains my sole defence, no need to be pretentious, in seeking to achieve this aim I’ve been most conscientious.”

“Bravo! It makes a pleasant change to hear unvarnished truth, what circumstance untimely plucked the flower of our youth: to have confirmed this genocide, this mass desanguination, has never been a policy but pure self-preservation!

We’ve had our fill of bleeding hearts and arms and legs and guts, the endless whine of mealy mouths, excuses, ifs and buts: se we commend your honesty, relieved you’ve not been vague, case dismissed, you’re free to go Field Marshall Douglas Haig.”

Photo: Michelle Lindsay-Baharie

Set against the backdrop of the 1926 miners’ strike and not long before Christmas, the pickets largely comprise of the original characters in the first Our Street performance. It was a case of ‘here we go again’. Suffering little or no capacity to eat, heat homes or remotely enjoy any forms of a decent standard of living, ‘our street’ were facing extremes last experienced during the first world war. Add to that the difficulties now further endured, both physical and emotional, our street and the mine workers want more then low incomes and little prospect of change. We find ourselves in a bleak stand-off with the greedy, self-aggrandising and assured pomposity of the rich and powerful mine owners, most

notably ‘Joicey’. WEA ‘Turbulent Times’ and WEA Durham combine to present the next chapter of Our Street.

Once again, this opportunity presented another challenge to our WEA drama group in Stanley, County Durham. Adversity and challenge can be an on-going part of the life of an adult with learning difficulties and also that of the aspiring actor. This time though it was different. We had two similar groups embarking on this exciting journey. We were joined by the WEA and Eboney film making class in nearby Blackhill.

Once again, they triumphed. Our WEA tutors, partners in Durham County Council Pathways &

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 89

Eboney day care, all the support staff and families, all at the Stanley Venue, Beamish Museum, Alun Armstrong theatre, The Time Bandits, medics, WEA sewing group and choir. The list is lengthy but so is the dedication, patience, support, kindness and unstoppable focus from literally everyone involved to overcome all and any challenges, even the inclement weather, to perform not one but three superb productions!!

All brilliant. Too many names to mention but even then, that would still not do justice to everyone involved at every level. No accolades or words could truly convey the amazing contributions made nor the events unfolding by all.

This opportunity presented another challenge to our WEA drama group in Stanley, County Durham. Adversity and challenge can be an on-going part of the life of an adult with learning difficulties and also that of the aspiring actor. ... We had two similar groups embarking on this exciting journey.

We were joined by the WEA and Eboney film making class in nearby Blackhill.

Once again, they triumphed.

90 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Photos: Jude Murphy

Alun Armstrong Theatre October 2017 Under the watchful and nurturing eye of WEA tutor Michelle Lindsay-Baharie, here we were again at the wonderful theatre where we performed so magnificently only a year or so to the day.

How could we ever beat that? We couldn’t but we could continue. Another packed house.

Beamish Museum December 2017 This was different... a sort of street theatre experience. Paying members of the public visiting the open air museum were given the prospect of witnessing a unique and ‘one off ’ performance in the masonic hall, a popular attraction. Sean stepped in last minute to cover a main part as once again adversity was overcome and the group delivered a compelling and powerful show. Beamish Museum’s James Barton commented, ‘It was fantastic to have the piece come to Beamish and deliver such an important topical and cultural message to our visitors. The piece and Beamish seemed to go

hand in hand together and it was wonderful to work with a different community group to bring alive the history and culture of the North East.’

A fantastic performance by the WEA staff choir during the break also elicited their mentor Judith Murphy to add “We were privileged to be able to sing Tommy Armstrong’s ‘Durham strike’ in such an appropriate context. We were proud to share the stage with such a wonderful group of seasoned performers”

St Marys Church, Blackhill December 2017

Tears, Tatties and Telegrams

Diane Howe from Pathways commented “WEA drama has offered a bespoke platform for students with complex needs to excel in a collaborative supportive environment, those with reduced literacy skills have received personcentred support to bring a touch of magic and a little bit of themselves to the performances which have ultimately left audiences captivated.”

WEA tutor Graham Smith and support Amanda Davison along with our partners at Eboney in Leadgate showcased the excellent DVD produced on location at Blackhill and Beamish museum.

Depth, integrity and brilliant film making highlighted the struggle along with that of female emancipation too which complemented the actor’s creative talents. Eboney’s Stuart Thompson commented “This was a real team effort where everyone worked so well together from developing the script, filming and acting the scenes and sourcing the costumes.. producing a DVD with an amazing and impressive insight into a bygone era. I am so proud of everyone”

Our lives were further enriched and we were so much more enlightened by portraying the continuing struggles that went before us.

The overall feelings of everything achieved and yet to be achieved are more stepping stones in the brilliant journeys everyone continues to make.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 91

Turbulent Times in Little Moscow, where “Precocious Lenins” are known to dwell.

Ronnie Stuart Chopwell, a pit village in (what was then) County Durham was tagged as one of Britain’s several 'Little Moscow' villages in the 1920s as a result of its strong support for the Communist Party. To this day it has streets named after Communist Party leaders. The term was coined as an insult by newspapers, but embraced as a term of pride by the labelled communities. It was also identified in the Morning Post on 15th June 1926 as “The Reddest village in England”. A place where “precocious Lenins dwell”.

Local school teacher Les Turnbull’s research for his booklet “Chopwell’s Story”, included a series of weekly sessions with villagers over the autumn/winter of 1977/78. He tells us that: “In 1913 the anarchist George Davidson bought Matt Caisley ’s shop in Der went Street and established a political club in Chopwell. It became the meeting place for a remarkable group of men, who in the 1920s were to become the political leaders of the community. The group included Vipond Millican Hardy, a confirmed atheist with a scorn for religion and religious people. He was regarded as scholarly, an authority on Darwin and a frequent lecturer on evolution. Harry Bolton was originally from Wales. He had been an active member of the Wesleyan Methodist Church until the coming of

92 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

the war, when he disagreed with the blind patriotism of his contemporaries who evoked God’s help in the brutal conflict. To Bolton the atrocities of the trenches were a crime against humanity, which all Christians should denounce.

He is remembered as an intelligent, independent thinking man; well read with an impressive library who held strong views on temperance and often spoke out on the evils of drink. Will Lowther, another pioneer came from a large Northumbrian family with a long histor y of active leadership in working class politics. His grandfather had been secretary of the militant Chartist organisation in Blyth in the 1830s.

These men, and others in the group differed in their personalities, religious beliefs and places of birth, but shared the view that if people cared sufficiently, and co-operated with one another in a determined effort, then society could be changed overnight. The idea of standing together, of solidarity, of fighting for what you maintain is your right, and settling for nothing else was fostered and ultimately it had the effect of binding the thinking and non- thinking members of the community together, and of making Chopwell people different ”.

Chopwell’s Miners Institute was built in 1910, using local bricks produced in Birtley. It was owned by the Consett Iron Company. Managed

jointly by the management and the men, every workman paid one penny a week as a condition of employment. It housed a large library, which was run by “old Harbottle” who had been injured at the pit. Les Turnbull tells us “Every socialist publication was there, from Marx to all the old Anarchist writers. Different speakers were paid to come to Chopwell, including many of the early socialists. It is said that Mr Imrie, the colliery manager and chairman of the Institute was to blame for the headway made with socialist ideas in Chopwell. When the big crack up came he was sacked and it just about killed him.

Image of local miners’ leaders in front of the Chopwell Banner, from the cover of Les Turnbull’s Chopwell Story, reproduced courtesy of Gateshead Libraries.

When the collieries were handed back to private businesses from public ownership in 1921 (after nationalisation during the war) the Consett Iron Company demanded a reduction in pay of 5 shillings per shift. The reason given was a depression in the British coal industry. The steel workers of Consett accepted the reduction, but the miners of Chopwell withdrew their labour for 4 months “until they were forced through destitution to submit. Ultimately they had to accept worse conditions that those originally offered”. However, they had learnt a valuable lesson, that they needed independent means to survive any future dispute with their bosses.

across the whole Durham coalfield. They were supported by the Durham Miners Association.

Their hand had been strengthened following the Blaydon Urban District Council elections of 6th April 1925, when the Labour Group secured 2/3 of the seats, and all 6 seats in Chopwell. The same poll elected the new Board of Guardians for the Gateshead Poor Law Union, with 31/36 positions going to Labour. One of their first acts was to adopt “substantially higher scales of relief ”, and controversially they included the provision that “in case of trades disputes the allowance to the wife will be increased to 27/- per week”. The purpose being to prevent the coal owners from “starving the miners into submission”. The lesson from 1921 had been learnt. Blaydon Councillors later refused to enrol volunteers, as directed by the national government Circular 636 during the General strike, since they “did not wish to be party to a strike–breaking scheme designed to assist the Iron Heel of Capitalism and bring disaster to our own class”. When they did return to work soon after the General Strike was called off after just 9 days they had won no concessions from the Company.

When the General Strike was called on the 3rd of May 1926 Chopwell had already been in dispute for nearly a year. A lockout of 4,500 men from 5 lodges including Chopwell had started on 22nd June 1925 when they refused to accept another set of detrimental conditions. The men saw their cause as a test case. They were fighting against the potential of a fair living wage being reduced

Footnote: The 1964 Durham County Development Plan classified Chopwell as a “Category D settlement” i.e. no further development would be permitted, and property would be acquired and demolished. The village is still here. An active Regeneration Group is attempting to revive a sense of community and pride.

Gateshead Council is currently in the process of developing an ambitious £1 million strategic plan aimed at regenerating the village.

There was also a well stocked reading room, with all sorts of periodicals – The Sphere, The Graphic, The London Illustrated News, Punch and engineering journals. It was a comfortable place, well patronised and well conducted, with dominoes, draughts and chess. The unwritten rule was that you had to be quiet. The same was true in the billiard room. The Caretaker was in charge and if he raised a finger you were out.”

