The Highway Special Commemorative Edition

The Highway h Special Commemorative Edition g

The Workers’ Educational Association In World War 1 In The North East

The Highway h Special Commemorative Edition g

The Workers’ Educational Association In World War 1 In The North East

Contibutors: Alan, Liz Armstrong, Tony Bulloch, Kath Connolly, Eileen Cordey, Colin Ferries, Malcolm Grady, Pauline Hilton, Anthea Lang, Bill Lawrence, Mick Lynch, Lelah McDermott, Angela McKean, Mary Pitt, Gareth Rees, Anne Sharp, Ruth Tanner, Nigel Todd, Terry Wiley and Lauren Wood.

Acknowledgements: Alice McCreadie; Anne Staines; Joy Nancarrow; and all the staff at WEA NE Regional Office; Lena Rodgers; Richard McMann; Chris Westbury; Gerry and Andrew Vincent; William Lamb; Branch officers and members from Durham, Newcastle, South Shields and Sunderland; Margaret Hedley and the Wheatley Hill History Club; Redhills Miners’ Hall, Durham; Sharon Vincent and all at the Donnison School Heritage Centre; South Shields Museum; Lydia Wysocki and Terry Wiley of Applied Comics Etc; Bethany Elen Coyle; John Charlton; Graham Smith; Tommy Anderson; Ted Taylor; Michelle Lindsay and Rob Baharie; Sarah Hellawell (Northumbria University); Jo Vietzke and the Durham County Records Office; the volunteers and staff at Women’s Health In South Tyneside; Anita Wan and all at Heritage Lottery Fund; Newcastle Libraries; St Mary’s Heritage Centre, Gateshead; Brancepeth Local History Group; the DLI Museum and Art Gallery; All at the Alun Armstrong Theatre, Stanley Civic Hall; Diane Howe; Pathways; Stanley Youth Centre and Durham County Council; The Old 68th DLI; Hatfield College and Palace Green Library, Durham University; Momentum Skills; Dorothy Rand; Sarah Reay; TRS Ribbons; Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums; The Robinson Library Special Collections, 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 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.

Contents 08

Introduction Dr Jude Murphy

50

Katherine Mary French Harley Pauline Hilton

11

Philip Anthony Brown Terry Wiley

52

War Baby Eileen Cordey

19

Widening Horizons: An Enjoyable Education For All Lauren Wood

53

Northumberland James Angela McKean

54 22

A WEA Student Goes To War Mary Pitt

The Road To Nowhere Gareth Rees

58

Just Not Good Enough!

Liz Armstrong

62

In Flanders Fields Ruth Tanner

71

Futility Lelah McDermott

25

Blimp Balloon Colin Ferries

28

Jack Trevena WEA North East District Secretary: Conscientious Objector Kath Connolly

36

The Place Of Memory In Education Alan

74

“Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty!”

Bill Lawrence

40

Staging Our Street: 1915 Tony Bulloch

78

42

Recreating The First World War In South Shields Malcolm Grady and Anthea Lang

The Correspondence Bureau: The Workers’ Educational Association And The First World War Nigel Todd

84

Women In The WEA And The Impact of The First World War Ruth Tanner

90

Ethel Williams Anne Sharp

94

The Finger Post

97

Jimmy’s Letter To Mum

98

References

46

WEA Members In World War 1 Pauline Hilton

48

Peter Lee Mick Lynch

49

The King’s Shilling Lelah McDermott

Introduction: Imagine beginning to widen your horizons at the moment the world falls apart…

Dr Jude Murphy, Project Organiser Welcome to this commemorative edition of The Highway, celebrating our project – made possible by support from the Heritage Lottery Fund – to uncover and share the stories of Workers’ Educational Association members, students and tutors in the North East of England throughout the First World War. The WEA was launched nationally in 1903 and within the North East in 1910, at a time when education beyond the school leaving age of 12 was mostly accessible to the wealthy. And, just four years after these opportunities opened up to ordinary people within the region, the world was facing one of its most massive upheavals.

When the WEA North East region celebrated its centenary in 2010, it was evident that there were many fascinating aspects of the organisation’s early years which were moulded and dictated by the devastating impact of the War. These include the experiences of war heroes such as WEA tutor Philip Brown; the alternative heroism of conscientious objectors such as District Secretary Jack Trevena; the rapid changes to women’s lives; and the commitment of WEA members to building a better society post-war. There were a great many hidden histories too, sparsely documented tales of ordinary heroes which we could flesh out through creative activities such as

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drama, visual arts, creative writing, songwriting and film-making. And so this project was born.

Our work has encompassed Durham, Newcastle, Sunderland, and South Shields. WEA volunteers and students have received training and participated in research groups exploring this educational movement during the First World War. There have also been courses, workshops, performances and exhibitions developing and showcasing our creative responses to these research findings. And the journeys have been literal as well as metaphorical: volunteers have travelled to the war graves in France and Belgium, and to archival collections all over the North East region as well as in London, Oxford and Cheltenham. All these activities have contributed to this publication.

The Highway was the WEA’s monthly newsletter, distributed to members throughout WWI and subsequent years. Its title reflected the association’s aim to make education less of a step ladder (which a student might climb but might equally fall down) and more of a broad highway, from which all kinds of interesting byroads might be explored. Writing in the October 1914 edition, the WEA President, William Temple issued a striking call not to arms but to analysis:

England needs, and still more will need, the influence of a fully informed democracy if the wisest and justest end of this conflict is to be reached … all who never thought or studied before should think and study now.

This typified the organisation’s response to the cataclysm of the Great War. They quickly published two 1915 study guides, War and the Workers and The War and Democracy, which would form the basis of study circles both in the trenches and on the Home Front. It speaks

volumes that WEA members were seeking the causes of the conflict so early and were prepared to analyse these in-depth.

From the very start of the war, WEA members, students and tutors were campaigning for education that would help build a better world after the conflict’s end. This book tells some of their stories. www.weainworldwar1.wordpress.com

The WEA In World War 1 In The North East | 9

John Maxwell

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Widening Horizons: An Enjoyable Education For All Lauren Wood

The concerns of the WEA in the years during and following the end of the First World War were vast. The Association was not simply focused on the issues at that moment in time but also with things that could improve the education system for future generations. At the heart of many discussions is the notion of accessibility of education particularly for workers. Around the time of the First World War the organisation looks at issues relating to improving their aims and services, and including more and more people within this remit. This is apparent when looking at attempts to increase the number of women in education which was discussed at a time when there were still restrictions on which women in society could vote.1 One of the most fascinating cases made for reform took place in 1919 with regards to the future of tutorial classes in universities. These classes had begun before the war covering a wide range of different topics, and with classes quickly spreading throughout the country.2 The focus is very much on what the student has to gain from these classes rather than how the university benefits from hosting them. There is the discussion of a number of ways in which to ensure the success of these classes in the future.

The funding behind these initiatives is assessed along with the suitability of candidates to teach

such classes. As mentioned previously the focus on the student rather than the institution, shows the way in which the WEA focus on what is most

The WEA In World War 1 In The North East | 19

useful for the worker to learn at that time. This is further evidenced in a discussion of the future of the University College of Nottingham, in The Highway.3 The article deals with the issues of finding financial support for this institution, pointing out that the majority of income has come from local sources where it is well supported. It is also worth mentioning that the beginnings of this institution were made in the form of local workers’ meetings. This shows that far from the concerns of the WEA being simply focussed at a local level, they extend into higher education.

The WEA’s concern with matters of higher education is also apparent when looking at an article relating to university lecturers. 4 The problems which the association attempts to tackle relate to funding. In this case the aim is to keep the organisation as accessible as possible by not having to charge admissions for lectures.5 However, the issue they faced was how to persuade lecturers that it was a good idea to carry out these events voluntarily without pay.6 Indeed funding and accessibility are visible with reference to many aspects of the WEA’s concerns throughout, and just after the First World War.

This extension of interest in issues outside their local remit can also be seen in the WEA’s involvement with the British Expeditionary Force during the First World War. Working with these soldiers the WEA attempted to usefully educate the forces during periods where they were not engaged in direct combat. In an article in The Highway the author charts the work of Mr and Mrs Patterson, and the ways in which they have promoted the WEA’s cause amongst soldiers.7 Much praise is given to the amount of poetry they have introduced the forces to, and also the impressive ways they have achieved this.8 The success of this is apparent in comments made by the author who argues that “Mr Patterson and his associates have helped us to attain a wider culture, a better critical faculty and a keener sense of the beautiful.” 9 What becomes clear here is that the WEA was not simply focused on educating soldiers in order to benefit them in the workplace or industry, but for the enjoyment and appreciation of new things. The article itself is followed by a review of a number of different texts covering different disciplines.10 This can be seen as another way in which there is an attempt made by the organisation to expand the horizons of the local population.

January 1916 WEA Residential School (Tyne & Wear Archives – WEA Collection)

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August 1921 WEA Summer School, Durham

A further issue which interested the organisation and is largely specific to the upheaval caused by war is the case of young men being trained for the war effort, and to fight on the front line. The WEA’s concern over the matter was what happened to the education of these men, or the trades they were learning when they were called up for ser vice to their countr y. 11 The factors addressed include problems for men returning

Overall the concerns of the WEA during the 1910s highlight concerns with the education system, future plans for this, and ways to prevent and solve these issues. Though some questions are largely relevant to their period such as the education of soldiers, other issues are still being discussed to this day. This includes an extension of education to areas where there was lower uptake, particularly in the case of higher education.

What becomes clear here is that the WEA was not simply focused on educating soldiers in order to benefit them in the workplace or industry, but for the enjoyment and appreciation of new things. to work after this period and also issues in seeking alternative forms of employment after this term. An awareness of how serious this situation could become is made apparent by reference to the case of these types of workers and the fate they suffered following the end of the Crimean War.12 This shows another way in which the WEA has sought to limit the failings of future education by learning from mistakes made in the past.

The problems with finding funding for particular things, and how much to charge for education, are being debated at present particularly with reference to higher education. Therefore the fact that some of the issues put for ward by the organisation are still relevant today, shows how forward thinking the WEA was at the time of the First World War.

The WEA In World War 1 In The North East | 21

A WEA Student Goes To War Mary Pitt A small group of WEA members visited the War Graves in France and Belgium to commemorate 100 years since the death of the WEA tutor Phillip Brown on November 4th 1916 as well as visiting the graves of other WEA casualties of WW1. In preparation for the visit I reviewed the ‘In Memoriam’ sections of the WEA journal, The Highway, and discovered a record of the death of Private Harry Towers from Stanley who was a WEA student of Phillip Brown. Harry like many other students had accepted the call to arms and there is evidence that the WEA made efforts to enable these men to continue learning.

Private Harry Towers,

His death on the 1st July 1916 was at the beginning of the Battle of the Somme which finally ended on November 18th 1916. Harry has no known grave and is one of the 72,000 soldiers of the United Kingdom and South African forces commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, the Memorial of the Missing of the Somme.1 At the time of his death, his wife was pregnant with their second child and a daughter Mary Irene was born on August 12th 1916. Dinah remarried and emigrated to Canada with her children. She had been awarded a pension of 18s 6p for herself and two children.2

2nd Border Regiment Harry Towers was born in Workington, Cumbria in 1882. By the time of his enlistment into the 2nd Border Regiment in January 1915 he and Dinah, his wife, were living in Stanley, County Durham with their two-year-old son, William.

Harry was working as a coalminer prior to leaving Stanley to join his Regiment. The September 1916 edition of the WEA journal, The Highway, informed his fellow WEA members of his death on July 1st 1916. The Memoriam reflected that Harry, ‘was a student in the tutorial class on European History, the tutor being Mr. P. A. Brown... he was a keen student who took a deep interest in the work of the WEA: his loss will be deeply felt by the whole of the Stanley Branch.’

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

Harry was of particular interest to me as I live in the Stanley area. My own Grandfather of the Durham Light Infantry had lost his life at the end of the Battle of the Somme on November 5th 1916. I do not know of any connection my Grandfather had with the WEA but like Harry he was a miner living in Stanley before the war. A young married man with a son of 4 years and my Grandmother was pregnant with their second daughter who was born in December 1916.

When I began thinking of students continuing their education in the trenches I had not considered the difficulties that the WEA would experience in meeting those needs. Those serving in the forces were not going to be in groups with shared learning goals and have facilities made available for regular discussion / tutorials. Reviewing the monthly WEA journal, The Highway throughout the years of conflict showed how soldiers in similar situations to Harr y were able to continue their development even if it was not related to their peacetime study. Students used some of their rare leisure time to keep in contact with the WEA who published excerpts from their letters in The Highway.

The WEA In World War 1 In The North East | 23

when on occasions some WEA men are billeted together, they will organise debates by picking a subject from the newspaper. Another letter recounts that one soldier made contact with another member when he showed the Christmas card he had received from WEA. Other instances show that communications from those who were prisoners of war were also satisfying their need to learn by learning languages and one by studying botany i.e. one lecture a week and two afternoons using a microscope.

An open letter from the General Secretary, Albert Mansbridge (published in the May 1915 edition of The Highway) spoke of discussions in the trenches and receiving requests for copies of The Highway. An earlier journal had identified that grants were available to educate soldiers in training camps prior to being sent on active service. Subjects included geography/history relating to the present campaign, map reading, conversation in foreign languages, field cookery, mending of clothes and tutorial assistance for those less able in writing letters and simple sums.

In his letter Mr. Mansfield updates members on the achievement of the work of the WEA in this area which had been undertaken in collaboration with the Y.M.C.A. He also refers to sending someone to support those who were interned in Holland. Rather than be captured by the Germans, 1500 men of the First Naval Brigade and their Commander, who had been involved in protecting Antwerp when Belgium was invaded by Germany, crossed the border to neutral Holland. It is documented that courses were held on foreign languages, navigation, accountancy etc. but I found that no evidence to suggest that this was a successful initiative by the WEA or was established by some other means.

The War Time Comradeship Committee which was established by the WEA played a vital part in supporting those men in the trenches. In November 1915, a Chaplain described his work at a Base Hospital and how on Sunday afternoons he distributes writing paper, cigarettes, sweets and magazines many of which had been provided by the WEA. One soldier describes that,

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

WEA members were already strongly committed to their own personal development in peace time. The WEA demanded regular attendance at tutorials and each member had to pay an individual subscription of 2s 6p which was a substantial amount when compared to his weekly income. The tribute to Harry in The Highway recognises his personal commitment to his studies with the WEA – attending lectures following a long hard working shift at the coal face. I hope that Harry was able to avail of the opportunities described above.

Harry Towers’ name inscribed on Thiepval Memorial

Blimp Balloon Colin Ferries The sky took control swayed to-and-fro the tension at its height, Casting a shadow, sirens sounded, I’m not alone beyond the horizon, near.

Wings stay clear fired twang and ping not so yet.

Whirly-gigs fly back and fourth now they’re gone all silent winch me down deflated.

No the winds take control Up with the Larks in song And quiet lays across the land.

The WEA In World War 1 In The North East | 25

Janet Roper

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

Regina Blachford

The WEA In World War 1 In The North East | 27

Jack Trevena – WEA North East District Secretary: Conscientious Objector Kath Connolly The story of Jack Trevena, North East District Secretary of the Workers’ Educational Association during WW1 illustrates the challenges and tensions brought about by the war for the organisation.

John George (Jack) was born January 1889 in Kyo a small village to the west of Stanley. His family were part of that great migration which brought workers from all parts of Britain to the North East in the latter part of the 19th Century looking for work in the rapidly expanding Northern Coalfield. Census records show his mother Elizabeth was from Tavistock in Devon while the Trevenas were from Cornwall, his grandfather Richard, a Cornish copper miner.

The family had moved north to Cramlington in 1871, Jack’s father John and his Uncle Isiah finding work in the pits while their disabled brothers Richard and Thomas found a way of making a living as a tailor and cordwainer (shoemaker) respectively. In common with thousands of North East miners as new shafts were sunk, seams opened up and other collieries ceased production, families moved around the coalfield. The Trevenas moved to Stanley in about 1888, settled in Elm Street, South Moor where his father and uncle worked at the local colliery. On leaving school, Jack joined them and by the 1911 Census he had become part of the ‘aristocracy’ of miners as a hewer.

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

Jack Trevena’s niece, Betty James remembers her grandmother who was Jack’s mother, “She was a small but wonderfully strong woman who set high standards for her family, the boys would certainly do as they were told”. 1 She was a staunch Primitive Methodist so Jack was brought up in a home where self-worth and selfimprovement were important; family, learning, hard work, Sunday School and Christian clean living the order of the day. Elementary education gave pupils little other than a ver y basic education and as a young man, Jack eager to learn joined the ver y active Stanley WEA community and became a student of economic history in Philip Brown’s tutorial class. It was here he met a fellow student, infant teacher Hilda Johnson, his future wife. She was the energetic and enthusiastic secretary of the West Stanley WEA Branch.

Nigel Todd describes the University Tutorial Class as the WEA’s ‘gold standard’. The North East Regional Secretary John Lee embedded these into the WEA programme, they were weekly two hour sessions over three years, constructed in partnership with Durham University. Regular summer schools, the first in the North East being held at Hatfield College in June 1911, gave working class students who, in Durham, were mainly miners and their wives, the opportunity

for extended study. The fellowship offered by the social activities programme helped to nurture the young movement with students who shared a common passion for learning and the WEA. The Highway published February 1914 described the tutorial classes as a means by which the WEA could become self-sufficient in its own tutors. Jack Trevena was one such student who aspired to be a WEA tutor.

Jack obtained a scholarship to Fircroft College, Selly Oak, with the help of a grant from Stanley Urban District Council and began his studies in September 1913. Fircroft was founded in 1909 in the former home of the Cadbury Quaker family. It was created to provide educational opportunities for some of the most disadvantaged and excluded members of society. Its mission was social justice. So Trevena was well placed to take up a paid position with the WEA when John Lee resigned to go back into the ministry in Sheffield.

The District Executive unanimously recommended Jack be temporarily appointed as North East District Secretary on 35/- per week, increasing to £2 if funds allowed. He and Hilda Johnson were married in Newcastle the following year.2

In letters to Albert Mansbridge, the WEA General Secretary, Trevena talks of the movement being strong in the North East with successful classes, tutorial groups and active branches but the outbreak of the war meant that the infant movement, made up in the main of young people, was faced with losing members of their classes to the military or working longer shifts.

They had to be creative in addressing these problems.

Hilda Johnson (in the Stanley News December 1914) reported of curtailed work because of the war but added that ‘with admirable zeal and earnestness we have managed to turn the situation and save the movement’. The literature class became a dramatic society and established a Morris Dancing Troupe which held a concert raising £5 6s for the War Relief Fund. In the same article she reported that JG Trevena of Stanley Branch had been appointed as North East Regional Secretary and had taken over Philip Anthony Brown’s tutorial class (Philip Brown having enlisted for military service). Items published in the Finger Post (Branch reports) in The Highway record great efforts being made to sustain the classes in these war years.

1913 WEA Summer School, Hatfield Hall, University of Durham.

Philip Brown is just right of centre in the second row. It is likely that Trevena is also present but he has not yet been identified.

The WEA In World War 1 In The North East | 29

Women took up a greater role, encouraged by Trevena who thought the ‘girls’ should take on secretarial work – ‘they are keener, are full of optimism and generally succeeded in getting their own way’. Nigel Todd tells us that by 1915 there were 4 female branch secretaries and 27 classes for women covering a range of subjects from Home Nursing to the Economic Position of Women.3 This was not the only problem; the WEA encouraged debate that would to lead to a greater understanding of the political and economic world they lived in but in doing so Nigel Todd talks of the need to manage disagreements between those who held diverging views on the war. Letters to The Highway (Oct/Dec1914) demonstrate these radically divergent views of war in the WEA. In October the Bishop of Oxford wrote ‘never in my life have I been so proud to be an Englishman’. He was confident ‘the army and navy, fighting for the cause of liberty, honour and justice sees the cruel insolence of German pride, daring to invoke our religion into its service and drag down our God into the position of German idol bound to fight for his chosen people, horrifying and disgusting’. Percy Redfern in December however tells the readers they should not believe that all that is German is base and all that is British is splendid, ‘If knowledge can do no better than this where is our hope of the WEA? It will teach us that the kingdom of God does not come by plunging bayonets into men’s bodies and scattering their limbs with machine guns ... The Kingdom of God – of fraternity and co-operation is indeed the only kingdom for our common humanity’.

And local WEA activist, Dr Ethel Williams was nearly lynched for organising an anti-war meeting whilst prominent suffragist, teacher and wife of Independent Labour Party full time organiser, Lisbeth Simm, also North East WEA took a very pro-war position.

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

As war broke out, discussions among Summer School students led to the publication of ‘The War and Democracy’ which argued that the future of democracy was at stake as is, ‘all that is worth living for’. While some in the WEA felt the book endorsed the war others saw it as a vehicle for discussion, and Jack Trevena used it in his North East study circles to facilitate discussion of these divergent views. In this way it helped the WEA accommodate opposing views and protect the movement.4 The great majority of the country were persuaded by the propaganda to fight for King and Country and were carried along by a patriotic, jingoistic fervour and a belief that God and right was on their side. Once the war was under way it became increasingly difficult, indeed traitorous to object. But those religious and humanist pacifists who were opposed to the war believed implicitly “thou shalt not kill”. Others took a left political perspective, among them Keir Hardie of the ILP who believed in the universal brotherhood of man. To this group, the war was more to do with the vested interests that make war both possible and profitable. It was an imperialist war of the ruling elites and British workers had much more in common with their German fellow workers. Those on the left were not necessarily pacifists and some reserved the right to fight for a cause they believed in.

There were approximately 16,000 British men on record as conscientious objectors (COs) to armed service during the First World War. This figure does not include men who may have had anti-war sentiments but were either unfit, in reserved occupations, or had joined the forces anyway. The number of COs may appear small compared with the six million men who served, but the impact of these men on public opinion and on future governments was to be profound.5 In March 1916 the Government introduced conscription and extended it to include married men in May of that year. Several district secretaries were in danger of conscription so the

WEA Central (National) Executive agreed that they should support appeal tribunals on the grounds that WEA officials were ‘engaged in work of national importance’. Three district secretaries made a successful appeal to be excused.

1916. As was the practice, the tribunal was made up of local dignitaries including the Lord Mayor as well as a militar y representative, Lieut.

Kingsley Taylor. His appeal was heard alongside an insurance agent, slaughterman, boot repairer, medical student and rolleyman.

Mr W. Straker of CWS Printing speaking on behalf of the WEA committee appealed on behalf of their Organiser, “the fruit of many years work would be lost if he had to serve and it would be a disaster, if at this time, Mr Trevena was withdrawn”. Mr Trevena made a personal appeal on grounds of conscience; to him human life was inviolable. England, he said, belonged as much to anyone else to lovers of peace, goodwill and love. He could not take it upon himself to end any man’s life. The appeal gave him a month (to set things in order) and recommended him for non-combatant service.6

© IWM (Art.IWM PST 5161)

It was resolved that his wife, Hilda Trevena should take over the responsibilities of District Secretary until Trevena was released, the first woman to be appointed to that role. Although that too was not without controversy, Hebburn Miners Lodge questioned Hilda’s appointment and demanded (unsuccessfully!) that she be removed.

There were three categories of Conscientious Objector: Absolutist – committed pacifists on religious or political grounds e. g. Quakers, Socialists Alternativists – would not serve in the army but were prepared to be engaged in war work such as munitions Non-combatants who might serve at the front but as stretcher bearers, medics etc Trevena believed that he was engaged in ‘work of national importance’ and should be excused.

As a committed pacifist and socialist he declared himself a Conscientious Objector unwilling to take part in any aspect of the war i.e. an absolutist. His appeal was refused and his case was put before a tribunal in Newcastle in July

The Cyril Pearce database of WW1 Conscientious Objectors identifies Trevena’s Objector motivation as Quaker and Socialist Labour Party*. Jack Trevena had attended Fircroft College, a Quaker establishment, and would most certainly have been made aware of their pacifist views and perhaps because of this there has been an assumption that Jack was a Quaker. Having spoken to his niece and checked with the Friends’ Library in London they could find no reference to him as a Quaker. He was however brought up in a Primitive Methodist home and there was certainly a tradition within the church which argued that the taking of life could never be reconciled with the teachings of Christ and so his pacifism may have been a product of his upbringing.

The WEA In World War 1 In The North East | 31

The same would be true of his politics. Prior to WW1 there was plenty of opportunity for political discussion in Stanley, through the miners’ union, a very active ILP branch and of course his WEA Classes amongst many others. The Stanley News of 30th Januar y 1914 reported on a lecture organised by the Annfield Plain Primitive Methodist Improvement Society and given by a visiting speaker, Mr Norman Angells, ‘The War against the War’ to which the local ILP were invited. Trevena and the WEA organised a big meeting in Consett entitled ‘European Nations and the War’. In addition, The Highway 1915 reports that several Workingmen’s Clubs held war lectures and tried to set up a study circle on the causes of the war.

on 22 January 1917 he was confined again on 23 January, awaiting trial by District Court Martial “for disobeying a lawful command given by a senior officer” and sentenced to be imprisoned with hard labour for 9 months. The NonCombatant Corps was dubbed the ‘no courage corps’, with huge casualties at the Front any objection to militar y ser vice was seen to be cowardly and unpatriotic.

Trevena was assigned to the 5th Northern Company of Non Combatant Corps (NCC), Northumberland Fusiliers (3162) and called up on October 17 1916. On 18 October his military record shows he was in confinement awaiting court martial, was tried and convicted of “conduct to the prejudice of good order and militar y discipline” and on 20 October he was sentenced to 112 days of imprisonment. Released to duty

The NCC was expected to wear army uniform and carry out work duties for the Army. As an absolutist Jack Trevena rejected all military discipline and his experience of disobeying an order, court martial and imprisonment was common amongst Conscientious Objectors and has been dubbed the ‘Cat and Mouse’ treatment, a strategy used against the Suffragettes.