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 93

DADA Chopwell Reading Room Workshop Participants This Dada art represents highly personal responses to our historical themes. It was produced as part of a special workshop led by Tommy Anderson which was the centrepiece of our May 2018 popup reading room events in Chopwell Community Centre. The use of photomontage, print and typographic techniques were accessible to all, enjoyable and rewarding. Dada was an art movement with an anarchic and provocative approach which powerfully reflected the turbulent times after the First World War. Our workshop participants felt that it has equal relevance to present day issues and the resulting pieces show a rich ‘then and now’ perspective.

The scene for the workshop was ably set by two community choirs, Chopwell’s Canny Chanters

94 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

(led by Bethany Elen Coyle) and Gosforth’s Come and Sing group (led by Jude Murphy). The Canny Chanters performed ‘Alfred’s Song’ by Ronnie Stuart, which is included in this book; while Come and Sing performed, ‘Beautiful Derwent Valley’ a song which represents the efforts of several generations of a Chopwell family: Joseph Walker, who wrote the original poem, his grandson Ray Urwin, who wrote an additional verse, Ray’s partner Julia Vince (also originally from Chopwell), who is part of the Come and Sing group, and Julia and Ray’s son Ethan, who set the poem to music.

Both the songs and the art formed an apt and inspiring portrait of life and protest in Chopwell over the past century.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 95

96 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 97

98 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 99

100 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 101

102 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 103

Hail The Conquering Hero

No Man’s Land Phil Cochrane

Phil Cochrane

The swelling should go down within the week; I'll say again I walked into a door: these aren't the sort of things of which we speak; these aren't the sort of things that we abhor.

I know I'm meant to feel forever blessed, my man came home, well half of him at least, I've no idea what happened to the rest, the boy I knew transformed into this beast.

No hero then but I could call him mine, that boy whose simple smile caressed my soul, whatever died when he went up the line seems lost to me and out of my control.

His duty's done now mine's to play the part of welcoming this stranger to my heart.

104 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Here they lie beneath the stones in serried ranks a thousand deep, no longer men but merely bones, here they lie beneath the stones.

The Browns, the Smiths, the Greens, the Jones, nameless now in orphaned sleep, here they lie beneath the stones in serried ranks a thousand deep.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 105

Aaron Ernest Gompertz Pacifist, politician and champion of the disadvantaged through turbulent times Tom Davie This quote exemplifies key themes of the Turbulent Times 1918–1928 project – achievement through adversity, progression with principles, a reshaping of British society at a time of considerable change.

Particularly it also typifies the life of Aaron Ernest Gompertz who achieved so much while dedicating a lot of this to the people of his adopted town of South Shields.

were that he was Jewish and held membership of the Non Conscription Fellowship and the Independent Labour Party (ILP). The Tribunal turned him down but he won his appeal and he was enlisted into the Non Combatant Corps (the NCC being a group of conscientious objectors that were often known by the derogatory idiom, ‘the non courage corps’).

As an ‘absolutist’, Ernie refused this form of military service too and as men in the NCC were regarded as soldiers he was court-martialled but consequently (and in contradiction to this prescribed military status) spent time from July 1916 to August 1918 in civilian prisons in Newcastle on [H1] Tyne, Wormwood Scrubs, Wandsworth, Pentonville, Leicester and Armley / Leeds. He was released on medical grounds and his treatment in jail led him to having to walk with crutches for several months after his release. One can only surmise that this was why he was called as an expert witness at a 1960 Parliamentary Commission exploring the use of corporal punishment in prisons.

Political beliefs and values Early life

Ernie Gompertz (left) holding a picture of Prime Minister Clement Attlee with South Shields MP James Chuter Ede to his right.

Photo: Newcastle Journal.

“I think you may agree that the public life, national or local, political or social is better for the rebel who is incorrigible and whom time never will alter.” 1

106 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Ernest (Ernie) Gompertz was born in Middlesbrough on 20 June 1887, the son of Samuel Aaron and Rebecca Gompertz (nee Cohen). He had one sister and four brothers (one of whom, Claude lived only one day, while another, Gabriel died at the age of 96). At the age of 12 he moved with his family to South Shields where his parents had previously lived. His father died in 1909 aged 50 but his mother survived until 1937 dying in Ohio USA at 71 years of age.

He became a shop manager and this was his occupation (as well as a member of the Shop Assistant Union) when, after being conscripted into the army in 1916, he claimed exemption from military service on the grounds of being a conscientious objector. His motivations for this

Ernie was influenced throughout his life by Keir Hardie, a man he met, and who like him was a pacifist opposed strongly to World War I. But Ernie’s stance for justice and equality took on many dimensions throughout his political life. As early as 1907, at the age of 20, he was successfully campaigning to Councillors in South Shields Town Hall for the appointment of a shop inspector to ensure fair wages and workers’ conditions. The Council appointed their first Shop Inspector that year. In 1912 he became Assistant Secretary of South Shields ILP but his tenure lasted only from January to March of that year. The cause of his premature departure remains a mystery.

The regional newspapers of the 1920s and 1930s record that the British Union of Fascists (BUF) regularly spoke and marched in towns and cities

in the North East. The movement fed on their hatred of immigrants (South Shields had a high Arabic population and many other people from across the world visited the town as seafarers) and that this was contributing to high unemployment in the region. There was also evidence of fascist sympathies within the business communities. Lord Runciman a renowned Tyneside ship owner (whose son Walter was President of the Board of Trade) had visited Italy in 1933 and on his return espoused his, “...strong plea for settling industrial disputes in the Mussolini way.” 2 In September 1934, Ernie made what the Newcastle Journal described as an, “eloquent speech” 3 opposing right-wing Borough councillors’ attempts to offer council contracts to German firms who supported Nazi ideologies. Earlier, in March of the same year, in South Shields market place (an unofficial ‘speakers corner’) he was arrested, by a Senior police officer sent to observe the speech, which made claims that fascists were operating in the South Shields area. His crime (later dropped on appeal) was deemed as ‘Disturbing the Peace’.

His defence made the case that Ernie had, “Safeguarded the rights of free speech and liberty.” It is somewhat paradoxical that at his funeral, thirty four years later the Chief Constable and Acting Chief Constable of the River Tyne Police attended along with representatives of the South Shields Magistrates Courts; such changing times.

The South Shields Trades Council (SSTC) regularly held anti-fascist meetings and also made public their distaste that groups and individuals could espouse their racist beliefs so blatantly. Wilhelm Hacker, a German sailor who lived in South Shields, was prone to march down the streets giving ‘Heil Hitler’ salutes and was imprisoned for one month for disturbing the peace. As an SSTC member, Ernie pressed the authorities to deport Hacker, arguing that it was shameful that someone with such views could be allowed to remain in the UK while Germans escaping Nazi persecution were being denied entry into the British Isles as refugees. William

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 107

Joyce (the notorious Lord Haw Haw who broadcast in World War 2 from Germany) during one public speech in South Shields became confused and angered by what he later described to the press as a, “Jewish Heckler ”. The Newcastle Evening Chronicle doesn’t state that it was Ernie but his stance in those turbulent times suggests it might well have been.

In 1928 (a year after being elected to South Shields Council) he became Agent for the Labour parliamentary candidate James Chuter Ede (an Epsom born man educated at the University of Cambridge) for eight general elections including successes in 1929 and the continuous representation of the town by the same MP between 1935 and 1964. Ernie unlike Chute as the regional press described, ‘didn’t stay the distance’ and was voted out of his role as Agent in 1960, his modest farewell being, “goodbye Comrades”.

In his varied political service he nevertheless sat on many and varied council committees including the Electrical and Ratings Committees.

As Chairman of the Council Finance Committee he successfully fought against national attempts to have individual departments taxed for services they provided, rather than the whole Council collectively. He protested in the 1950s in his role on the Housing Committee at the selling off of

council owned property which he believed should be lived in by those who could not afford to buy or privately rent.

His honesty and caustic views sometimes led him to criticise institutions and others whose beliefs he would normally (at least in principal) have supported. For example as a member of the Tyne Improvement Committee he was overheard criticising the National Coal Board and retorting, “...give us back the old coal owners.” 4 He also used his tenure to vocally criticise national government policy and this was typified in his comments about the1934 Unemployment Bill stating in Council that, “As a national not local charge this council protests against the actions of the Government in refusing to embody the principle of the Unemployment Bill now before Parliament.” 5 The Bill did become an Act of Parliament that year. Its main principle, which Ernie had argued for, was that the Government should be responsible for supporting the long term unemployed with personal face to face assistance in finding them appropriate work. A precursor to the modern day Job Centres.

Ernie’s principles led him to standing down as Alderman (a post he held from 1948 to 1951) in order to [successfully] fight for a Council seat at Horsley Hill but he later became Mayor of the Borough in 1953. In 1968 he became a Freeman of South Shields, “...in recognition of the eminent services rendered to the Borough.” 6 In the same year he was also awarded a ‘trophy’ for services to the Labour Party. Typically he accepted the honour but then returned it and asked that it be awarded within the town’s schools to a pupil who had achieved success in, “musical attainment”.

Personal life

Aaron Gompertz with Prime Minister Clement Attlee Photo: Shields Gazette

108 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Ernie married Annie (nee Thompson) in Carlisle in 1923 but had no children. She died on the 3 January 1967. Gompy (as he was affectionately known, to family and friends) himself died on 5

April 1968. The Shields Gazette obituar y described him as someone, “modest in his private life, who shunned money, who liked to spend a quiet holiday in the Northumberland countryside and was...respected for his honesty and integrity.” 7 Ernie was a teetotal, non-smoking, vegetarian and, and by consideration of the fact that he was a member of the Humanist Society and had a humanist funeral, possibly an atheist or at least agnostic. He was a member of the Rationalist Press Association, which from its formation in 1885 and still today is, ‘...promoting reason, science and humanism and standing up to irrationalism and religious intolerance...’

Considering Ernie believed in a regional and national press that should be a watchdog of the public view and in being honest in its own reporting standards it is ironic that he met the comedian Norman Wisdom in South Shields who was making a film in 1959 entitled, ‘Press for Time’, about a journalist ’hack’ who was unprincipled in his reporting of stories. The film is based in the fictitious town of Tinmouth (a name not to dissimilar to Tynemouth).

of fashion which decreed that turn ups must be worn. Now I have the perfect retort when accused of being a crank in the sartorial matter which so far has proved unanswerable.” 8 One can only assume that the people of South Shields accepted this man in his lifetime and held him in such high regard despite his imprisonment for his pacifist views, because of his integrity, of his consistent political and moral principles.

His legacy then and today His views did not hinder him from taking part in a broad range of public activities and engagements.

As Mayor of South Shields he attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, but in a touch of irony for his conscientious objector past and lifelong pacifist views, his seat at the ceremony in Westminster Abbey was directly in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior.

Residents walking through the residential area of Gompertz Gardens in South Shields today may not know of the contribution Ernie made to the town they live in and his determination to seek social justice in such turbulent times.

His humour can be observed too. When a few weeks later the new Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited the South Shields Borough he noted that the latter despite the fashion of the time, had no turn-ups on his trousers. Ernie was heard to exclaim, “All my life I have not only been a teetotaller and non-smoker but a deifier

“He had suffered social ostracism because of his hatred of war and he spurned patronage of any kind. A humane man, he loved children, cared for the old and infirm and was prepared to do battle for the defenceless and troubled and in want.” 9

Photo: southtynesideimages.org.uk

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 109

The Ballad of Philip Brown and Thomas Kenny

Memories Of A Coal Miner Maria Hawthorne

Ann Alexander Chorus: Save yourself Tommy, go on without me Get yourself back to the British lines I’m badly wounded, don’t carry me further Save yourself Tommy, there’ll be better times.

Philip from Kent was a good scholar History at Oxford, degree first class Could have gone on to fame and fortune Preferred to teach men from the working class Tommy he was an everyday miner Hewing the coal in the Durham mines They met in the trenches in 1915 In that wasteful war which took so many lives Out on patrol, one fog-laden night The German guns fired and Philip went down Tommy carried him faithfully, more than an hour While the guns fired mercilessly, on and on At the British Headquarters, as Philip lay dying He smiled up at Tommy, his friend to the last ‘Well Tommy, you’re a hero,’ Philip said to him Then sadly he died, another life lost Tommy got the VC, a well deserved honour Philip’s story is told among us today Let’s remember these men, both of them heroes Yes, both of them heroes In their own special way

With acknowledgements to Terry Wiley who wrote and drew the graphic account of this event, and to the members of the WEA, especially Lena Rodgers and Nigel Todd, who did the research.

Also thanks to Gerry Vincent, Philip Brown’s great niece, for her help.

110 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

It was in 1926 they tried to cut our wages And prolong the working day – despite the human price.

A million men locked out, the miners stood defiant For all to emulate their sacrifice.

Chorus Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day.

That’s our cry and that’s what we’ll achieve.

Pits and jobs, they will not axe Scabs and blacklegs watch your backs!

In our solidarity I must believe.

So, no buses, trains or trams, as 2 million men stopped working.

The dockyards silent fell – no ships, no power, no coals.

The ruling class we’d cripple, and show that bloody Churchill We weren’t rats to be sent back down our holes!

Chorus But on the streets came tanks and guns, and soldiers of the army With volunteers and specials, all combined the strike to beat, And our traitorous union leaders, conspired with coal owners To sign a deal that guaranteed defeat.

Chorus And the miners stood alone, through 9 months of starvation Condemned by church and state, told that striking was a sin.

But as we drifted back to work, in the shadows of resentment The spirit of insurgence lived within.

Chorus That was 60 years ago – I’ve seen life come full circle.

The miners once again are left to fight alone.

The spectre of the past now haunts our sons and daughters But the winds of change some fruitful seeds have blown.

Chorus

Commentary Inspiration for this came from the slogan of the time – ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day ’. Also from the infamous quote of Churchill when referring to the miners – ‘we need to send these rats back down their holes’. I guess you’d expect that from the creator the Black and Tans though. 1926 was the year my Dad started work, and with much of the family still back in Ireland, the anger expressed in the song is still rather raw and personal. But I tried to keep it upbeat, as I didn’t want to write another lament. The miners were completely betrayed by the whole country, even their own union, and unbelievably it all happened again. I hope the song captures the fighting spirit and the camaraderie of the mining communities. I didn’t know about the Church – it was the Catholic Church that denounced the strike as ‘sinful’ apparently! I was quite appalled to read that – maybe that was just in England though? But even the old miners would praise Churchill as a good leader during the war, so nothing is ever truly black and white and no- one truly evil (though some come very close).

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 111

Philip Anthony Brown & The Half-Shilling Curate Sarah Reay

As we approach the final year of remembering the 100th Anniversary of the Great War, it is time to give some thought and recognition to the Army Chaplains who ser ved so quietly and gallantly throughout the war.

In relation to the North East and the story of Lieutenant Philip Anthony Brown of the 13th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantr y, we remember his Army Chaplain, the Rev. Herbert Butler Cowl M.C..

Herbert Cowl was born and educated in Headingley, Yorkshire – the son of a Wesleyan Methodist Minister.

Prior to the war, Methodist churches in the North East of England had experienced a period of sustained growth and had been very well attended so it was a natural choice for the army to choose a Wesleyan padre for the 68th Brigade. Before 1914 the church had played a major role in the social life of North East communities.

As Philip Anthony Brown wrote home to his mother about those early days serving in France and Flanders, his padre was also writing home to his mother. They shared the same experiences as they approached the frontlines close to Armentières. Herbert wrote home to his parents:

112 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

I stand in the darkness; watch the probing searchlights flicker on to the clouds and hear those grim far off voices speaking death. It is a new sound; it is another world; and it calls to unprecedented scenes and experiences. God grant as we march into it all, that there may arise a man in me that is sufficient to this new occasion!

Herbert was one of the youngest chaplains to go out to France in 1915. Both Herbert and Philip were born in 1886. Although from different backgrounds, they shared similar interests in literature and their values in reaching out to the hard working-class men of the North East who had volunteered to ser ve in the British Expeditionary Force.

Lieutenant Philip Anthony Brown was killed in action on 4 November 1915. His obser ver / escort, Private Thomas Kenny was awarded the Victoria Cross for his part in carr ying the wounded Lieutenant back to a British ditch before stretcher bearers retrieved him. However, Lieutenant Brown died of his wounds before he reached the dressing station.

Philip Anthony Brown’s Army Chaplain, Rev. Cowl wrote home to his parents describing the scene of one of the first burials at the front.

Lieutenant Brown was the first Battalion casualty when they reached the frontline. Note that Rev. Cowl used the word ‘sergeant’ in this account, but research shows there was no sergeant who was killed in the brigade in the month of November 1915. Herbert’s descriptive account could be the only one detailing the funeral of Philip Anthony Brown: “It was a strange service. I wish you could see that little burial-place: an old village orchard, in whose trees the birds sang morning and evening as if by choice. There were a few flowers in the grass, and long trails of crimson creeper hung from the cottage walls on two sides. Even while the firing party took their places by the graveside, two great shells came screaming into the

Some Army Chaplains were beginning to write about their wartime memoirs, but Herbert had no intention of writing about his personal story and he certainly saw himself as no hero. One hundred years on and his granddaughter would disagree. adjoining garden, and burst with an angry crash.

The men must lie down under the nearest wall: and even as I stood there reading the service, every British gun in the fields behind chose the time to talk back to the German gunners. Yet, for all the hellish din of the moments, the peace of that laying-by seemed unbroken: and when his comrades had gathered from the shattered gardens around a handful of flowers, and placed them on the upturned soil; one felt that there was something triumphant about the passing of the Sergeant.”

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 113

with the repatriation of thousands of soldiers and sailors returning from war. His new role was to continue until September 1919.

Some Army Chaplains were beginning to write about their wartime memoirs, but Herbert had no intention of writing about his personal story and he certainly saw himself as no hero. One hundred years on and his granddaughter would disagree.

Five days later the padre’s time on the Western Front was to come to an abrupt end. He was seriously wounded by shrapnel during a heavy German bombardment of the frontline.

Herbert Cowl was one of the lucky ones – he survived. The brigade doctor, Philip Gosse wrote to his father: “He will be badly missed by his men who seemed to admire him: as he was not only their chaplain but also their friend, and spent hours with them in the trenches, instead of living in safety and comfort further back.”

Following his departure from the Royal Army Chaplains Department in 1919, Herbert moved to Gloucestershire and became a School Chaplain. His role changed again – now he had to help in the healing process of a school which had been ravaged and broken by the consequences of a four year war.

The full story of Herbert Cowl, Army Chaplain is told by his granddaughter in the book; The HalfShilling Curate, A personal account of war& faith 1914 – 1918.

Eight days later, Herbert Cowl found himself on the ill-fated hospital ship, Anglia. Herbert’s heroic actions on the Anglia resulted in him being awarded the Military Cross Medal for his exemplary gallantry. He became the only known Army Chaplain to be awarded the Military Cross Medal for his actions on a ship during the entire war.

114 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Ceinwen Haydon Doris thought she’d burst when she got the telegram. Ernest was coming home and she couldn’t sit still. She leaded the range, springcleaned all four rooms of their Tyneside flat and finished by scrubbing the front step and painting it fresh with Cardinal Red. She couldn’t believe how lucky they were; so many had fallen.

When the day of his homecoming dawned, she wanted to look her best. She brushed her hair, pressed her best skirt and shook out the highnecked cotton lawn blouse she’d worn on her wedding day. Finally, she pinned a cameo brooch on the frill at her throat. His mother, Bella, had given it to her as she lay dying. Doris had nursed Bella to the end and in her last hours she’d promised her that Ernest would always come first.