The NCC was stationed at Morn Hill Camp, Winchester and so Trevena started this sentence in Winchester jail on 3 February 1917. Released on 30 June he was Court Martialled on 5 July and sent back to Winchester, this time sentenced to serve 2 years.

© IWM (Q 103334)

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

their monthly or fortnightly letter home but using small sheets of brown toilet paper, a pen made from the needle they used for sewing mail bags and ink from the cobblers’ wax used for waxing the thread, this little 5”x5” magazine was produced. It was made up of essays, poems, humorous remarks, cartoons and sketches. Each one surreptitiously passed secretly up sleeves and under waistcoats. While we don’t know for certain if Jack Trevena contributed to the Whisperer it is hard to imagine that someone with his interests and skills did not – he would most certainly have read it.

‘only their ideals for company’

Interviews and memoirs give us an insight into the life of a WW1 conscientious objector in Winchester Civil Jail. Harold Bing, a Quaker CO, in Winchester at the same time as Trevena, tells us, ‘The cell was about 6 feet by 13 feet with one small window above head height, you couldn’t see out of it except by standing on your stool for which you might be punished. CO’s were kept in solitary confinement, could speak to warders only when spoken to and prisoners spent long hours alone in the cell sewing mailbags. It was easier to face prison if you were young and fit and were able to read. Some died in prison, some went mad, some had a breakdown in health and never really recovered, it depended on the strength of your constitution and temperament’. 7 Ironically the Cat and Mouse treatment allowed news of the war to filter through, so many of the men were on short sentences and found ingenious ways of communicating. One such method was the ‘ Winchester Whisperer ’.

Prisoners were not allowed paper other than

On 20 April 1918, by order of the Home Secretary, Trevena was given an early release; ill health had taken its toll. In May 1918 he was transferred to the Army Reserve and finally discharged on 31 March 1920.

The controversy which had arisen out of the appointment of a pacifist’s wife to the role of District Secretary, deepened further after Trevena’s release. ‘The District Executive asked him to return to work immediately and gave Hilda their appreciation, asking her to stay as secretary to the Tutorial Classes’.8 A furious Percy Corder, the District Treasurer, called on the November Executive meeting ‘to agree that JG Trevena having as a Conscientious Objector refused to perform work of National importance as an alternative to Military Service is unfitted to act as District Secretary’.9 The motion was seconded by Jevons, another influential member of the Executive but the vote was lost 7:4. Corder wrote to McTavish, WEA General Secretary ‘but the Association’s Central Executive felt that

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Trevena believed that he was engaged in ‘work of national importance’ and should be excused. As a committed pacifist and socialist he declared himself a Conscientious Objector unwilling to take part in any aspect of the war dismissing an official because of his personal views would be foreign to the spirit of the Movement and President, Vice President and General Secretary were all authorised to go to the Newcastle District Council to lay down the law’. Procedural objections were raised by several members and a stormy meeting ended in Corder resigning as Treasurer and storming out of Burt Hall. Putting aside the political consequence of a Coalition Liberal Candidate supporting a CO, Harry Barnes, a major in the Northumberland Fusiliers who had lost his own son in the war, defended Jack Trevena and prevented the crisis deepening. However, the crisis continued with Tynemouth WEA, National Union of Teachers and North Shields Cooperative Society calling for a special District Council to consider these matters, and Newcastle Co-operative Education Committee, Sunderland NUT announced they were seceding from membership.

In the end the national leadership came up with a compromise and offered the Trevenas a move

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to the newly created South West District and in September 1919 they moved to Plymouth where he served as District Secretary for 35 years.10 Clearly the WEA was not immune from the hostility shown by the wider society towards the Conscientious Objectors, their family and friends.

Challenging military culture and standing up for a belief is as courageous now as it was then but today the right to conscientious objection is recognised by the United Nations. *The Socialist Labour Party founded in 1903 was a left split from the Social Democratic Federation.

It was a revolutionary socialist party and British Chapter of the American SLP. In 1920 some of its members joined the Communist Party and some went to the Independent Labour Party.

I would like to acknowledge the help and encouragement in researching Jack Trevena’s story. In particular Terry Middleton, Nigel Todd, Jude Murphy, the staff of the Friends’ Library, London and the Peace Pledge Union.

William Temple The Highway (October 1914)

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The Place Of Memory In Education Alan*

This piece draws its title and inspiration from an article published in The Highway, July 1914 (originally an address to Reading WEA in January 1914).

“You do not educate a man by telling him what he knew not, but by making him what he was not”1 Even prior to The First World War, the WEA wrote about education and memory (the brain).

They knew young children left school aware of a world of information they barely realised and should be praised for aspiring to improve their position. They needed to be insightful and not abuse their brain through an over-focus on facts.

Today this is an element of the contest between education & lifelong learning.

‘The opinion of good men is knowledge in the making’.

To think about anything, you need to know facts, so workers are drawn to economics as they have genuine experience of it. Philosophy and literature are ignored as workers do not have time for studying them. Workers need ‘maximum visible result with minimum expenditure of time’.

Straining our brain with a never ending supply of simple facts greatly restricts our ability to train our brains to judge. Purely memorising facts, or

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accepting what people say is the wrong attitude for anyone. This approach restricts and lowers our overall abilities, leaving our brain inferior.

Undue faith in the written word and facts are the most effectual means of limiting individual growth.

The theories springing from evolving judgements allow learnt facts to become cultivated and your own. Facts will become digested and absorbed, not simply consumed. The brain requires assisted judgement not to be superseded by learning facts by rote. All education should include the training of powers as well as the acquisition of knowledge. These developing skills offer perspective and individualism. Bacon also stated in regards to facts that ‘simple men acquire them and wise men use them’. So seek lifelong learning with a ‘humble mind and a consciousness of our own ignorance’. As Bacon wrote, “Reading maketh a full man”. It increases insight and helps your skills of interpretation. A cultured individual trains their imagination, sympathies, understanding and judgement.

Learning attains a new skill or fact, memory is the expression of what you’ve learnt. Learn a new skill or fact slowly and laboriously, that’s learning. If acquisition occurs instantly, that is making a memory. Education uses a curriculum and is formal. Whilst learning is not and is rather

gained through lifelong experience, daily interactions and the world around us. It is now believed that 70% of learning might occur outside of formal educational settings. Many professions require their members to continue reflective practice and training.

nervous system (CNS). Good nutrition, stress management, and sleep can improve brain fitness. Whilst chronic stress, anxiety, depression, aging, air pollution, decreasing estrogen, excess oxytocin, and prolonged cortisol can decrease brain fitness.

Begin your individual learning journey, your mind will accelerate, you will see life securely, whole and beyond simple facts. Education should be a lifelong, never-ending process and ‘to travel hopefully is a better thing then to arrive and the true success is to labour’. You will gain an attitude of mind, able to trace cause, consequence and hold judgement whilst listening and tolerating other interpretations.

Regular actions become subconscious and automatic so most actions are done largely unconsciously, requiring less brain activity in the brain, due to less brain exercise. Activities that require you to use all your senses, break your subconscious routines and engage in new experiences, create BDNFs (neurotrophins).

Neurotrophins are a small class of proteins vital in neuronal development, that help stimulate

Education uses a curriculum and is formal.

Whilst learning is not and is rather gained through lifelong experience, daily interactions and the world around us. It is now believed that 70% of learning might occur outside of formal educational settings.

Give your brain time and you will self-develop, your judgement will be aided. Resulting in good citizenship, individual happiness, developing critical thinking – and you will think for yourself.

The power to do this all comes from within.

“Education is what people do to you. Learning is what you do for yourself ” Joi Ito Metacognition Cognitive Strategy Instruction (CSI) is learning to recognize learning strategies, to evaluate learning is the first step in developing lifelong learning. Physical and mental exercise increases levels of neurotrophins which act to protect and assists the survival of a sufficient number of neurons in the peripheral nervous system (PNS) as well as neurons in the central

and control neurogenesis. Certain types of physical exercise have been shown to markedly (threefold) increase BDNF synthesis in the human brain, partly responsible for exerciseinduced neurogenesis and improvements in cognitive function. Patients with Alzheimer’s and with Huntington disease exhibit reduced levels of BDNF. BDNF is vital to learning, memory, and higher thinking. Brain fitness is influenced by mental exercises so brain power games or cognitive training are helpful tools. *As this article draws parallels between a WWI era article and the author’s own direct experience, the name of the author has been changed to Alan in line with their wishes.

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Val Black

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Linda Martin

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Staging Our Street:1915 Tony Bulloch WEA Course Organiser, County Durham

A thought provoking, enigmatic and holistic production of the themes emerging from our First World War project, Our Street: 1915 was staged on 6th October 2015 at the Alun Armstrong Theatre, Stanley Civic Hall. The play was performed by a group of energetic and talented WEA students with learning disabilities and complex needs – and this fresh interpretation of the lives of North Eastern people during the First World War was created together with their WEA tutor Michelle Lindsay. No small task was asked of them either as the students only had 45 hours or so to learn their lines and bravely do something they had never done before in previous WEA classes and productions… perform with no direct support or prompts in front of a huge audience of 250+ members of the public. Diane Howe, our longstanding organiser partner with Durham County Council commented: “This was an empowering, inclusive opportunity for all of us which ultimately achieved every performers’ dream, a full house and a vast community presence.”

Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund for this production, they were thrilled to be able to perform on the impressive stage of the Alun Armstrong Theatre and with the highly

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professional support of the Stanley Civic Hall team. The heritage lottery funding enabled us to acquire authentic period costumes, provide appropriate props and engage inclusively with a variety of community organisations and individuals and so much more too. The cast were further empowered by the following note of support from Alun Armstrong himself: “To all involved at WEA, actors, performers, writers and organisers, I wish you lots of luck for your performance. Claire Howe the Civic Hall Manager has told me about the play and how much effort and work goes into such performances by all involved. Keep up the good work.”

“This was an empowering, inclusive opportunity for all of us which ultimately achieved every performer’s dream, a full house and a vast community presence”

They were also boosted by the walk-on parts from some volunteers from The Old 68th DLI Society and Display Team, who also provided their own highly authentic costumes.

As for the play itself, Our Street: 1915 was a tightly scripted depiction of the war-time lives of a range of characters all living in the same North East street. It explored the challenges faced by ordinary men and women in the face of big questions such as whether to heed the recruiting sergeant’s call and how to build a better society after the war. Conscientious objectors, best friends being accepted and rejected for the services, interpreting war reporting, fear and love were amongst some of the concepts showcased.

Given the subject matter, there were moments where the interplay of dialogue, music and the actors’ touching performances were deeply moving and almost unbearably sad, and yet the production as a whole was an extremely uplifting experience for all involved.

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Recreating The First World War In South Shields Malcolm Grady and Anthea Lang

In early 1915, three WEA tutors published a book based on a course they had taught on the reasons and implications of the outbreak of the First World War. It was a pioneering study by three tutors who felt that the important issues of the day needed to be discussed, considered and understood. Little did they know at the time how long and how horrific the next three years were to be.

One hundred years on, we know the length, the horror and the waste in human life of the Great War as it became to be known. The passage of time, however, naturally distances us from the events of the war, the battles, the use of new technologies of warfare, the politics of the time and the way ordinary people, away from the front line, spent their daily lives on the home front.

In 2015, the WEA North East gained funding for a First World War project funded through the National Heritage Lotter y Fund. A number of projects were established in the region. In South Tyneside, a project to try and recreate aspects of life on the home front was established. The project took the form of a 10 week course beginning in January 2016 at the South Shields John Simpson Kirkpatrick, hero of Gallipoli, commemorated in South Shields town centre

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Museum. The purpose of the course was to follow the progress of the war through each year 1914–1918 through the use of primary source material, artefacts of the time and through experiences which tried to make empathetic connections with the past. Each session lasted 2 hours and interested course members came from Sunderland, North Tyneside as well as South Tyneside.

From the start, course members were encouraged to think about what it must have been like to have lived through such unprecedented times, to see loved ones volunteer and go to war, for women to do the jobs that men once did, to balance an ever challenging budget for the home. So, how did we do that?

War memorial, St Stephen’s Church

One way was to re-introduce the group members to the coinage of the day, £ s d. For the first 2 sessions we handed out coins which were pre-1916 pennies and halfpennies, and asked members to take 3d in coinage (some referred to the coins as ‘old money’!). They were given prices of some goods in 1914–15 and then they went through an exercise of what they could buy for 3d. Newspapers cost a halfpenny, a loaf of bread a penny, a glass of beer up to 3d.

Some spent, some saved. As the weeks went on, the amount that they could have increased to 6d, then 9d and finally 1s.

At 1s, some took a mix of coinage with threepenny bits and sixpences being introduced, some stuck to 12 pennies (heavy in the pocket and purse!) .

They found that they were restricted in the amount they could buy and the range of what they could buy due to increased costs due to shortages and rationing of goods.