It was unseasonably warm and sunny. As Doris paced about waiting, she imagined snuggling up in bed that night. She would make him feel like a king, nothing would be too much trouble, it had been so long. She dared to think of the baby that might follow. At thirty-eight-years-old she might still catch. 1919 would be brand new, a good year to celebrate.

In 1918 Herbert was sent to the Portsmouth Garrison in Hampshire to continue his work as an Army Chaplain. Due to his injuries at the end of 1915, he was never fit enough to return to active service overseas. Being seriously wounded, he could have resigned his commission as an Army Chaplain, but his strong sense of duty meant that he had to continue his work.

By November 1918 the war was over. However, there was a new role emerging for Herbert Cowl.

He was asked to stay-on at Portsmouth to help

Two of the Lucky Ones

He started to push past her and wobbled; he grabbed her arm roughly to steady himself. She tried to kiss his beery mouth and smelt cheap cologne. She saw lipstick on his greasy collar. He pulled away sharply. She continued to smile, ‘Thank God you are home, Ernest. I’d all but given you up, love.’

‘Aye, and you’d best do just that. I’ve nothing left for you.’

She watched the thin, trembling figure limp upstairs. His trousers were soaked. He’d never been a drinker before. When he’d stopped banging around, she stowed his heavy kit bag under the table to sort out in the morning.

On his first night home, she lay in the box room on Bella’s old bed. In the dead of night, Doris heard the church bells chime three o’clock. In this witching hour, Bella’s reedy voice whispered in her ear, ‘He’s nothing left for you, he’s nothing left for you. Damn you, if you forget your promise.’

The daylight leeched out of the sky as the moon rose. Surely, he wouldn’t be much longer? At eleven o’clock she sank down on a chair at the kitchen table and rested her head on her arms.

She must have nodded off because she nearly jumped out of her skin when the front door slammed to. Her heart hammered as she stood up and turned to face her husband.

Images from Sarah Reay’s personal collection

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 115

There wasn't much else to say.

Meals had been getting smaller lately so it didn't surprise Alan to hear there would no tea, but it was surprising to be told not to bother going home.

Soup Kitchen Susan Hathaway

Drawings by Susan Hathaway

'Mam says not to go home for tea today.’

Alan swung his legs over the branch and looked down at Doris, contemplating how well she blended into the landscape.

From up here, her shoes, her coat, and her hair, all matched the mousy brown mud and remaining vegetation.

Even her salvage wool tam blended in.

Alan recalled only too well how Doris had pulled back a pile of their outgrown socks after Christmas, winding hoops of crinkly wool around the washboard legs, and tying them at each end to stay wound when she slipped them off the board.

Then she'd soaked all the hanks in cold soapy water overnight, and tied them to the washing line in the back yard to drip.

Mam let Doris use her soap from the saucer on the window sill - the fancy Lux smelled so much better than the green household Fairy bar in the

116 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

laundry tin.

Alan had rejoiced in the sink being full of wool for a night. He got out of washing, a chore at best. But bone-chilling in winter.

It had taken all weekend and despite using Lux, the musty, oily smell of the damp skeins had lingered in the scullery for days as they slowly dried, looped over the ends of the clothes pulley.

Alan had been pressed into action for hours, holding the yarn across outstretched hands as Doris wound it into dainty balls about her thumb. The drab little cakes of khakis and greys fed out from the thumbhole with only a hint of their previous working showing in occasional kinks.

Night after night, Alan silently marvelled as Doris's nimble fingers flicked and clicked across 5 needles, turning their redundant socks into a fashionable striped affair. She featured some bright grassy green, and teal, using two cards of

darning wool she'd found on clearance with her birthday money, and topped it off with a pom pom the diameter of a penny, in all the shades of the hat.

Looking down from the tree, Alan could see how well the colours worked together, and blended into the grass about.

Unintended camouflage.

A final flurry of rusty leaves bowled past below her. Throughout the beech tree silken lime frills were squeezing from scaly buds, ejecting last year's wizened leaves.

stared at her feet on the worn grass. She pushed her hands deep into her coat pockets, shielding her chilblains from the Siberian gusts blowing up from The Bents, and waited for the penny to drop.

It was only a couple of minutes before her patience was exhausted. Her feet were damp and numb, and her nose was raw from wiping.

She ached for a warm fireside.

'We have to go up to the hall instead.’

This was new.

Alan sat up and took notice.

The gnawing ache where his lunchtime bread sandwich had expired sat up and showed interest too.

He lowered his eyebrows as quickly as they had gone up.

'Why’s that then?

He'd settle for satisfying his curiosity if nothing else. A trip to the hall would be interesting ,- he'd never been inside before - and it looked onto the cricket pitch. Maybe he could watch them practice – they usually started about now – and he liked watching the bowlers so he could copy them in the back lane. Next year he would be able to try for the Junior 11, and he wanted to be good enough by then.

'Mam says Ms Barnes is giving us tea today.’

Alan dropped down from his perch, landing crouched by Doris's feet.

Her tight brown shoes were shiny on top, polish pressed and buffed over the scuffs. Alan took note and marched over to the pond, stooping to scoop the duck water. 'I’d better wash my hands then...’

High time he replied.

'Oh?’ There wasn't much else to say. Meals had been getting smaller lately so it didn't surprise Alan to hear there would no tea, but it was surprising to be told not to bother going home.

That was harsh.

'Yes.’ Doris leaned her back against steely bark and

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 117

Managing the Bloodless Wound – Post 1917 Gareth Rees

account of life in the trenches by Walter Galloway from Cassop colliery: ‘The weather is very cold, and it is very monotonous in the trenches day in and day out and there is nothing but the continuous rattle of the guns both day and night. We cannot get much sleep as we have to be constantly on watch especially at night time. It was raining part of the time we were in the trenches and I can tell you things were a bit thick – up to the knees in mud and the enemy firing all the time at you when you are bailing out the water. The only thing for it – stick it to the end’.

The photos below illustrate some conditions.

Throughout the time of the Great War there were increasing concerns over the number of casualties that were being inflicted on all nations involved. Precise figures vary. ‘No one knows how many soldiers were wounded in the war, but a possible figure is 21 million’.1

Most people’s idea of casualties in WW1 were men who had bullet wounds, shrapnel wounds, broken limbs and a whole concoction of these too horrible to describe. The photos below illustrate these.

How soldiers were treated?

Another account of the horrors experienced and suffered by these soldiers is given regarding Private James Henry Fox who was a reservist working at the patent coke ovens at New Brancepeth and was one of the first units of the British Expeditionary Force sent to France. ‘He saw considerable fighting and following 23 successive days in the trenches near Armentieres fell a victim of frostbite and other ailments and was invalided home, where he died from pneumonia last week’ – January 1915. 3 Amongst these wounds there was a ‘bloodless wound’ that gradually appeared through the war which gave concern to many. This was called ‘Shell Shock’. It took many forms – soldiers being ner vous, staring blankly into space, holding their heads in the hands when shells exploded. York describes a scene:

Image courtesy of IWM

The Wounds

‘On 21 January 1915 (at Hooge) owing to the wet and waterlogged ground a dugout collapsed and trapped Private Henry Burn, a West Hartlepool man; although they dug him out as fast as they could, sadly by the time the rescuers reached him he was dead.’

Image courtesy of IWM

First at a regimental aid post which was located in many trenches. Secondly at a casualty clearing station which was in a safe area. Thirdly after initial care taken to a hospital centre again in a safe area.

‘Shellshock manifested itself as panic, staring, a lack of reasoning, not be able to sleep or walk and in some cases, soldiers simply wanting to run away.’4

From here many men were sent back to the front if they were deemed fit for active duty. Those who were more seriously hurt were returned to United Kingdom by ship and hospital train.

Image courtesy of IWM

Image courtesy of IWM

Regardless of the type of wound the soldiers were treated in the same manner.

118 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Conditions that soldiers experienced The conditions that soldiers lived and fought in were horrendous. Sheens book 2 gives an

Again, taken from Sheen’s book ‘this description of an incident highlights the horror of the trenches: Image courtesy of IWM

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 119

Shell Shock (The Bloodless Wound) was not recognised as an injury at the beginning of WW1. It was only when strange behaviours were being recognised with the troops that concern grew.

‘Officially, shell shock was unnamed and invisible – effectively it did not exist – until the Army authorities recognized it was a potential threat to military manpower in early 1915.

Those cases that existed before the term ‘shell shock’ was recognized were treated as concussion, head or brain injuries, as were many after that time’.5

Research indicates two references to the Infectious Ward (previously the isolation ward) where it is considered that soldiers with shell shock were accommodated.

Homeward Bound Research at the Imperial war Museum (February 2018) illustrated a number of issues regarding the Hospital trains. Original plan indicates a number of carriages for transporting troops.

Note here that there are no numbers of troops carried and no mention of soldiers with ‘Shell Shock’. There is however indication of stretcher cases and room for sitting patients. Included in the plan is an isolation ward.

Image courtesy of IWM

It was the conditions in the trenches that the soldiers experienced that contributed to this invisible bloodless wound. However, Leeses indicates that the army, at first, would not recognise this condition.

Train Carrying Capacity was in 1915 160 troops lying and 90 sitting. In 1916 increased to 236 lying and 144 sitting. This reflects the increase in number of injured troops to be taken home. Also note that the Isolation Ward has been changed to ‘Infectious Coach’. All trains were numbered sequentially but there was no ‘Hospital Thirteen Train’. Photographs of the train are very clean and sterile.

Image courtesy of IWM

Reference here to ‘mental cases and bars being put on the lights yet no locks to be put on the doors. The conditions in these hospital trains was horrendous. These are described by:

Some salvation for the soldiers came from Dr Charles Samuel Myers who was commissioned as a captain.

‘While he was at Le Touquet, three soldiers were brought suffering from various forms of war neurosis. As someone who had devoted his life to the study of the mind, he was the obvious doctor to treat these cases. He later wrote it was clear to me that my previous psychological training and my present interests fitted me for the treatment of these cases’.6

Image courtesy of IWM

It soon became obvious that these soldiers needed treatment away from the war front. As early as 1913 transporting severely injured soldiers by train and boat had been considered.

Image courtesy of IWM Image courtesy of IWM

120 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Jean Emily Harstone an American nurse on a hospital train from Etaples France 6th March 1917.

Image courtesy of IWM

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 121

“They began to fill my car and as they slid the stretchers in the dim light of the ambulance reached their features; they were worn and weary and marked with pain, yet they smiled. I returned for my next load, wondering how they could endure such pain so patiently and cheerfully. For a time, I watched the sitting cases leave the train, dazed, blood soaked, men once strong fighters, now worn, weary, stunned, bewildered, sad yet glad. Old men and young boys, once laughter loving and full of the joyous excitement of life helping one another as best they could, their bandages dragging in the dirt, clothes ragged and rolled in blood, they were like helpless children, these strong men who had been through hell for the sake of freedom.” 7 The Ambulance Trains travelled to England as indicated by Millard: ‘The main port of arrival for war invalids was Southampton, although some came through Dover and other ports. Initially the wounded were mostly conveyed to hospitals in London and the Home counties, but as the number of casualties increased it became necessary to distribute them throughout the country, which meant that the ambulance trains began to make journeys as far north as Scotland.’ 8

Men treated at Winterton include Private William Armstrong who was reported being wounded in action on the 21st April 1915. William was suffering badly from Shell Shock and died in Sedgefield Lunatic Asylum on 22nd February 1917.10

Image courtesy of IWM

Today all that remains in the grounds of the Mental Asylum is the former St Luke’s chapel which is now a private gymnasium.

Men arrived home in the North East – Darlington, Middlesbrough and Newcastle. Many of those with ‘Shell Shock’, an unexplained bloodless wound ended up in the local Mental Asylum – Winterton Hospital in Sedgefield, County Durham.

This was a large Asylum opened April 1858.9

Photos: Gareth Rees

Photo: Gareth Rees

The rest of the area is a private housing estate. It is interesting to note that outside the chapel is a memorial dedicated to military personnel who died ‘Behind These Walls’ – a similar title to the book used in this work.

122 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

“How many shell shock victims died ‘Behind These Walls’ of Winterton hospital is unknown. Today there is a fitting memorial not only to local soldiers but also foreign soldiers who died ‘Behind These Walls.’ All that remains of the hospital is the hospital chapel which is now privately owned.”

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 123

Nearby on the Ferry Hill road is a small cemetery which contains a number of graves. Most of them are in a bad state of repair but there is one which is in good condition. It is easily recognised as it has a Belgium Flag / Logo on its top.

Contact with the Belgian War Museum in Brussels gave me the similar information as is noted by Johnston & Boorman. 11 ‘Pieter had been badly wounded trying to stop the German invasion of his country in November 1914 and then had been evacuated to Britain.

Via a number of hospitals in the London area; he ended up in Winterton Asylum but was well enough to work at the Belgian munitions factory in Birtley. Pieter died in Winterton on January 19th, 1918 of ‘General paralysis of the insane.’

This is a delicate term for syphilis, which drove its victims increasingly mad.

The impact on families is seen in the following account that I received while undertaking research for this project.

Photo: Gareth Rees

The person buried there is called Pieter Vermote who was a Belgian Soldier.

‘I am mailing in connection with your letter regarding WW1 soldiers and Winterton Hospital, which appeared in the Sedgefield News. My Uncle; Arthur Pratt 1898-1971, was a sufferer from Shell Shock. He was born in Willington, Co. Durham 22 March 1898 and at the start of WW1 would have been only 16 years old. He served with the Royal Garrison Artillery as a Gunner, Service Number 189132. Unfortunately, his service records are not available, so I do not know for how long he served. He was affected by Shell Shock to varying degrees throughout the rest of the life.

He worked at Brancepeth Colliery near Willington and in the 1939 Register is shown as a weigh clerk. I can remember him from about 1953 onwards and at that time his work was as a part time cleaner in the offices there.

Image courtesy of IWM

124 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

I know he was an in-patient at Winterton for some time before 1953, but I do not know for how long. He came home at some point; was looked after by his mother and after she died his sister. He never married. His illness took the form of talking to himself and being unable to conduct a conversation without lapsing at regular intervals. At least that was the outward sign.

After the sacrifice of WW1 men returned home to a society where some male and female roles had changed. As the men were at war away from home it became essential that women took over many of the tasks that men did prior to the war. An uncertain future had begun.

The Future

Towards the end of the 1950’s his illness became much worse and eventually, as a voluntary patient, was admitted to Holywood Hall Hospital, Wolsingham where he remained for the rest of his life. I cannot remember attending his funeral, so I think this may have been carried out at the Hospital.’

This was 1919 and the Establishment and the country were shaken by the core. The country faced widespread unemployment and food shortage. When the soldiers and police joined in, it got the politicians shaking and that shows you how bad it was’.13

David Pratt Sedgefield

The demobbed soldiers returned to their towns and villages in the North East. Here they found how things had changed in their absence.

Stock and Burrell tell us, ‘Many thousands of women had taken up working roles during the war years and although it never really affected the Sherburn area, the authorities saw women in employments as a major obstacle in finding returning soldiers work’.

There were a lot of widows from the war and this is again highlighted by Stock and Burrell ‘The boom in marriages during 1919 was twofold; love did play a part, but moreover, especially in the villages dependence on one industr y necessity dictated the terms. The County was full of widows and fatherless children and whilst benefits and pensions did put finance into the purse, the security of a working husband was a status few women in the colliery villages could do without.’ 12 Another view of the national situation was indicated on the internet site It’s History: ‘After the First World War the promise of the Prime Minister David Lloyd George was ‘A land fit for heroes’. The reality was a major industrial chaos with disruptive strikes. Soldiers decided to form their own union with demands of demobilisation, better food, equipment and housing. The country was heading towards a revolution. Even the police joined in the strike and stopped guarding 10 Downing Street.

What was to follow probably changed the ‘social fabric’ of our society for many years. This will be covered by other contributors to this journal.

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 125

Lynemouth: Ashington Coal Company’s Model Town Liz O’Donnell In 1921, at the end of a three month long miners’ strike, a Daily Express article, ‘Mr and Mrs Miner at Home’, was reprinted in The Ashington Collieries Magazine. 1 Describing pitmen as ‘strange and peculiar’ beings, the ‘most abused [workers] in the country’, it claimed that their living conditions were truly appalling. ‘Has any one ever tried humanising mining villages as a possible remedy for strife in the mining industry?’ asked the author.

The Ashington Coal Company [ACC], which had begun publishing the magazine as a vehicle for its welfare policies earlier that year, might well have been answering the question with a resounding ‘yes!’ Plans ‘to alter the face of the land by the erection of what might be termed a model village’ on land owned by an allied company, Milburn Estates, at Lynemouth, a few miles northeast of Ashington and near to the collier y at Ellington, were already in the pipeline.2 By 1926 the population had swelled

from 22 in four houses to 2,000 in 520 dwellings, with even more scheduled. Devised as ‘the realized dreams of our political idealists…ideal homes set in a town designed to aid progress towards better ideals, a healthier race’, with ‘[b]road sweeping roads, wide footpaths, open spaces and gardens… avenues of trees’, it was little wonder that the company was eager to showcase the village when VIPs like the Duke of York visited the area.3 Isobel Wyness’s father had to cycle to work at Ellington pit every day from their colliery house in Widdrington. The family were overjoyed when they were allocated a home in Lynemouth: “And we thought it was wonderful… four taps in the house, hot and cold in the sink at the back, in the kitchen sink, and hot and cold in the bath….it was great….toilet in the backyard – flush toilet – that was a novelty.” 4 There were five types of houses, from a simple 805 square foot two-bedroomed property to the one, measuring 1,385 square feet, with an inside toilet and a separate dining-room, meant for colliery officials. As well as having bathrooms, sculleries and flush toilets for individual households, the houses had long front gardens with a self-contained yard at the back and were

126 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

wired for electric light. Allotments were provided for ‘keeping poultry, pigeons and other such things that a miner’s heart delight in, as well as for raising garden produce.’5 There were also thirteen and a half acres of sports grounds, for playing cricket, football, bowls and tennis, with a ‘commodious pavilion’. But the ‘crowning feature’ of the scheme was the Miners’ Institute, which boasted a hall seating 500 people, a library, billiard, reading and class rooms, and a ladies’ meeting room. By May 1927, ‘upholding its reputation as a model town’, a cinema attached to the Institute opened its doors.6 Every effort has been made to plan Lynemouth on ideal lines, and to eliminate those features which have so often caused colliery townships in the past to become synonymous with ugliness…

[T]he town affords every opportunity for an expansive everyday life for the miner and his family.7 The ACC’s managing director, Mr Ridley Warham, told a church conference into social problems in the north-east that, although the company would not profit financially from Lynemouth, they ‘had taken the long view that extra money spent on housing would give them the best type of workpeople.’8

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 127

Conditions for Lynemouth residents were undoubtedly a huge improvement on older colliery housing, where water was supplied by standpipes in the street and privy middens were shared between several households across an unpaved lane. Moreover, the lack of building during the First World War had resulted in long waiting lists for housing; there were even people living in ‘bungalows’ (actually huts or pigeon crees) on their allotments in Ashington.9 But the image of the ACC as a benevolent model employee is open to question. Murphy argues that coal companies developed a policy of ‘welfarism’ after the war, of which housing was a key plank, to justify their continued ownership (following a period of government control) and to combat working-class militancy. 10 The ‘generosity’ of ‘free’ housing for workers, for

example, can be seen as a disguised form of wages which also tied them to their jobs. Mary Bryan described how her uncle, head timekeeper at Ellington Colliery, ‘came to Lynemouth about 1922. Sadly, he’d been badly gassed in the First World War, and when he could no longer work, he had seven days – which was the rule then – to find somewhere else to live.’ 11 Mar y ’s father had not been eligible for free housing but was able to take advantage of a house purchase scheme in Lynemouth. A number of dwellings were available to buy, the cost to be deducted from wages each week over 15 years. Again, this can be seen as a way to lessen the likelihood of industrial action (the occupants may be less likely to strike if they fear mortgage default) and a means of fracturing

Ever y effort has been made to plan Lynemouth on ideal lines, and to eliminate those features which have so often caused colliery townships in the past to become synonymous with ugliness.