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A second experience was in sampling foodstuffs of the period, not the original stuff that is! Tutor Anthea Lang researched and sourced the ingredients for a range of cakes and biscuits that both families on the home front and soldiers on the western front would have eaten. Each week she baked to an original recipe from the 1914– 18 period and brought the finished product to the class. Course members then had to buy the cake or biscuits from their weekly allocation of pennies. Such treats included Anzac biscuits, Trench cake, Lemon and Poppyseed cake and a variation on a ginger cake. Anthea recreated the growing shortage of certain ingredients, such as sugar, in the cakes and biscuits she produced with the challenge of week 6 when we all tasted the delights – or not – of Trench cake!

Course members also experienced certain treats of the time including sharing a box of Milk Tray chocolates (some visited the chocolate box 3 times!) which had been introduced by Cadbury’s in 1915 and a taste of Guinness as it was one of the few beers/stouts that was not diluted by Government regulations to curtail excessive drinking amongst the munitions workers as it was brewed in Ireland. However, the most challenging experience for the group

Trench cake

was in the distribution of ‘peace babies’ to reflect coming of peace in 1918–19. We know them as Jelly Babies! Course members had to chose two and then demonstrate how they would eat them.

Heads first won hands down to coin a phrase!

of the sea plane launch pad at Littlehaven which can be seen a low tide were studied in the hope that they may be part of an eventual ‘Healthy History’ walk to remind future generations of the importance of that facility in ensuring the safety of the North East Coast from enemy attack.

The timing of the course didn’t allow the documentation for the walk to be completed but it is something which will be revisited to allow completion in the future. The course was over so quickly – 10 weeks in the blink of an eye almost. Still, the course prompted thoughts, provoked ideas and gave time for reflection upon a momentous period in our history... to coin a phrase, it gave food for thought!

...treats included Anzac biscuits, Trench cake, Lemon and Poppyseed cake and a variation on a ginger cake. Anthea recreated the growing shortage of certain ingredients, such as sugar, in the cakes and biscuits she produced with the challenge of week 6 when we all tasted the delights – or not – of Trench cake!

A third experience was in sharing family histories of the First World War through personal family memories, artefacts of the time eg ration cards, enlistment records, letters and photos and in trying to understand aspects of South Shields as they were in 1914–18 through visual images and moving film of the time. Members attended a ‘cinema’ type session where they were shown original footage of the Battle of the Somme July 1916 as if they were watching it in 1916.

Photographic images of South Shields at various times during the period were shared with the group in an attempt to tr y and recreate an historical walk through the town reflecting the different developments taking place at the time.

For instance, the last remaining wooden supports

Sea plane launch pad supports, Littlehaven

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WEA Members In World War 1 Pauline Hilton

There were many members of the WEA nationally who served bravely and lost their lives in the Great War. Some of them were notable by the fact that they had benefitted greatly from the education they received as members of the organisation.

One such member was J. L. Murray, son of a Wallsend miner and himself also having worked at the ‘pit’. He was a keen learner and gave evenings and spare time to his self-improvement, which in time led to his obtaining two scholarships and acceptance at Oxford. He was affiliated with Ruskin College.

He joined the Royal Flying Corps during WW1 and acted as an observer flying over enemy lines reaching the level of 2nd Lieutenant. During one of his observation flights he was sadly killed in 1917.

2nd Lieutenant Murray is an example, to all that aspire to self-improvement and adult learning, of the levels of education that can be attained when eagerness and application go hand in hand.

Captain Reginald J. E. Tiddy was born in 1880, educated at Tonbridge School and University College Oxford. He became a fellow of Trinity College and University Lecturer in English. His foremost interest was in upholding country traditions such as folk dancing and song, and

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was instrumental in arousing interest in the revival in Oxford. He built up a strong local committee which spread into the surrounding district, where the traditions had not entirely died out. He spent most of his holidays in Ascott under Wychwood and brought to the village life old Oxfordshire folk dances. One visitor remarked that it seemed like the whole village sang and danced. The success of the Ashton under Wychwood WEA was attributable to Reginald Tiddy. He passionately believed that if the WEA could spread through and work in the villages and surroundings of Oxfordshire, they would find a people as ready and eager for education as those in the populace of Industrial towns.

The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 ended Tiddy’s rural idyll. Although a pacifist by nature, he felt it his duty to fight, and he enlisted in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, becoming a lieutenant with the regiment’s 2nd/4th Territorial Army Battalion in 1915. With asthma and poor eyesight it was a wonder he passed a medical board, and in fact it took several attempts.

He was extremely interested in the Wartime Comradeship Committee (WRCC) writing to a friend In July 1916 that “the WEA is standing up to its best traditions in this war. I mean to work hard for it if I get back”.

Captain Tiddy was fortunate to have with him, as a batman, a friend from Wychwood. He was known for his great friendship with his men and that friendship was a great comfort to him. He was killed in the trenches by a shell burst on the night of the 10th September 1916.

Early in August an unlucky shell deprived the Battalion of one of its best officers. Lieutenant Tiddy had joined the Infantry in a spirit of duty and self-sacrifice, which his service as an officer had proved but to which his death more amply testified. The regrets of friends and comrades measured the Battalion’s loss.1

The WEA resolved to raise a memorial to all of its sons who had fallen in battle.

Captain Tiddy

Name: Tiddy, Reginald John Elliott Initials: RJE Nationality: United Kingdom Rank: Lieutenant Regiment / Service: Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry Unit Text: 2nd/4th Bn. Age: 36 Date of Death: 10/08/1916 Additional information: Son of William Elliott Tiddy and Ellen Tiddy, of Priory Cottage, Ascott-under-Wychwood, Oxon.

Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead Grave/Memorial Reference: II. D. 20.

Cemetery: Laventie Military Cemetery, La Gorgue

Lieutenant H Haworth was another enthusiast of the WEA and of self-improvement through education. He belonged to the Blackpool Tutorial class and did much to spread the popularity of the WEA winning many members. He joined the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment and was sadly killed in action in 1917.

2nd Lieutenant A Gadsby Machine Gun Corps – He was the assistant-secretar y of the Birmingham WEA giving a lot of his time to the furtherance of education for the working man.

In February 1918 he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery during the battle of Cambrai.

This was a battle waged against the troops on the famous Hindenburg line and one in which improved tanks were used by the British Army.

No further information is known about him following the award.

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Peter Lee Mick Lynch Peter Lee was born in July 1864 at Duff Heap Row, five houses at Trimdon Grange Colliery.

His parents Tom and Hannah moved from Oldham Lancashire in 1860. Tom his father had three children from a previous marriage. Tom’s wife Hannah was educated by her grandfather, a schoolmaster. She in turn educated her children, wherever they happened to live, as her husband Tom could not settle at one place for long. Tom’s grandfather, a gypsy, may have been the reason for his movement from colliery to colliery with gypsy blood in him. He actually moved 21 times in 22 years.

In 1874 the family moved to the Durham coal fields. Peter, his brother and father got jobs in Littletown colliery and his mother Hannah tried to get them to go to night school when they came home from the pit. They were not interested except in the winter months when it was dark and they had nothing to do. Between 1879 and 1886 Peter Lee worked at fifteen collieries. At the age of sixteen he worked as a coal hewer and was noted as a heavy drinker, a bit of a fighter, but a very hard worker. He realised he was wasting his life away so decided to join night school and soon learned there was a bigger and better world out there. At 22 years old and being a wanderer he booked a passage to Philadelphia, United States of America. During his time in America working in the mines he found no difference. It was still dangerous, low paid and badly managed and within six months he had worked in about six mines in different towns.

He eventually became involved in trade unions, later becoming chairman of a miners’ lodge in Mecklenburg County. However, with no ends of trouble, poor methods and low wages, even for

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good workers like himself, he decided to return to England.

On his return to the pit he became involved in a Miners’ Lodge within three months. Also on his return he married Alice Thompson from Thornley on 29 of February 1888 in Haswell.

During sometime at Marsden pit he befriended a schoolmaster who sensed a quality in him and educated him for two years before Peter left to work at Thrislington and got a job as checkweighman due to his mathematics and being able to express himself. In 1903 he was elected to the parish council and became chairman. Through his good work as chairman he became a member of the rural district council of Easington. Peter was involved in the chapel and would preach in other villages miles away. In 1919 Durham County Council became the first Labour council in Great Britain and Peter was chairman. He flourished as a leader even during the strikes and lock outs: in 1933 he became President of the Miners’ Federation. Peter Lee died on Sunday 16 June 1935. He was laid to rest at Wheatley Hill.

Many people, however, thought he would be buried in Durham but he wanted to be where his heart was at Wheatley Hill. People from all over came to his funeral to do honour to the life and work of Peter Lee. His mind was still active and alert but his body let him down.

Editor’s note: Peter Lee’s story is a fascinating tale of self-motivated education, and it’s an interesting coincidence that his headstone in Wheatley Hill cemetery lies just across the path from that of Thomas Kenny (see comic book on page 11).

The King’s Shilling Lelah McDermott Aye lads let’s take the king’s shilling, A few weeks, and we’ll rout the Hun, Then back again it will be such fun Squalid conditions in foreign land, mud blood and guts all around Nothing romantic and glorious here – Body’s all broken minds all awry Every one thought it would be over by now It goes on forever the rain and the pain, Nothing will ever be quite the same

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Katherine Mary French Harley Pauline Hilton In an obituary column in the July 1917 issue of The Highway magazine there is an entry for Katherine M. Harley. The memoriam states that she went out in 1915 to Troves as administrator to the Scottish Women’s Army (attached to the French army).

In researching this intriguing woman’s history I came across many remarkable events in her life.

She was born Katherine Mary French, 3rd May 1855, less than 3 months after the death of her father, William French, a naval Commander from Ireland. She was the sister of Sir John French, leader of the British Army at the commencement of the 1914-18 war.

Her childhood was affected by the ill health of her mother and by the age of 10 years old she was an orphan. She was at first sent to boarding school and then travelled to India to stay with her sister Maggie. It was there that she met and married George Ernest Harley, a soldier. She was still living in India when a little over a year later she gave birth to her first child Florence.

On their return to England she gave birth to a

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son, Julian and another daughter, Edith. She followed the life typical of army wives of the time. They finally settled in Condover near Shrewsbur y. Records show that, after his retirement, George and Katherine took cruises to South Africa in 1904 and another before his untimely death in 1907.

After Katherine was widowed her life changed dramatically. She became politically active. She took the role of a Poor Law Guardian in 1910.

Her political persuasions then led her to become an active member and leader of the West Midland Federation of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Three years later she became the President of the Shropshire NUWSS as well as having involvement in the Church League of Women’s Suffrage. She was the Suffragette who instigated the 1913 Suffragist Pilgrimage, marching across 17 Cities and ending at Hyde Park, London.

With the outbreak of war there was a change in focus for the Women’s Suffrage movement, who within seven days of the declaration of war became a relief movement. The women began volunteering to assist the war effort and directing them to organisations they could assist. Katherine was foremost in asking them to assist her brother who ‘sorely needed able bodied men’, by women taking over their jobs to enable them to go to war.

Katherine became involved with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals directly because of her work with the League. The first unit was posted to

and motorised ambulances. She was in charge of staff, a mobile kitchen, 6 ambulances and 2 delivery vans. Attached to the Serbian army, they were billeted in tents near Osrovo. They transported wounded soldiers from dressing stations from 10 to 30 miles away. 400 wounded had been cared for in the first eight weeks.

Despite working in difficult conditions often tired and worn out tr ying to keep the fleet of ambulances on the road continuously, the unit were criticised for poor discipline, smoking, drinking and for having short haircuts. It was felt that Katherine didn’t have a tight enough control over the unit. After an inspection by the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, Katherine and her daughter resigned.

Royanmount near Troyes in France, and owing to the ill health of the Administrator Katherine offered to take over her role. She worked under difficult conditions to establish a second hospital, most patients being nursed in tents while building was underway.

In October 1915 the Unit was transferred to Ghevgeli, 50 miles from Salonika. They were given a disused silkworm factory and tents were erected in the compound. Within 2 weeks it was ready for the wounded to be transferred in. Many had frostbite as the winter weather was bitter.

Eventually when it became too dangerous the unit was transferred to Salonika, where they found themselves up to the knees in mud. The Navy stepped in to help erect tents in preparation to receive wounded troops. Katherine for her dedication and services to France was awarded the Croix de Guerre.

Determined to help care for women and children and the elderly, Katherine and Edith moved to the town of Monastir renting a house which she funded to be used as an orphanage. The Allied troops were based in Monastir and it was subject to heavy bombardment every day. On March 7th 1917, while taking tea with Edith, Katherine died as the result of shellfire from a barrage of shelling on the town. Her body was taken to Salonika by her daughter Edith and buried with full military honours. Her grave was more outstanding than the others in the cemetery.

A memorial fund and a medal were endowed to Salop Infirmary in Honour of Katherine Harley.

The Hospital no longer exists, but an award is still given for the Katherine M Harley medal for efficiency.

In spring of 1916, following a dispute, Katherine resigned and returned to England. Katherine was determined to go back and later returned with her daughter Edith in response to the Serbian Government’s request for two further hospitals

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War Baby Eileen Cordey The Letter Regret, relief, a silent tear ran down her cheek as she read his spiteful rant Mocking her weakness, rejecting the child born out of loneliness, a fleeting release from poverty and fear.

Their eyes looked up at her expectantly “Is me da coming home then Ma?” the eldest asked.

“No lad, we’re on our own He’s with a foreign lass that’s young, excitin’.

He says he won’t be back, So that’s that”.

Christmas Day The tiny Christmas tree was decked with tarnished tinsel.

A silver paper star atop a spindly branch.

The baby slept in a makeshift cot beside the hearth.

Her brothers fidgeted sensing their ma’s despair yet still lost in wonder at the apple, orange, and wooden toy, lovingly carved

by Granda, found in stretched stockings that morning.

She’d scraped and saved her coupons to buy the chicken, plumped out with stuffing, taties, cabbage and a plum pudding, the meagre treat divided carefully and topped with watery custard.

The Homecoming The pit wheel still, no weary miners trudging home that Christmas day Yet hobnailed boots clanked on the cobbled road outside Finger to lips she shushed her brood and waited …

Then breathed his name.

Brushing the snow from his army great coat he filled the tiny room.

“It’s your Da,” she said with scorn, “back from the war, back from his whore.”

He fixed his eyes on the sleeping child “A lass, I suppose that’s summat. I’ll take her on …

What’s one more.”

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Northumberland James Angela McKean In Ypres’ field, sodden like King James’s at Flodden four centuries past, his namesake lay pooling in mud. Blown from the trench with the clay and the stench he sank slowly, stunned, spending his blood.

It was spring when he fell, he was sure as he struggled to think through the cylinder shrink of his mind. So how could he now feel wild Lindisfarne winds thicken his blood into ice?

How, lying here could the sky, clear when he rode into war just this morning, close into night like a vice?

No matter, no cry; no more call to advance.

No sigh left his body as the drum beat, receding, fell into his darkness. His slowed heart collected the rest of his life and left, bleeding the zest of his life into poppies too young, like himself, to have learned how to dance.

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The Road To Nowhere Gareth Rees

St James’s Church, Thorpe Thewles

Thorpe Thewles is a small village of 140 houses which, prior to the outbreak of the First World War, was located in the south of County Durham.

It was predominantly a rural area with the village and surrounding area supporting a number of farms.

To do this I undertook the following research:

The rural outlook of the village was unusual because it was located amidst a centre of heavy engineering within county Durham and Yorkshire.

Ten men went to the Great War from the Parish of Grindon in which Thorpe Thewles is located.

None returned home.

• Investigation of some of the individuals at Teesside Archives, Durham Archives and Northern Archives of Northumberland Fusiliers.

My main aim in this project was to discover if any form of personal or group education was undertaken by any of these ten soldiers who were located in different areas of the battlefields at different times of the war.

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• Investigation of the ten individuals using Ancestr y.com, the Commonwealth Graves Commission and the National Census prior to the Great War.

• Field visits to Belgium and France to identify graves and aspects of the Great War relevant to some of these soldiers from the Parish.

• Continued research and study of The Highway to identify aspects relevant to the main aim above.

The soldiers I researched are:

Name

Rank

Unit

Fell

John Thomas Herbert Bee Sergeant

Northumberland Fusiliers Rifle Brigade

21/08/1916

Alfred Gaylo

(The Prince Consort’s Own) 14/11/1916 Rifle Brigade B Company 13th Battalion

Rifleman

Frederick James Goldsbrough Private

Gunner Royal Garrison Artillery

13/10/1915

Joseph Alexander Hattle

Rifleman

Rifleman B Company Rifle Brigade

25/01/1916

Robert McKeag

Sergeant

9th Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers

19/12/1915

Matthew Metcalfe

Private

Machine Gun Corps (Infantry) formerly 9900 Durham Light Infantry

14/01/1918

Albert Nelmes

Private

Alexandra Princess of Wales Own Yorkshire Regiment

15/09/1918

John H Pinch

Sapper

Railway Company Corps Royal Engineers

22/10/1917

Martin Smith

Private

Cameroonians Scottish Rifles

07/04/1917

Frederick Woodward

Private

Durham Light Infantry

16/09/1916

The sacrifice that these men made is recorded on a plaque in St James’s Church, Thorpe Thewles. There is no cenotaph in the village as there is in the nearby villages of Carlton, Stillington and Bishopton.

My Own Experience My own experience as a child of the Workers’ Educational Association was borne out of seeing my father attending classes for literacy and number skills.

He was a miner in the South Wales Valleys and as a result I have associated the WEA with areas that have an industrial background. In my mind I felt that the WEA in the 1950’s would have been associated with industrial regions.

The plaque in St James’ Church, Thorpe Thewles commemorating the men’s sacrifice in the Great War

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Agricultural workers in Thorpe Thewles prior to the Great War

Thorpe Thewles 1914

Robert McKeag

Unlike today, Thorpe Thewles in 1914 was predominantly a rural farming community having six farms in the village and area nearby. Today there is one farm nearby to the village.

According to the 1911 census Robert McKeag was one of a family of eight. He worked as a labourer at the blast furnace at Carlton Iron Works at Redmarshall in Durham. He was single and would be 31 years of age when he enlisted in1914. He died on 19th December 1915 and is buried in Etaples Military Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France. Research into Carlton Ironworks documentation at the Teesside Archives did not show any record of him.

Consequently in the 1914 era the predominant work in this area was agricultural. Based on the area’s agricultural background, I expected to find many of the men working on the farms prior to going to the Great War. However, through research of the 1911 England Census I found out that two of the men actually worked in an industrial background. These two men were Robert McKeag and Albert Nelmes.

Due to the industrial backgrounds and my association of the WEA with an industrial background I decided to focus on these two gentlemen.

The nature of daily agricultural life in Thorpe Thewles

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Albert Nelmes Albert Nelmes was a member of a family of six.

He joined the Yorkshire regiment in 1914. He died on 15th September 1916 aged 20 years of age. He is buried in Flatiron Copse Cemetery in Mametz on the Somme. Research at Stockton

Librar y and Tom Leonard Mining Museum indicates that at the age of 14 Albert was a ‘flapper’ – a person who operated the wooden doors to provide ventilation to the mine levels.

Access to the WEA Through this extensive research I cannot find any evidence that these men had access to the WEA. Unfortunately this lack of a documented link applies both to these men and others during their time at work in the United Kingdom and when they were serving in their regiments in the Great War.

Conjecture / Incidental Learning One must ask the question did these men: 1. Have the opportunity to discuss things and share rich experiences from their differing backgrounds while in the rest trenches at the front?

This is reflected from the following ideal set out in The Highway,1915: ‘The gathering together of adults of different temperaments, varying experiences, and diverse degrees of knowledge, all in the determination to get out of their association with one another increased mental, spiritual and physical power, has been shown to be full of glorious possibilities almost undreamt of before they happened. It is not merely that knowledge is achieved. Knowledge may be a dangerous thing unless it is utilized by the person who possesses it for the common good.”1 2. There is evidence from our visit to Belgium that these men were ver y adept at creating things. Not only poetry, trench publication e.g.

Wipers Times but also physical items such as soap sculptures, paper models and brass trench

art. Examples of these are plentiful at the Hooge Crater Museum near Ypres. Learning must have been evident for these things to occur.

3. One must consider how much time these soldiers had available for learning to take place.

Consideration of the simple time line below indicates that: • There was a set routine during the day and night • ‘Stand to’ was a time when the soldiers caught up with daily chores – clean / repair equipment, write home or catch up on some sleep. Although bored at times they were constantly in fear of death from snipers, shelling or attack. This could not have been conducive to a good learning environment.

Conclusion drawn from this research When these men were behind friendly lines there is no evidence that I can find to indicate organized education took place either with or without WEA. Consequently I can only draw the conclusion that any education that occurred was purely incidental and not formally organized.

This would be based on the experiences and knowledge of the men and officers who were either in the trenches or available during rest and relaxation behind friendly lines.

Thanks to the following for help with this research: Tom Leonard Mining Museum, Teesside Archives, Clayport Library Durham, Stockton on Tees Library, John Hall Photographs, Durham Light Infantr y Museum, WEA Magazine – Highway, Northumberland Fusiliers Museum, Alnwick, Woodhorn Colliery Museum, Ashington, St James’s Church, Thorpe Thewles and Thorpe Thewles History Group.

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Just Not Good Enough!

Liz Armstrong It is a warm Monday evening late in March 1918.

Several days of steady sunshine have slightly counterbalanced grim news from the Front, where the Germans are mounting a strong offensive on the Somme. In Newcastle, the WEA Branch is meeting in a room in the Co-operative Society Offices in Westmorland Road.

war time national debate about the need for a more inclusive education system.

In 1914 the mass of children left elementary school at 12; only a few of the most intelligent and wealthy children could take the opportunity of what the WEA termed ‘a ladder of opportunity

It is not extreme to say that throughout WWI child slave labour remains widespread. This state of affairs is not to be tolerated – the Branch, along with the rest of the WEA wants change. They argue for ‘a broad (educational) Highway along which children of the poor may travel’.

Everyone knows of someone who has been killed in France; Philip Anthony Brown who died in 2015 would never be forgotten along with many husbands, brothers and sons of friends and students. The war is impacting on the WEA in other ways too and the Committee is working hard, with reduced funding, to maintain a varied programme of tutorial, sessional, and day school courses: Industrial History, Economics and Music Appreciation, Poetry and Landscape; a study circle on Democracy and the War. There is practicality too. Classes on First Aid and Home Nursing meet a domestic need; there are social events and outings to provide companionship and support for the many women managing alone at home.

There have been public conferences and one on ‘The Education of Children beyond 14’ encouraged the Branch to join in the ongoing

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from elementary school to University’. For the majority, with only basic instruction, the next step was an unrewarding, low paid, insecure job. It is not extreme to say that throughout WWI child slave labour remains widespread. This state of affairs is not to be tolerated – the Branch, along with the rest of the WEA wants change.

They argue for ‘a broad (educational) Highway along which children of the poor may travel’.

300 miles away in Parliament just such a change is being debated by the politicians; a new Education Act is being driven through the commons by Hal Fisher, President of the Board of Education. Progress has been slow and the ride predictably bumpy. The main proposals are that all children will remain at school until the age of 14. There would then be 8 hours of day part time continuation schooling for all adolescent boys and girls.

Branch committee members know that during the second reading of the Bill, in March 2018, those in favour talk about it having ‘very steady backing, particularly from the great mass of the working-class population’. Those against quote The Confederation of British Industries’ claim that industry would be ruined if all children received continuation education. A period of 8 hours a week taken out of working time would impose a burden many industries would be unable to bear. The wellbeing of Industry had to be the first consideration; education the second.

Riled by the slowness of progress of the Bill and by the antagonism of the CBI towards the proposed changes, the Branch has decided to add its voice directly to the debate. The main business tonight is not the class programme or the next social event. The job this evening is to formulate a motion to go to no other than the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, and to Hal Fisher.

They mull over the issues. The Bill is a step in the right direction but it is just not good enough. The claims of the CBI must be dismissed and an amendment (submitted by Sir Henry Hibbert) to reduce the number of hours allocated to

continuation education must be rejected. More, not fewer, than 8 hours a week must be allocated for the part time education of those over 14 years old. And why are the politicians taking so long to finalise the debate?

A final wording is triumphantly agreed which includes: That the Newcastle Branch asserts its abhorrence of the proposals contained in the Memo on Education issued by the Federation of British Industries, calls upon the Government to extend and strengthen the scope of the Education Bill... and expresses the unalterable determination of the workers to insist upon rejection of the Hibbert Amendment.

In the event, the Hibbert Amendment was rejected and the Fisher Education Act, whilst not fully implemented, was significant in that it ensured the end of child labour. Through their own WEA education, members of the Newcastle Branch felt empowered to play their part in shaping the country’s education. Just what Albert Mansbridge must have hoped for.

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Sandy Egan-Fowler

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George Young

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In Flanders Fields Ruth Tanner Diary of a WEA Visit to the War Graves of France and Belgium November 2015

Ration Farm Military Cemetery, Armentieres

Tuesday November 3rd

Wednesday November 4th

An early start, as most members of the group gathered on Newcastle station for the train down to London. Others joined at Darlington and the final two in London, including Gerry Vincent, the great niece of Philip Anthony Brown, whose grave we were to visit the next day. The train journey to Lille passed very quickly and we were soon settled in a very comfortable hotel on a quiet waterway near to the centre of the city.

During the evening we continued getting to know each other and enjoyed presentations from those who had prepared handouts for the sites we were to visit next day.

We set off in a neat little bus ably driven by Ali, our knowledgeable driver, whose brilliant English, we learned, had been acquired during 4 years working in London.

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Our first stop was at Ration Farm, a small site of 1022 graves, so called because it was the point to which rations were brought to be distributed to the troops on the front line. We found Philip Anthony Brown’s grave, and Gerry spent some precious quiet moments there. Her family had not visited the site since 1924, and she showed us a picture of the grave taken then. Although the

grave was just the same the area around it was not in such good repair as it is now.