128 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

working-class solidarity through promoting conspicuous gradations of status. However, because of lower wages and the 1926 strike, many house-buyers were unable to maintain their mortgage payments. The ACC faced their showpiece scheme becoming an embarrassment and offered lower repayment rates to help workers hold onto their homes, but by April 1928, 60 houses were empty in one street in Lynemouth, as more and more reverted to the company’s ownership.12

However, a thriving community had quickly been established. As well as the Institute and Welfare grounds, there was a Tudor-style hotel, a brass band, choral society, a Primitive Methodist chapel and Anglican church, Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, to name just a few of the opportunities for socialising, and even during the 1926 stoppage, there were dances and community singing concerts to raise money for the relief fund, with 230 children receiving a school meal every day.13 The environment was clean, every street paved and avenues of trees planted, with a beautiful beach and pleasant dene nearby for recreation. Even after Lynemouth collier y commenced operations in 1934, it was built a little way outside the village, and so did not dominate the environs to the extent that pits in many nearby colliery villages did. The ACC maintained that their welfare work, including the creation of Lynemouth, was ‘not, as has been suggested, a “capitalistic dodge to get more out of the worker.”’ 1 4 An examination of the evidence challenges this assertion; nevertheless, the new residents counted themselves as very lucky to live there.

Images from Brochure published by the Ashington Coal Company, Ashington Coal Company, Ltd. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, nd (c1920s).

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 129

Homes Fit For Heroes – Or A ‘Sop’ For Soldiers?

Bill Lawrence

By the start of the 20th century the housing crisis in Britain had brought demands from all sides of society and with the growing power of labour and the emergent trades unions came a ground swell of working class agitation for the state to see more houses built. The principle of municipal housing had been the policy of the TUC and Labour for more than a decade so, by the time the Great War started, it had become a major political issue. Then, like so many other aims, it was put aside “for the duration”.

However the government seeing revolution in Russia and elsewhere feared there would soon be ‘social discord’ in Britain. Rent strikes in Glasgow; striking shipbuilding workers on Clydeside; the Dublin Uprising in 1916; demands by miners for their industry to be nationalised all served to draw minds to find ways to avoid a very significant political crisis.

Even as it worked to raise people’s expectations about women's suffrage; expansion of national insurance, education reforms and many other matters, Lloyd George’s wartime coalition bent its greatest effort to the planning of a post-war housing policy, enshrined in the slogan “Homes fit for Heroes”, which became a rallying cry and election promise. By the time of the 2nd Reconstruction Committee in February 1917 a

130 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

national housing programme came to be seen as the pivotal post-war social policy.

During the war a mere 50,000 houses were built, many for war workers who had moved to the munitions factories. Ten thousand permanent houses were built on thirty-eight sites near munitions factories such as the Woolwich Arsenal and at Gretna Green. After the 1915 “Great Shell Shock”, when the army was so short of ammunition that guns could fire no more than ten shells a day, new arms factories were needed and accommodation was needed for the workers.

To Tyneside came a unique new village to house exiled Belgian workers and their families at the National Projectile Factory in Birtley. The new village, named Elisabethville – for the Queen of the Belgians – was a self-contained community with 906 huts housing the 6,500 workers and their families. The village embodied some of the concepts of the Garden Cities such as Letchworth and Welwyn. Each home had five rooms including a kitchen, three bedrooms and a bath, and gardens where vegetables could be grown to supplement food rations.

Dorothy Prowse, the daughter of A.E.Prowse, the Ministr y of Munitions Administrator for

A street in Elisabethville Belgian village c1916 Photo: Julien Dedrie.

Housing at Elisabethville, was seven years old when the settlement was constructed in 1916.

She recalled: “The local population called them ‘the huts’ but inside they were well appointed.

They all had electric light, hot and cold water, plunge bath and a flush toilet. At this time a large proportion of Birtley houses had only earth closets across the yard. The bath was in the kitchen and when not in use was covered with a single hinged table top lid. They were all furnished by the Ministry of Munitions”. In June 1920 local MP Jack Lawson asked in Parliament what had been the cost of building and furnishing this village and was told it was £329,500.

An indication of the post-war housing crisis is shown by the 1921 Census which gave the overcrowding percentages of every local district.

Those areas with more than 30% or more were nearly all in Durham and Northumberland – outside these counties only London’s Finsbury and Shoreditch areas throughout all England and Wales were so overcrowded. In Durham there

were 20 districts with significant overcrowding, including Chester-le-Street of which Birtley was a part, and in Gateshead 37% of the population lived in overcrowded property. In Northumberland there were 15 such districts with Newcastle having 33% of its population overcrowded.

It was obvious to reduce overcrowding to any small figure would require on Tyneside an effort far greater than would needed elsewhere in England and Wales.

Addressing local authorities at Buckingham Palace in April 1919 King George V said: “The first point at which the attack must be delivered is the unhealthy, ugly, overcrowded house in the mean street, which all of us know too well. If a healthy race is to be reared, it can only be reared in healthy homes……if ‘unrest’ is to be converted into contentment, the provision of good houses may prove one of the most potent agents in that conversion.” Clearly the King was as worried as his government that with half a million demobbed soldiers – many without

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 131

“The first point at which the attack must be made is the unhealthy, ugly, overcrowded house in the mean street, which all of us know too well”.

their chosen hut and leaving a chair or item of furniture there until they could move their possessions in by cart, and this system was ‘widely respected’ by other hut seekers.

The council was sympathetic: it arranged water to be supplied, and in view of the fact occupiers were undertaking conversion work themselves rather than incurring council expenditure on it the residents of “Liberty Villas”, as they called their community, were officially recognised by the council.

These examples from Birtley and Sunderland show families in housing need who had grown impatient with and sceptical about official efforts to address their problems and so had simply found their own solution. The local authorities saw little alternative but to accept these solutions after the event.

King George V, April 1919 Durham and Northumberland had 30 districts with more than 30% of houses overcrowded. Only London's Finsbury and Shoreditch, were so overcrowded in the whole of England & Wales. 1921 Census

decent homes and now trained in military tactics – then “social discord” might soon come to pass.

Elisabethville, therefore provided an ideal opportunity for a social experiment in housing working class people and, when the Belgians were repatriated to their homeland after the Armistice, it provided a valuable resource to house local people.

Soon after war ended 400 of the huts had been transferred to the Ministry of Labour and used as an industrial training centre for ex-servicemen before the local authority could approach the Ministry of Munitions about taking over the huts as emergency accommodation due to the housing problems in the area, exacerbated by large numbers of “young people getting married and living with their parents by the score.”

No reply was received but by 1920 local people began to occupy the huts of their own accord.

Eventually it was agreed they pay rent to the

132 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Ministry of Munitions through the council. In line with the mood at the time their action had been supported by Birtley Parish Council, which in 1919 had achieved a Labour majority and included activists from the Demobilised & Demobbed Sailors & Soldiers Federation. Over the next few years they supported the hut occupiers’ efforts to have the huts improved and the rents renegotiated.

In Sunderland the following year a number of young families principally ex-ser vicemen, occupied abandoned buildings on an aerodrome at North Hylton. They had, as described by the local newspaper, “previously lived where they could’ and this could include six adults and two children in a two-roomed house. The first families occupied the best buildings they could find and then as news spread by word of mouth others followed them and a ‘mad search for the best apartments was conducted without any tangible ill-feeling’. The squatters made their claims by writing their names on the door of

were going to make the country fit for heroes to live in. They have done nothing yet. We went into this place through stress of circumstances.”

These huts were ‘well built and in a fair state of repair’, the occupants of the former cookhouse were the only ones with an oven but they shared this with the others as the need arose. Those without fireplaces had ‘cleverly built small brick fireplaces with flues’.

This was a self-regulating community of 89 adults and 58 children, determined to see no damage was done and that ‘there would be no disturbances’; for example after an episode of domestic violence the culprit obeyed the collective response to stop or he would have to leave. At a meeting with the council the squatters’ representatives explained they were ‘law abiding citizens’ who ‘had no intention of getting something for nothing’ As one explained: “Ninety percent of us fought for King and country and we were told by politicians that they

© Sarah Sutherland (street doodler) for Bill Lawrence

Acknowledgement: I have been greatly helped in this writing by Kath Connolly and Don Watson and have relied quite heavily on their work.

“Homes Fit For Heroes” was Kath (Mattheys) Connolly’s 1993 essay written while studying for her PG / MA in Urban Studies at Newcastle Polytechnic.