It was impressive to see how well the Commonwealth War Graves Commission keep the sites overall – beautifully mown, with long-life and low maintenance plantings and flowers such as lavender and roses duly tidied and pruned.

Gerry shared with us a poem written by Philip, ‘A Pennyworth of War’ a witty jibe at all of us for treating news of war as a sort of entertainment, but a sad and slightly cynical comment also. Then she read his last letter home dated November 3rd 1915. In it he expressed his guilt at having warm dry feet as he had been issued with trench boots while his men had not. He described the beauty of the sunrise and wrote “We have a mild enemy in front of us.” The next day he was hit in both legs and although rescued from the front line by Private Thomas Kenny, who gained the VC for this act of valour under fire, Philip died later of his wounds.

It seems that Philip was beloved of all who knew him. Gilbert Murray wrote in the introduction to P.A.B.’s book on the French Revolution: “He was like a brother to us all and so clever.” His brother Theo Anthony Brown wrote: “We have all lost one of the best friends we had and one who set us an example of wonderful unselfishness and good nature in everything he did.”

We were privileged to be there one hundred years to the day after this sad event to lay a wreath from the WEA on his grave which is marked with the simple words taken from Leigh Hunt’s Abu Ben Adam: “Write me as one who loves his fellow men.”

Gerry Vincent visits her Great Uncle Philip Brown’s grave on the centenary of his death

From Ration Farm we moved on to the Loos Memorial at Dud Corner, so called because of the number of unexploded bombs found in the vicinity. The cemetery stands near the site of a German strongpoint known as the Lens Road Redoubt. On three sides are panels with the names of around 20,000 men who died at the Battle of Loos and have no known graves, with a further 1800 in the cemetery itself. The Battle of Loos lasted from September 25th–14th October 2015, and is remembered both for the huge numbers lost, (nearly 60,000 British and

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Among those commemorated were: Lieutenant Arthur George Heath, a colleague of P. A. Brown, killed on his 28th birthday, and Second Lieutenant Theo Brown, Philip’s brother.

As a group we were slowly coming to terms with the reality of the huge loss of life commemorated in the cemeteries, and before travelling to Vimy Ridge we stopped briefly at St. Patricks to visit the grave of Enoch Dalton, a skilled miner who tried to rescue men out of a mine blown by the Germans. He was a North Yorkshire WEA member (Maltby branch). By honouring one man perhaps we could somehow begin to cope with the vast and senseless loss of life overall.

Dud Corner Memorial Loos

Commonwealth and 26,000 Germans) and also for its first use of poison gas. It was hoped that this would bring the breakthrough that would win the war, but despite an initial gain, lack of back up of supplies, poor communications and the unanticipated problems of gas blowing back towards the BEF troops nullified these hopes.

“British losses were devastating.”

Vimy Ridge is an escarpment about 8km north of Arras, near Lens. As we approached we could see the two arms of the giant Memorial reaching up into the sky. The ridge had an obvious tactical advantage, and the Germans had taken and held the heights since trench lines were drawn up in late 1914. Neither the French nor the British had managed to dislodge them until the Canadian Corps’ success on April 9th 1917.

All four divisions of the Corps fighting together for the first time formed a 4 mile long circle of troops around the Ridge and stormed it aided by artillery and the British 5th Division. The Canadians claim that their success at Vimy Ridge cemented their identity as a nation and as a fighting force in its own right rather than merely as colonial support to the British.

Dud Corner Memorial Loos

Vimy Ridge

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The Ridge is now owned by the Canadian Government and we were shown round by a Canadian student. We were able to go into the tunnels which were dug to enable the advancing line of Canadian soldiers to approach very close to the German front line. The site is remarkable for having left the ground largely undisturbed so that the trenches and shell holes are clearly visible and the trench outlines have been made more permanent by the addition of concrete ‘sandbags’ so that one could walk along them without fear of mishap. The overall impression has been softened by the planting of many local and Canadian native trees.

Tunnels at Vimy Ridge

From the memories of warfare so well described in the Visitor Centre we turned to admire the truly beautiful and imposing Monument, which was built of limestone brought from an abandoned Roman quarry on the Adriatic, with imposing figures which were carved in situ the largest being that of a woman representing ‘Canada – a young nation mourning her dead’.

On the walls around the memorial are carved the names of 11,285 soldiers who have no known grave out of a total of more than 66,000

Canadians who gave their lives in the war. We marvelled at the sheer size and majesty of the memorial which was newly restored and opened in 2007 and the wonderful view of the countryside around including the twin ‘Double Crassier’ slagheaps we had passed and which have been a feature of the area for a hundred years.

Thursday November 5th This time we drove north-west into Belgium and towards Ypres, first visiting Poperinge and Talbot House, that haven of calm, a comfortable gentleman’s home of the time, but in this case welcoming men whatever their rank who sought some respite from the horrors of the Front.

Though in an unassuming backstreet in a quiet Belgian town, (at the time away from the turmoil of battle in the Ypres salient,) its founders, Neville Talbot and Tubby Clayton, and the organisation which grew out of it, Toc H, (Toc from the radio signalling alphabet for T) are famed worldwide.

Toc H have called Talbot House a ‘light in the darkness’ – hence the symbol of the movement, the Toc H lamp. Once again we enjoyed an interesting and evocative exhibition and the peaceful garden and also the rather perilous climb up to the chapel at the top of the house, after which local volunteers gave us a welcome cup of tea.

Talbot House, Poperinge

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From here we went on to a small cemetery at Brandhoek, in an area which was comparatively safe and therefore a centre where field ambulances were posted, and then to Essex Farm cemetery to see the memorial to Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, of the Canadian Army Medical Corps and author of In Flanders Fields the Poppies blow. It is said he composed it there in memory of a good friend who had just died. McCrae himself died near the end of the war from pneumonia and is buried at Wimereux near Boulogne.

Langemark – the Studentfriedenhof

Gareth and Bill at Brandhoek Military Cemetery

If ye break faith with us who die, We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

Somehow and with the help of Ali we fitted in lunches bought from motor way stops, but perfectly adequate, which gave us a break and set us up for a further afternoon of visits.

Langemark. We noted the difference in the sombre tones of basalt lava and the lowering oak trees in this German cemetery. It is one of only four in the Flanders region, and one of the

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‘collecting cemeteries’ where the many German soldiers’ remains were brought from surrounding graveyards as a result of agreements reached with the Germans after the war. After the first war and again after the Second World War, Germans both known (c.19,000) and unknown (nearly 25,000) were brought to Langemark.

Known soldiers are commemorated in graves and the unknown on oak wood panels in the entrance porch. A bronze sculpture of four mourning soldiers also looks out over the site: The Studentenfriedhof. The Students’ cemetery.

It is noticeable that many of the graves are of very young men – the 3,000 or so war volunteers, young cadets brought in to ‘fill the gaps’ before the expected German victory early in the war.

In 1940, Adolf Hitler paid a visit to Langemark during the Anschluss, and it is said that his resolve to obtain retribution for the humiliation of Germany during and after the First World War was intensified.

During our visit so far we had visited graveyards of increasing size, but nothing could prepare us for the Tynecot Cemetery and Memorial and the numbers of soldiers commemorated there.

Nearly 12,000 soldiers are buried there of whom 70% are unknown, with “Known unto God” on their graves and nearly 35,000 are commemorated on the panels around the Memorial site. It is of course a cliché for those visiting the Flanders memorial sites to feel overwhelmed by this, but it is still true.

the Menin Gate, and who died after August 16th 1917. It seems strange, since the gate was not built until the 1920s, but perhaps a demonstration that even then the numbers were so vast they couldn’t be included on one memorial without making it unacceptably enormous. Out of these numbers 1,200 officers and men of the New Zealand forces are commemorated in the central apse of the memorial, showing again the contribution made

by The Empire (now Commonwealth) to the war effort.

We noted the three pillboxes, or bunkers used by the Germans to house and protect their machine guns and which are now incorporated into the Memorial site.

Finally much as we north-easterners would have liked to think that Tyne Cot was named after their homeland by the Northumberland Fusiliers, it seems that they did not arrive till after the area had been named!

Tyne Cot Military Cemetery

So close to the slaughter fields of Passchendaele, it seemed a little ironic that there was a sign as we entered the museum saying “Do not come in with muddy boots.” The Visitor Centre seems to be in the earlier stages of development, so we concentrated on the site itself and sought some of the names on our list. The 34,927 names of soldiers are of those who could not be fitted onto Ypres Cloth Hall, home of the In Flanders Fields museum

Tyne Cot Memorial

We arrived in Ypres at around 4pm giving us just enough time to visit either the Cloth Market and its ‘In Flanders Fields’ museum or St George’s Church. The Museum was one of the best we visited, being a multi-media presentation which was extraordinarily even handed in the perspectives it took on the whole experience of war.

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St. George’s Church was built on land purchased by the British from Ypres, designed by Reginald Blomfield (who designed the Menin Gate) and consecrated as part of the Church of England Diocese in Europe in March 1929. Originally there was also a school nearby which was built for the children of those who worked for the (then) Imperial War Graves Commission. The school ceased to function after 1940. The Church remains as a site for families of soldiers lost in the First World War to visit.

Finally we experienced the climax of our visit, the sounding of the Last Post at the Menin Gate, a ceremony which has been conducted every day, with the exception of the days of the 2nd World War. Again, the Menin Gate was a splendid building with 54,000 names inscribed upon its walls.

It was very nice to have a meal laid on for us so that we knew we would be ready in time for the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate, and also not to have to choose from a menu, and just enjoy what had been prepared for us by the owners, who spoke with a suspiciously ‘estuary’ English accent. It turned out that the man was from Essex, and his wife had spent some years there too!

It had been a long day but a very rewarding one.

The trumpet sounded, a Scottish lament was played on the pipes, and young people laid wreaths on the memorial.

John and Marjory at Lochnagar Crater

Ypres, the Menin Gate

Friday November 6th Our last few destinations were to the south west, and just north of the Albert to Amiens road.

Lochnagar Crater: This amazing site is said to be the largest crater ever made by men in anger, an explosion so loud that it was heard in London.

Earlier French mine workings in the area had been taken over by the British in 1915, and a series of mines prepared and blown up to start the Battle of the Somme, of which the Lochnagar mine was the largest with 60,000 lbs of explosive.

The mine crater is 90m across and 30m deep. It should be remembered too that the explosion had obliterated around 100 metres of German dug-outs full of troops.

The site is now owned privately by Richard Dunning. He writes of his hope that the experience of Lochnagar will “make the world

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Lastly, it was most fitting to end our trip by a spontaneous visit to the cemetery at Butte de Warlencourt, where one of our number, Mary, found the grave of her grandfather, visiting 99 years and 1 day after his death.

Then began the trip home, after farewells to Ali, uneventful journeys both sides of the channel and with thanks to Jude for her excellent organisation and gentle shepherding of her flock throughout a worthwhile and memorable trip.

Lochnagar Crater – memorial to a DLI soldier

they were so cruelly denied a much more peaceful, forgiving and loving place.” We noted the memorial to the nurses of the VAD who gave their lives in the war and the many small tributes to individuals left as plaques in the wooden walkways, especially a message from an Australian which said “please leave a flower on behalf of family members so far away”, and indeed a small posy of wild flowers was left there.

(Thanks to Marjory Winnie for information on Lochganar.)

Thiepval is another massive memorial to both the British and the French. It is at present undergoing renovation in preparation for the 2016 commemoration of the Battle of Somme.

It was designed by Edwin Lutyens and bears the names of around 73,000 soldiers of whom around 58,000 were British. It sits on high ground about four miles from Albert. It is significant that only the village well remains of the village of Thiepval itself. A combination of deep bunkers and effectively placed machine guns inflicted unprecedented casualties on the British and French while the Germans remained relatively unscathed. Beyond the memorial is a mixed nationality cemetery for the graves of soldiers whose remains have been identified after the end of the war. (Thanks to Gareth Rees for these notes.)

Mary Pitt visits her Grandfather’s grave at Butte de Warlencourt Military Cemetery

...she read his last letter home dated November 3rd 1915. In it he expressed his guilt at having warm dry feet as he had been issued with trench boots while his men had not. He described the beauty of the sunrise and wrote “We have a mild enemy in front of us.” The next day he was hit in both legs...

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From Mary Pitt My grandfather was Corporal Robert William Pitt, aged 25 years when he died November 5th 1916. A coal miner by occupation but he had been a member of the Territorial Army since 1909 and had attended training camps prior to the commencement of the war. My dad was born 1912 and my aunt (named Sommena) was born in December 1916 after his death. My grandmother, a small determined lady, never considered having another partner.

Following gunshot wounds to both thighs on June 15th 1914 Robert was sent home to a hospital in England – hospitalised for 59 days. (I expect that was how Sommena became into being). And once again he returned to frontlines.

My dad served in the DLI during WW2 and was a German POW.

My dad and my grandfather

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My grandfather has been inserted into the family photo after his death. The baby is Sommena

A letter sent to my grandma

Futility Lelah McDermott Pain filled faces with bulging eyes Blank staring face.

Helpless and hopeless, starving and thirsty Dirty but who cares, no one comes.

The bombs continue to fall.

The safety of home all gone.

And they lay waiting – But for how long Is he safe my son, who I gave life to Has he got warmth, food and shelter.

Is he dead from the bullet or the bomb.

Will he come back whole in spirit, body and mind can war ever have a reason or meaning?

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Sheila Parry

Lynda H Todd

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Robert Siddle

John Maxwell

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“Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty!”

Bill Lawrence The 1916 music hall song was going through my head as we travelled away from Lille on our last morning. But before going homeward bound from Gare de Lille Europe, less than 2 miles from our hotel there was still the near 200 mile trip to yet more war graves. This was a schooltrip, well, one for grown-ups, so shouldn’t we be singing along the road? After all our ‘headmistress’ Jude is a musician. No, it wouldn’t have been appropriate for ‘war-graving’ is sombre.

There we were heading down l’autoroute du Nord A1 – just like our A1 Great North Road home. Roadside signs kept reminding me of home. Passing sorti 16 ‘Douai’ – the town which gave sanctuary to English Catholic Priests after the Reformation, and brought about the establishment of Durham’s Ushaw College. Soon it would be sorti 12 ‘Amiens’ – twinned with Darlington.

And the chorus line: “Take Me Back...” set me humming. Quietly though, to myself. Got to be respectful for this was Department de la Somme where so many thousands had perished to save the world.

Take me back to dear old Blighty!

Put me on the train for London town!

Take me over there, Drop me ANYWHERE, Liverpool, Leeds, or Birmingham, well, I don’t care.

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And then our coach pulled up at the Lochnagar Crater, the biggest crater ever made by men in anger. French mine workings (there it was again bringing thoughts of home) were taken over in 1915 when the British moved to the Somme.

Miners, many from the Durham coalfields, dug tunnels under the German lines and Lochnagar mine had the largest charge – 60,000lbs of explosive ready for the July 1916 offensive. So here we were again burying ourselves in more war history. Strolling along the edge of the crater 90 metres across and 30 metres deep you could understand how the explosion was said to have been heard in London. The earth column rose to 1,200 metres, hung in the sky then fell away in a widening cone of dust and debris. Our resident historian Richard believed in keeping us up to speed – sometimes I wondered if we would have an end-of-tour test!

Now the crater is an international site dedicated to peace, fellowship and reconciliation between all nations who fought on the Western Front. We were just 12 of the near 200,000 who come each year to remember.

On our last night we had been at the Menin Gate memorial parade in Ypres. One of our party, Mary Pitt had, almost off-handedly, said how November 5th, that ver y day was the 99th anniversar y of the death of her grandfather Corporal Robert W. Pitt of the DLI. Mary’s father was a four year old boy, and his sister, Cpl Pitt’s daughter was born four weeks after he was killed.

They would grow up never knowing their father.

The next morning Mar y found Lochnagar ’s memorial to the nurses and VDA’s who had served in the Great War. She was sitting on the memorial seat, no doubt as a nurse herself wondering what life had been like in the battlefield hospitals. She had no idea overnight John Forster, on the tour with wife Jean had been checking the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) casualty records.

A few minutes before arriving at the crater Richard had the bus slow down and pointed to another war cemetery. Warlencourt. Little did we know then he and John had found the burial place of Mary’s grandfather.

Leaving Lochnagar that song was in my head again and this time we were heading for Lille and back to “Dear Old Blighty”. But no, there was yet another cemetery walk. But what a memorable one. We had started our tour on November 4th at the grave of WEA tutor Philip Brown, on the 100th anniversary of his death, listening to his great-niece Gerry Vincent reading his last letter home, written on the evening before he was killed. Now Mary was to visit her grandfather’s grave the day after he had been killed 99 years before.

It was a sombre moment watching her placing a remembrance cross at his grave. The mood lightened a little as she took commemorative photos – a skill she learned at another WEA class.

Lochnagar Crater Nurses & VAD memorial

As we walked away, back to the bus and at last off to “Dear Old Blighty”, we came across another soldier killed alongside Mary’s grandfather on that terrible November 5th. This soldier was Private T.W.Tortoise – a name so unusual I confess it brought a giggle.

The DLI always had a reputation for fast marching. Was this soldier the slowest in the platoon and had been given the nickname Tortoise? No, it couldn’t be for surely the CWGC wouldn’t have allowed such a liberty. Then I pondered was his name a ‘posher’ Courtoise and had been spelled wrongly by the engravers?

There was a story to be unravelled once back in “Dear Old Blighty”.

What had happened on that fateful day to Cpl. Pitt and Pte. Tortoise?

Rain, the scourge of the battlefield, had fallen heavily throughout October and fighting ceased for a week or more. The DLI were ordered back into battle, their mission to capture the Butte de Warlencourt, a prehistoric burial mound heavily fortified by the Germans. It was of little strategic value but had become a symbol to many soldiers.

As their commander, the famed Witton Park soldier Roland Boyes Bradford VC was to write about the attack: The Butte of Warlencourt had become an obsession. Everybody wanted it. It loomed large in the minds of the soldiers in the forward area and they attributed many of their misfortunes to it. The newspaper correspondents talked about ‘that miniature Gibraltar.

The Bonfire Night attack was carried out in appalling conditions, after a night of heavy rain.

The DLI captured the Butte temporarily but had to retreat in the evening with 400 wounded, leaving 130 soldiers dead, and 300 missing.

Among the dead were Mary’s grandfather and Private Tortoise.

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Warlencourt Cemetary Grave of Pte Tortoise

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And that song kept coming back. One verse goes: One day Micky O’Shea stood in a trench somewhere So brave, having a shave, and trying to part his hair Mick yells, dodging the shells and lumps of dynamite.

‘Talk of the Crystal Palace on a Firework Night!’

And then it’s the chorus: “Take me back to dear old Blighty!”

So that’s just what we did after the memorable day we went to Warlencourt.

Back home it was more research. Who was Private Tortoise?

To add to the myster y of “our Tortoise” the Norfolk Regiment was also said to have a Thomas William Tortoice (sic) #18477 killed in action on an unrecorded date.

Then looking at the birth records there were only 8 male Tortoises born between 1837 and 1899.

Our Tortoise would have been at least 16 to be in battle and knowing he was killed in 1916 only 5 of those male Tortoises were born after 1874.

Bertie Edwin, the Norfolk Regiment soldier at Norwich in 1892; Joseph Thomas at Durham 1874 who would have been 40 when war started; and there were 3 born in Newcastle.

Andrew James in 1890; Alexander Phillips in 1898, and William born in the spring of 1891. But no Thomas.

We had started our tour on November 4th at the grave of WEA tutor Philip Brown, on the 100th anniversary of his death, listening to his great-niece Gerry Vincent reading his last letter home, written on the evening before he was killed. Now Mary was to visit her grandfather’s grave the day after he had been killed 99 years before.

The CWGC records him as Pte Thomas William Tortoise #7857 DLI and his grave as plot 2.C.27 in Warlencourt Cemetery – just as the details on Mary’s photograph of his headstone and the place his grave was found. However the 5th Battalion DLI Book of Remembrance at the battalion church of St Thomas in Stockton-onTees has his service number as 4970, the number given to him in the Norfolk Regiment before transfer to the DLI. It all starts to get confusing even though only two soldiers named Tortoise were killed in the war: Norwich brothers Thomas William, and Bertie Edwin Tortoise. The latter was Private 123785 in the Norfolk Regiment who was killed on 13th October 1915.

So was our Tortoise the 1891 William?

There is a William Henry Tortoise, Pte 6849 recorded in the Benwell, Newcastle Roll of Honour serving in the 21st Division Salvage Corps BEF in 1916 – a year after Thomas William had been killed. So that idea falls too.

Aesop’s Fables tell the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. The moral being ‘hasten slowly’ and with a deadline looming that’s where for now this research ends.1 But one day the story of ‘our Tortoise’ will win out. Good research takes time.

Festina Lente.

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The Correspondence Bureau: The Workers’ Educational Association And The First World War Nigel Todd “We have been sharpening our bayonets this afternoon” wrote Sergeant Enoch Dalton before he was killed in France in October 1916, “to slay those whom I would prefer to shake hands with, and I assure you I felt a repugnant feeling to the task.”

A decorated soldier, Dalton died trying to rescue trapped comrades in a gas filled tunnel under the front lines. With ‘the soul of the poet and the artist’, he had picked wild flowers to lay on the unknown graves that he passed. And in his peacetime hinterland as a miner in the Yorkshire village of Maltby, he had helped start Workers’ Educational Association classes for women.

Enoch Dalton’s humane sentiments nestle in a treasure trove of personal recollections and letters from soldiers, nurses, conscientious objectors, adult students and tutors, lovingly preserved in the Workers’ Educational Association’s monthly magazine, The Highway, by dedicated women WEA activists during the First World War. There they remained, unseen for a century, and now stored at the London Metropolitan University library off Holloway Road.

Within weeks of August 1914, huge numbers of WEA courses and lectures on international relations were organised across the country to consider the genesis of the War, shaping the

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response of the Association’s members.

Hundreds ‘joined the Colours’, generally because they saw the War, reluctantly, as a fight for democracy against Prussian militarism. Jingoism wasn’t a motive. Others became nurses and medical orderlies to save lives, or took up noncombatant roles.

There were a few, including the WEA’s North East district secretary, Jack Trevena, who went to prison as uncompromising conscientious objectors, or who ran anti-war campaigns, like WEA tutor, Dr. Ethel Williams, Newcastle upon Tyne’s first female GP, She was lucky to escape unscathed in 1917 when, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, she held a ‘Stop The War’ public meeting in Newcastle, resulting in a near riot as chairs and fists flew between soldiers and Socialists singing, respectively, Rule Britannia and the Red Flag.

Mansbridge knew that the WEA hosted widely divergent opinions, but would want to stay together to ‘fight against that eternal enemy – ignorance, with its helpmate prejudice.’

He understood, too, that WEA people, ‘Rarely’ of a military inclination, didn’t like taking orders without question. Then there were the hatreds to cope with in the clash of cultures. Philip Brown, a WEA tutor who had taught in the

Durham coalfields, was, like Enoch Dalton, delighted when the Germans were identified as Fritz and not the Hun. William Lawson, former Durham miner from Boldon Colliery and exRuskin College student, refused to use the word Bosch. And the brutality of militar y life – alongside the comradeship lurked theft, rape of civilians and other horrors – fuelled a longing for the gentle normality of a WEA evening class or summer school.

Keeping in touch would be important, so Mansbridge drew again on Frances’s inspiration.

Before the War she’d looked after a Comradeship Fund that gave help to WEA members to buy books. By transforming the Fund into a War Time Comradeship Committee it was possible to raise donations for Christmas cards and boxes of chocolates for WEA people abroad or in training or prisoner of war camps, letters and books, visits to the injured in hospital, and tea parties for the wives and children left behind.

The point was soon reinforced as Dalton, Lawson and others wrote to Mansbridge telling him about discussion groups they’d started in the lines, using the WEA method of finding something that interested other people and then exploring all facets of the questions that arose.

One soldier wrote in 1915: “Now about our Debates. On some occasions we WEA men get put in the same dug-outs or billets – and sometimes the time hangs heavy. So we fix up a Chairman and a Subject (which we pick out from a newspaper or anything that comes to our notice during the day) sometimes humorous and sometimes serious...”

“It is only a matter of starting the subject” wrote another, describing discussion groups formed in ‘the tents’.

And Lance-Corporal Earnest Wimble, formerly the WEA’s finance officer, told Mansbridge in 1915 that he had met other WEAers ‘out here’ and was leaving WEA literature in the soldiers’ clubs, and ‘often get talks [going] with the fellows in them.’

Averil Sanderson Furniss, Sydney 1924

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Demand rose steeply and Mansbridge once more turned to a WEA woman for help. He found Averil Sanderson Furniss. An active WEA tutor in women’s history, Averil, aged 41, came from a middle class West Countr y family. She had married Henr y Sanderson Furniss, a blind economics graduate, in 1902, and their mutual interest in working class adult education led both of them to the WEA. Averil became secretary of the WTCC, gathering together enthusiastic volunteer female helpers.

These included her young cousins, Molly Pope

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and Rachel Sanderson, her husband’s personal assistant, Ethel Archer from Oxford’s Barnett House, and the formidable Miss Eardley-Wilmot (who later collected WEA membership subscriptions from William Beveridge).

Maintaining the correspondence was an unrelenting task, but Averil did get hold of War Office lists of WEA members’ addresses overseas for circulation to those at battle Fronts. A typical welcome came in 1917 from one soldier who wrote that the “list of names will help me to find comrades with something in common, whereas

today, we wander in the dark amidst a great multitude of people ignorant of one another’s presence, whereas we might be spending our spare time in some educational discussion.”