Don Watson wrote of the post-WW1 squatters in “Squatting in Britain 1945-1955: Housing Policy & Direct Action” (pub’ London, Merlin Press 2014)

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 133

The Bridge Song Music: Debra Milne & Steve Glendinning Lyrics: Debra Milne We’re gonna build a bridge across the Tyne By the time it’s ready it’ll be really fine Mott, Hay and Anderson are the engineers It’s designed to span the Tyne for hundreds of years We’re gonna build a bridge (build a bridge) We’re gonna build a bridge (build a bridge) And there will be two towers - one on each side With a parabolic arch that’s 5-3-1 feet wide And when construction’s finished we will paint it all green It’ll be the finest bridge the river Tyne’s ever seen We’re gonna build a bridge (build a bridge) We’re gonna build a bridge (build a bridge) So the men they all got working with the steel and cranes While the folk around endured Depression’s pain From nineteen twenty five to twenty eight that bridge arose And its mighty beauty gave the people hope We’re gonna build a bridge (build a bridge) We’re gonna build a bridge (build a bridge) On tenth October twenty eight the day arrived The children let off school to see King George number five They gathered in their thousands to wave and to cheer And Tyneside rejoiced because their new bridge was here They went and built a bridge (built a bridge) They went and built a bridge (built a bridge) They went and built a bridge (built a bridge) They went and built a bridge (built a bridge)

134 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 135

4. Ivan Corbett 'So Noble an Institution A History of the WEA Northern District' 1910-1980.

• So Noble an Institution, A History of the WEA Northern district – Ivan Corbett.

• The 1918 Education Act – Herbert Fisher (T.E.S).

• A Gift in our Hand – Michael Standen.

• The Same Difference – Eileen Aird.

• A Children’s Charter for Great Britain – The National Council of Women and The Save the Children Fund 1924, book and pamphlet division.

• Declaration of Geneva 1923.

• Minutes of WEA Conferences courtesy of London Metropolitan University.

References 08

10

16

5. Ministry of Reconstruction, Adult Education Committee Final Report, (London, 1919), pp243-4.

6. WEA Newcastle Branch Executive Committee Meeting, 14th July 1914, E.WEA.12/1/1; WEA Newcastle Branch Executive Committee Meeting, 22nd December 1914; WEA District Minutes, Secretary’s Report, 25th September 1915, TWA WEA 1/1/1 1910-1916, p98.

7. Sunderland Empire poster, Nov 1913, showed ticket prices to be 6d for the stalls, 4d for the balcony and 3d for the pit. http://www.jugglingarchives.com/wpcontent/uploads/2011/04/SDC10361-small.jpg 8. Ministry of Reconstruction, Adult Education Committee Final Report, (London, 1919), p243.

9. W G Whittaker, ‘A Tutorial Class in Music Part I’, in The Highway¸ X/113, February 1918, 61-63, p61.

10. W G Whittaker, ‘A Tutorial Class in Music Part I’, in The Highway¸ X/113, February 1918, 61-63, p62.

11. Gustav Holst, letter to W G Whittaker, Nov 6 1925, Letters to W G Whittaker, Ed Michael Short (University of Glasgow Press, 1974) p92. Holst commented on reception of a recent performance, “As for the audience … I’ve no language left for N o T”.

12. W G Whittaker, ‘A Tutorial Class in Music Part II’ in The Highway¸ X/114, March 1918, pp77-78, p77.

13. W Gillies Whittaker, “The Folk-music of North-eastern England”, in his “Collected Essays”, (Books for Libraries, New York, 1940, reprint 1970), p41.

14. Clough broadcast in Cologne, as well as France, Holland and Belgium. Ormston, C and Say, J, “The Clough Family of Newsham”, (Northumbrian Pipers’ Society, Morpeth, 2000), p27.

15. Gillies Whittaker, W, “The Folk-music of North-eastern England”, in his “Collected Essays”, (Books for Libraries, New York, 1940, reprint 1970), p52.

16. W G Whittaker, ‘A Tutorial Class in Music Part II’ in The Highway¸ X/114, March 1918, pp77-78, p78.

Introduction Jude Murphy, Project Organiser 1. Ministry of Reconstruction, The 1919 report : the final and interim reports of the Adult Education Committee of the Ministry of Reconstruction, 1918-1919, reprinted by Dept. of Adult Education, University of Nottingham, 1980, pp5–7.

2. Ibid, pp216–217.

3. Class journal, Annfield Plain 3rd year Psychology Class, 1925–6 (TWA E/WEA1/16/1).

Before The Pitmen Painters: Chester Armstrong’s Ashington Nigel Todd 1. Armstrong, Chester 1938, Pilgrimage from Nenthead, (London: Methuen).

2. Harrison, Bill 1990, Ashington: A Histor y in Pictures, (Northumberland County Libraries), p. 8; Quincey, Thomas, 2013, ‘Owenism in Action: Ashington and Hirst Co-operative Society in the 1920s’ in North East History, Vol. 44.

3. Kirkup, Mike 1993, The Biggest Mining Village in the World: A Social History of Ashington, (Warkworth: Sandhill Press).

4. See: Ashington Industrial Co-operative Society, Quarterly Reports, 1920s [National Archives: Woodhorn Collier y Museum and Northumberland Archives, Series Ref 06961).

5. Ashington Industrial Co-operative Society, Quarterly Reports, ibid., August 1924; Kramnick, Issac, and Sheerman, Barry, 1993, Harold Laski: A Life on the Left, (London, Hamish Hamilton), pp.178 and 181; Kirkup, M, op.cit., p.174. Laski’s letters that include descriptions of his Ashington visits are online via the Oliver Wendell Holmes Collection at Harvard Law Library (see especially Laski to Holmes, 26 September 1924 – https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:35764154$48i).

6. Jackson, T.A. 1953, Solo Trumpet: Some Memories of Socialist Agitation and Propaganda, (London: Lawrence & Wishart), p.144; see Ashington Industrial Co-operative Society, op.cit., Quarterly Report, Februar y 1918, for suggestion of Edwards’ Co-op links; Armstrong, op.cit., p.248.

7. For the story of the Pitmen Painters, see Feaver, William, 1993, Pitmen Painters: The Ashington Group 1934–1984, (Northumberland: Carcanet Press), and especially p.15/17 for the WEA origins of the Group.

“QUICKENING THE SMOULDERING FLAME”: Music in the Tutorial Class Era William Gillies Whittaker (1876–1944) Jude Murphy 1. W G Whittaker, ‘A Tutorial Class in Music Part I’, in The Highway¸ X/113, February 1918, pp61-63 and Part II in The Highway¸ X/114, March 1918, pp77-78.

2. W G Whittaker, North Countrie Songs for Schools (Curwen, London, 1921).

3. Armstrong College was at the time a Newcastle-based offshoot of Durham University, later to become King’s College and eventually Newcastle University.

4. Gustav Holst, Letters to W G Whittaker, Ed Michael Short (University of Glasgow Press, 1974), p23 Letter from Holst to Whittaker regarding The Planets, 23rd May 1917; and p(ix) Holst’s daughter Imogen recalls her father’s admonition to Whittaker: “Young man, you need a holiday, or beer: or meat: or something of the sort”.

136 | The WEA In World War 1 In The North East

20

32

Harry Barnes Goes to Parliament Brian Bennison 1. Newcastle Journal October 16th 1918 p5.

2. The coupon was given to 364 Conservative, 159 Liberal, 24 National Democratic Labour and 2 Labour candidates.

3. Newcastle Journal October 16th 1918 p5.

4. Newcastle Journal December 12th 1918 p5.

5. Newcastle Journal November 29th 1918 p6.

6. Newcastle Journal November 29th 1918 p6.

7. Newcastle Journal December 10th 1918 p5 & December 11th 1918 p5.

8. Newcastle Journal December 30th 1918 p7.

9. Sunderland Daily Echo September 13th 1919 p4.

The WEA after WW1 The Influence on Women and Children Marjory Winnie 1. Huddersfield Examiner, July 1924.

2. Ivan Corbett 'So Noble an Institution A History of the WEA Northern District' 1910-1980.

3. A Gift in our Hand - WEA leaflet 'Women in the WEA' from 1912 conference, with an essay by Eileen Aird and an introduction by Michael Standon 1982

34

1926 Women Kath Connolly 1. Garside, The Durham Miners 1919-1960 p 298 Allan and Unwin 1971.

2. DCRO D/X1208/10.

3. inflation iamkate.com.

4. The Labour Woman September – October 1926 in Gateshead Library.

5. Marion Phillips and the Miners' Lockout LSE HD5/B28.

6. Callcott. M in North East Labour History 1970.

7. The Labour Woman September – October 1926 in Gateshead Library.

8. Labour Woman April 1925.

9. Annfield Plain Industrial Cooperative Society Ltd Jubilee Souvenir 1870-1920.

10. Dr. Mary Patricia McIntyre's e thesis Durham University 1992.

38

Annie Errington – Russia 1926 Kath Connolly 1. The Labour Woman September – October 1926 in Gateshead Library.

40

The First Year of the Women’s Engineering Society: a snapshot through a North East Lens Jude Murphy & Shiva Dowlatshahi 1. Lady Katharine Parsons, Women’s Work in Engineering and Shipbuilding During the War, address read before the NorthEast Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders, 9th July 1919, reprinted in pamphlet form by the Council of the NE Coast Institution. IET Archive, UK0108 NAEST 092/10/03, p9.

2. Much of the background information quoted here is gleaned from the Women’s Engineering Society website, WES History Now and Then: www.wes.org.uk/content/history.

3. Circular letter, 5th December 1918, from Rachel Parsons to interested parties. IET Archive UK0108 NAEST 092/04/08.

4. The Times, Saturday, Feb 15, 1919; Court Circular, p11.

5. Women’s Engineering Society, Council and AGM Minutes 1919-1986, IET Archive UK0108 NAEST/092/01/01.

6. The Times, Monday, May 19, 1919, p9.

7. Shields Daily News, 31st March 1919, Local News.

8. Letter from Lady Katharine Parsons to Caroline Haslett, 4th April 1919, IET Archive UK0108 NAEST 092/04/08.

9. Letter from Lady Katharine Parsons to Caroline Haslett, 30th March 1919, IET Archive UK0108 NAEST 092/04/08.

10. Letter from Lady Katharine Parsons to Caroline Haslett, 9th April 1919, IET Archive UK0108 NAEST 092/04/08.

11. Caroline Haslett letter to Lady Katharine Parsons, 10th April 1919, IET Archive UK0108 NAEST 092/04/08.

12. Letter from Caroline Haslett to Lady Katharine Parsons, 23rd May 1919, IET Archive UK0108 NAEST 092/04/08.

13. 26th June 1920, List of Newcastle and District Members, IET Archive UK0108 NAEST 092/04/08.

14. Lady Katharine Parsons, Women’s Work in Engineering and Shipbuilding During the War, IET UK0108 NAEST 092/10/03, pp4-5.

15. Lady Katharine Parsons, Women’s Work in Engineering and Shipbuilding During the War, IET UK0108 NAEST 092/10/03, p7.

16. Lady Katharine Parsons, Women’s Work in Engineering and Shipbuilding During the War, IET UK0108 NAEST 092/10/03, p8.

17. James F Driver, Correspondence printed in Lady Katharine Parsons, Women’s Work in Engineering and Shipbuilding During the War, IET UK0108 NAEST 092/10/03, p12.

18. All issues of the Woman Engineer are available online at https://www.wes.org.uk/content/journal-archive.

45

In a Flap!

Attitudes to young women workers in the early 20th century Liz O’Donnell 1. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/flapper 2. Shields Daily News, (henceforth SDN) 14 January 1905.

3. Sunderland Daily Echo, 16 July 1914.

4. Daily Mirror, 26 August 1916.

5. SDN, 16 March 1918.

6. Newcastle Journal, 12 June 1918.

7. Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, (henceforth HNDM) 25 February 1916.

8. SDN, 11 September 1918.

9. The Co-operative News, 2 February 1918.

10. Ibid., 9 February 1918.

11. Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 19 Dec. 1918.

12. Ibid., 19 December 1918.

13. HNDM, 27 June 1919.

14. SDN, 5 February 1920.

15. HNDM, 22 May 1922.

16. Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 13 February 1929.

59

Popular Culture Elaine Pope • Nicholson, Virginia - Singled Out - Penguin Books 2007 ISBN: 978 0 670 91564 4.

• Braithwaite, B - Walsh, N – Davies, G – compilers - Ragtime to Wartime, The Best of Good Housekeeping 1922-1939 – Leopard Books 1995 – ISBN 0 7529 0045 5.

• The Story of Seventy Momentous Years, The Life and Times of King George V 1865-1936 Odhams Press Ltd. • The Sheik(Novel) – Wikipedia.

67

Living Conditions in a Mining Community Post WW1 Mary Pitt • Medical Officer of Health annual reports. (Ref: UD/Ann), 1918 – 1928, Durham Record Office.

• Register of housing inspections, Annfield Plain, East Castle, Harelaw, West Kyo. (Ref: UD/Ann 66) 1925 – 1937, Durham Record Office.

70

Summerland: Spiritualism and post-war remembrance Liz Greener 1.http://www.cragheadspiritualistchurch.btck.co.uk/Historyof ourChurch 2.http://ww1centenary.oucs.ox.ac.uk/body-and-mind/asolace-to -a-tortured-world-the-growing-interest-inspiritualism-during-and-after-ww1/ 3. Malcolm Gaskill, Hellish Nell Last of Britain’s Witches, (Fourth Estate Publishers, 2001).

Turbulent Times 1921– 28 | 137

74

92

Conscientious Objectors in the North East during World War One. The backgrounds to these men’s’ lives and beliefs Tom Davie 1. Wikipedia 1918 General election results United Kingdom general election, 1918 and Henry Purchase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_electi on,_1918 2. Lives of the First World War – IWM/Pearce register. https://search.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/search/worldrecords/conscientious-objectors-register-1914-1918 3. Tom Davie’s blog post on Aaron Gompertz is here: https://weaturbulenttimes.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/charles -richard-flynn-conscientious-objector-promoter-of-workersrights-and-education/. Further examples of Tom’s work on the post-war lives of former CO’s can be found here: https://weaturbulenttimes.wordpress.com Select bibliography/acknowledgements: The National Archives; http://www.ancestry.co.uk; Tom Davie, A consideration of the political, religious and moral reasons for conscientious objection in Britain during World War One. An analysis of the treatment of the Richmond Sixteen and others in the context of the Military Service Acts of 1916 (MA History Dissertation, University of Sunderland, Sept 2003).

Turbulent Times in Little Moscow, where “Precocious Lenins” are known to dwell Ronnie Stuart • Main source: Chopwell’s Story, Les Turnbull, published by Gateshead Metropolitan Council Education Department 1978.

106 Aaron Ernest Gompertz Pacifist, politician and champion of the disadvantaged through turbulent times Tom Davie 1. Saturday Portrait; Profile of Ernest Gompertz, Newcastle Journal, 18 December 1954 2. Nigel Todd, In Excited times, p28, Bewick Press 1995.

3. Ibid Saturday Portrait; Profile of Ernest Gompertz, Newcastle Journal, 18 December 1954.

4. Gompertz...stormy petrel of Labour Party, Shields Gazette, April 8 1968.

5. South Shields Council records, February 1934.

6. Borough of South Shields Council resolution 26 July 1968.

7. Mr. Gompertz, Shields Gazette, April 8 1968.

8. Ibid Saturday Portrait; Profile of Ernest Gompertz, Newcastle Journal, 18 December 1954.

9. Gompertz – ‘A Pioneer in Socialist Movement’, Alderman A L Newman in his funeral tribute, Shields Gazette 9 April 1968.

[H1] Note this is not an error – in the early part of the 20c Newcastle was ‘on Tyne’ and not ‘upon Tyne’.

Sources • In excited times, Nigel Todd, Pub. Bewick Press 1995.

• We do not want the earth, the history of South Shields Labour party, David Clark Pub. Bewick Press 1992.

• Newcastle Evening Chronicle.

• Newcastle Journal.

• Shields Gazette.

• South Shields Council records held in South Shields Library (‘The Word’).

• IWM Pearce Register of Conscientious Objectors. https://search.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/search/worldrecords/conscientious-objectors-register-1914-1918 • Rationalist Press Association website.

• South Tyneside images organisation. http://www.southtynesideimages.org.uk • Thanks to the staff at Word, South Shields • Ancestry website: https://www.ancestry.co.uk Select Bibliography/Acknowledgements:

138 | Turbulent Times 1921– 28

https://search.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/search/worldrecords/conscientious-objectors-register-1914-1918; http://www.southtynesideimages.org.uk; http://ancestry.co.uk; thanks for the help given to me by the staff in The Word, South Shields.

118 Managing the Bloodless Wound – Post 1917 Gareth Rees 1. Simon Adams, World War 1 (Dorling Kindersley in association with The Imperial War Museum, London 2001) p30.

2. John Sheen The Steel of the DLI – The 2nd Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry at war 1914 -1918, (Barnsley South Yorkshire, Date Unknown), p81.

3. John Sheen The Steel of the DLI – The 2nd Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry at war 1914 -1918, (Barnsley South Yorkshire, Date Unknown),pp75-76.

4. Trevor Yorke The Trench: Life & Death on the Western Front 1914-1918 (Newbury, Berkshire 2014), Page 40.

5. Peter Leeses Shell Shock – Traumatic Neurosis and the British Soldiers of the First World War (Basingstoke, Hampshire, 2014), p53.

6. Taylor Downing, Breakdown - The Crisis of Shell Shock on the Somme, 1916 (London 2016), p81.

7. Jean Emily Harstone ‘While the World Sleeps’ 565 Warter Street, Ontario – Account of Ambulance Train Convoy Etaples Convoy, France 6th March 1917 to 30th June 1918 – researched at Imperial War Museum February 2018.

8. Philip A Millard LNWR Great War Ambulance Trains (Premier Portfolio No 11. London, Date unknown).

9. Adam Lamb and Jack Turton, Behind the Wall – The Life and Times of Winterton Hospital (County Durham Books, 2009).

10. L Johnston & H Boorman, Winterton Fallen Heroes (Sedgefield Local History Society, Durham County Records Office et al 2014), p23.

11. As is noted by Johnston & Boorman 2014 Page 26 12. Stock and Burrell, Keep the Home fires Burning – A Social and Military Diary of Events for the Sherburn Area 1914 -1923 (Bognor Regis, West Sussex, 2008) p150.

13. Internet Site ‘It’s History’ Reference to David Lloyd George 2018, https://itshistory-mariahardy.blogspot.com/2012/09/land-tobe-fit-for-heroes.html.

126 Lynemouth: Ashington Coal Company’s Model Town Liz O’Donnell 1. Ashington Collieries Magazine (henceforth ACM), 1:7 (July 1921), p.15.

2. Shields Daily News (henceforth SDN), 13 March 1923, p.3.

3. ACM, 6:4 (April 1926), p.131, Dundee Evening Telegraph, 16 July 1928, p.4.

4. Oral history interview with Isobel Wyness, 18 July 2016, Northumberland Archives, T.962.

5. ‘Ashington Colliery II’, in Colliery Engineering (August 1927), Durham Mining Museum website, http://www.dmm.org.uk/colleng/2708-01.htm (accessed 26 April 2018).

6. ACM, 7:5 (May 1927), p.145.

7. ‘Ashington Colliery II’, in Colliery Engineering (August 1927).

8. SDN, 1 October 1924, p.1.

9. SDN, 9 October 1924, p.1.

10. John Michael Murphy, ‘Housing, Class and Politics in a Company Town: Ashington 1896-1939’, unpublished MA dissertation, Durham University.

11. Oral history interview with Mary Bryan, 22 July 2016, Northumberland Archives, T.967.

12. Michael Dintenfass, Managing Industrial Decline: The British Coal Industry Between the Wars, (Ohio State University Press, Columbus, Ohio, 1992), p.104; Leeds Mercury, 26 April 1928, p.8.

13. ACM, 6:6 (June 1926), p.196; 6:7 (July 1926), p.231.

14. ACM, 1 (1921), p.44.