They could be a serious lot in the mud and bullets.

Though contact could be accidental as when one soldier shared a WEA card on Christmas morning with his corporal who, it turned out, was ‘one of the WEA workers from Liverpool’.

By these means, the WEA replicated itself in France, and in the Middle East. Letters arrived asking ‘for any books or magazines’, or in another case noting that ‘several parcels of literature... were much appreciated by my comrades. I have had to give an explanation of what the WEA is and the work it is doing on a number of occasions...’. Another soldier, commenting on a WEA pamphlet, said “I read most of it to my chums, and they were very pleased with it.” Taking time from scraping Flanders mud off his uniform in 1915, H. Charnwood Turner from London described himself and his WEA colleagues as the Association’s “preachers at the cannon’s mouth.”

And a sergeant in the Dardanelles, scribbling on his last scrap of paper and lacking an envelope, reported to Mrs. C.E. Noad, another of Averil Sanderson Furniss’s volunteers: “Your literature has been to Egypt and followed me out here, and I cannot tell you how welcome it was... [to] myself and the members of the section to whom I passed them.”

One of the most popular books was The War and Democracy. Written by WEA tutors following discussions at five summer schools in 1914, its case for democratic control of foreign affairs connected the WEA with the emergent interest in a League of Nations to sustain peace, and helped to unify the Association’s members as well as attracting wider attention. As George Rubb, introduced to the WEA on board a troopship, wrote from his trench in 1918: “I have lent out my copy of War and Democracy and some are waiting for their turn.”

The books and The Highway served as a welcome break from the ‘yellow journalism’ of the Jingo press. William Lawson complained to Averil Sanderson Furniss that he was deluged in camp with the jingoistic John Bull magazine edited by the financier and swindler, Horatio Bottomley. An unnamed WEA soldier complained in August 1917 that he could “only get hold of the Bottomley and Northcliffe press, of whose false prophecies he is getting very tired!”

By 1915, the WEA was working closely with YMCA recreational huts, libraries and canteens behind battlefronts. It helped that Rev. William Temple (subsequently a socially radical Archbishop of Canterbury) was both president of the WEA and had influence with the YMCA, which framed its war time educational provision ‘entirely along WEA lines.’ Through these links, WEA lecturers in literature, history, economics, politics, science and more were sent out for months on end to France, Malta, Salonika, Mesopotamia and elsewhere.

One of these seized a chance-in-a-lifetime to talk about Homer to army audiences on the very site of Troy.

Unsurprisingly, a busy WEA attracted official curiosity, especially as fears of subversion and red revolution grew in the latter stages of the War. Controversially, Mansbridge had allowed The Highway to carry letters from pacifists. In 1915, he and Temple refused to associate the WEA with a pro-War committee of ‘National Patriotic Organisations’, which then accused a popular tutor in Wensleydale of teaching antimilitarism, implying that ‘he was a German spy’ who was being ‘watched in this connection.’

Temple was even included on a dangerous persons list by Basil Thomson, the spy-catcher head of Scotland Yard’s CID, simply because he was president of the WEA. Bizarrely, an army major alleged that Mansbridge was teaching Socialism, free love and polygamy at an army education school in Oxford. It was pretty unlikely but, more seriously, a memo to

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the War Cabinet in 1917 claimed that the WEA was spreading revolutionary ideas ‘under the guise of University education for the working class.’ According to Tom Jones, the War Cabinet’s Deputy Secretary, the allegation was ‘solemnly discussed’ by Ministers and, for some reason, referred to King George V. The King interviewed J.M. Mactavish, a Socialist Portsmouth shipwright who had succeeded Mansbridge as WEA general secretar y, and impressed by Mactivish’s explanations apparently offered to join the Association (a suggestion quietly sidestepped by the WEA’s leadership).

The WEA was being radicalised by the War. At home, it campaigned from 1916 against attempts by rural education authorities to lower the school leaving age under pressure from farmers whose labourers had joined up. Mansbridge and MacTavish subsequently put the Association centre stage in planning post-war reconstruction.

It was an exercise rich in framing ideas but badly let down by Lloyd George’s Coalition Government after the War. The heightened campaigning edge was stiffened with encouragement in letters from the Front arriving at Averil’s post room. Philip Brown urged in May 1915 a WEA focus on ‘reconstructing a peaceful society’; another correspondent called for WEA efforts to ‘do our rebuilding on the right lines’; yet another in February 1917 argued for ‘education for the working classes conducted on sane lines’; and a commitment to women’s rights came through in a letter hoping that ‘the women will not be content’ with going back to their pre-War status.

WEA pamphlets on educational reform brought ‘an eager demand for copies’ and the hope ‘that the classes going on in England are devoting themselves to the study of Reconstruction after the War, and to a serious consideration of what can be done to make England a better place.’

On reading one of these, ‘a Comrade in Egypt’ wrote in support of raising the school leaving age and pushing ‘education to the front.’

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Unsurprisingly, a busy WEA attracted official curiosity, especially as fears of subversion and red revolution grew in the latter stages of the War. Controversially, Mansbridge had allowed The Highway to carry letters from pacifists.

Emerging from the War intact and more confident, for the WEA the human cost had been almost unbearable. The Highway knew of over 80 WEA members killed in action or through disease but thought there were probably more, and every month had fondly carried obituaries of lost comrades. And some losses graphically represented a ‘lost generation’, as when three well-liked tutors, authors of English Economic History, a 1914 book that enabled WEA students to work with original historic documents on working conditions, were all struck down. Philip Brown, one of Britain’s most promising historians, was killed at Armentieres in November 1915, Alfred Bland, died on the Somme in July 1916, and R.H.Tawney was badly wounded in the same offensive.

The War Time Comradeship Committee was wound up at the end of the War, Averil Sanderson Furniss giving an account of its work in The Highway, written whilst campaigning to prevent women being thrown out of their jobs as the men came home. She then joined with Marion Phillips, the Labour Party’s new Chief Women’s Officer, in asking working class women what kind of housing they would like, generating The Working Woman’s House, a remarkable book that influenced Labour thinking on council housing for the next 30 years. After that, she and her husband spent their time travelling. Widowed in 1939 and with no children, she died near Newton Abbot, back in the West Country, in 1962, aged 89 and still in touch with Molly Pope.

Soldiers and poppies knitted by WEA students for Knitted Gardens (part of the “Blooming Marvellous� national tour), 8th July 2015, The Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead.

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Women In The WEA And The Impact Of The First World War Ruth Tanner

from women caused its title to be changed from The Association for the Higher Education of Working Men to the gender neutral ‘Workers’ Educational Association.’ From 1907 there was a National Women’s Advisory Committee, which regularly held conferences on the higher education of women. Ida Hony, one of two women to hold the post of Women’s Officer at this early stage wrote in 1913:

The Women's Library, LSE

“Of all the special efforts the WEA is making today, perhaps none is more important than the special effort it is making on behalf of women.”

In a very modern intervention, in November 1915 the National AGM papers record that “in one place the unfortunate writers had used the words ‘men’ for ‘men and women’. This was explained as meaning the same as ‘brethren’ in clerical parlance – the explanation did not give complete satisfaction.”

“The WEA is a society of men and women united by the desire to bring within the reach of all English people the Higher Education which has hitherto been the privilege of the few.”

From the start in 1903, when Albert Mansbridge and his wife founded the WEA with 2/6 from the housekeeping, women were involved in this pioneering organisation. As early as 1905 pressure

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Women who had the opportunity were as hungr y as their male counterparts for the benefits of higher education, but the conventions of the time meant that although open to women, relatively few actually took part. Those who did were seen as “unwomanly and eccentric people.”

It was the determined pioneering spirits who showed the way forward for women, assisted by three factors, firstly the historic trends which led

Glass panel at The Women’s Library, London School of Economics

to universal elementary education, the rise of the labour and trade union movements, and the campaign for women’s suffrage.

Secondly the WEA had a democratic, open structure with opportunities for involvement at many levels as students, tutors, or volunteers.

Women could participate in whichever way suited them best.

The final catalyst was the First World War, which saw women taking up roles formerly held by men: in transport, on the land and in factories.

The WEA could be seen in many ways as the intellectual equivalent for women of work in the Munitions factories.

Even before the war women appear throughout the WEA. In April 1914 “Working women attended Armstrong College in large numbers to hear Margaret Blomfield (labour activist and women’s rights campaigner) speak on ‘The Higher Education of Working People,’ while in January 1913 in the new South Shields branch “the wife of one of the most active members, a plate layer, has lately learned to read at the age of 65.”

In January 1914 The Highway published an article on ‘The Evolution of the Home’ by Mabel Atkinson. Mabel was shrewdly engaging the time honoured teaching strategy of starting from where most women found themselves and moving out from there. She advocated such topics as Histor y, Biology, Psychology and Economics to enable women to “gain both theoretical and practical advantages for an investigation of the institution in which the greater part of the lives of most of us is spent” and she kindled such interest that five courses with over 100 women students grew out of her writing. Thus classes for women in a variety of general topics were justified to their own minds, possibly also to their husbands. The coming of the war saw new courses in the North East which attracted women, such as International Law, tutored by Miss Tooke and European History with Miss Robinson.

More traditional courses were also offered. 1915 saw a short course in Embroidery “with Mrs. Simm acting as teacher.” Lisbeth Simm was an interesting example of a woman of working class origin – daughter of a Cramlington miner –

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In 1915 Hygiene, Home Nursing and First Aid were offered, arising from the needs of caring for war wounded. Later in the war, discussions at regional meetings on education and the tension between ‘Earning or Learning’ extended to consideration of Post War Reconstruction, with ‘Women’s place in Society’ also a topic of study.

A letter appeared in The Highway in November 1916 headed ‘A Common Omission’ addressing the overlooking of women in the educational reform movement. A correspondent in January 1917 asked for opportunities for girls to do science in the laboratories of boys’ schools. By this time Miss Lillie Johnson was teaching ‘Citizenship’ in Newcastle in 1918, Miss Caldwell Modern European History in Dawdon, Miss Brown Shakespeare in Stockton and Miss Lawton Music in Tynemouth.

As for branch involvement, The Highway, February 1915 recorded that nationally “many classes have been depleted of men eligible for military service, while women students who have soldiers billeted on them have been prevented from attending.” Mining was a reser ved occupation – so, despite the ‘pals’ battalions who did volunteer a strong core of male workers remained in the Northern coalfield. In May 1916 we read that North Eastern branches were thriving, with 3 new branches about to be set up in Shildon, Greenside and Ferryhill. And the

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The Women's Library, LSE

who became a passionate socialist, advocate of votes for women and WEA member. The description “acting as teacher” may have been because she trained as a pupil teacher as opposed to several female tutors who were finding outlets for their more academic backgrounds, such as Miss Wyllie(MA) teaching English Literature in Bishop Auckland and Miss Kate Greenfield (BA Liverpool) tutoring a course on ‘Famous Englishwomen’ in Jarrow. At the end of the Embroidery course “a purse of money was presented to Mrs Simm on behalf of the women by Mr. A.B.Dodd” – the students themselves apparently not considered responsible enough to do the honours themselves.

North East report to The Highway noted; ‘owing to the war, new secretaries have had to be appointed in several instances. In nearly every branch women secretaries have been appointed to look after the women’s side of the movement and a big effort is to be made next session to start a women’s class in connection with every branch.’ The setting up of women’s committees is recorded in Sunderland (February 1915), Newcastle (July 1915).

Women secretaries were not confined to Women’s studies however. Jack Trevena wrote to Albert Mansbridge in 1914: “I am going to make it a rule as far as possible to get the girls to take on secretaries’ work. They are keener, full of optimism and generally succeed in getting their own way.” He may have been thinking of the work of his wife Hilda Trevena, née Johnson, who had worked hard to build up West Stanley branch. Their programme was extensive and original, with a variety of activities beyond classes,

including dramatic productions, a 1914, “concert in aid of the War Relief Fund” and a Summer Festival, an idea sanctioned by the District Committee “on the understanding that District Funds weren’t to be used for organising…” She also took time to act as an unpaid field worker, promoting the WEA among trade unions and advising that there were “requests for courses in many of the outlying villages.”(The Highway Aug. 1915) It is notable that when she married Jack Trevena she was still only 23. As well as becoming the first woman District Secretary, albeit in a temporar y role while Jack was imprisoned as a conscientious objector, she must also have been the youngest. The branch celebrated her work as secretar y, and also probably her marriage, by presenting her with a bookcase, commenting: “The flourishing state of the WEA in West Stanley is due more than anything to Mrs Trevena’s devoted and efficient work as secretary and she must be glad to know that it has been realised and appreciated.”

However, there was still work to do. In June 1917 we read “there is a feeling that little is done for women in Middlesbrough”, at which point Dr Ethel Williams was sent down to rally enthusiasm, and in June 1918 Tynemouth is still “endeavouring to form a Women’s section.”

If Hilda Trevena and Lisbeth Simm represented the working woman’s rise to influence in the WEA, Ethel Williams, at the other end of the social scale, used her influence as a professional woman, (the first woman doctor to practise in Newcastle, a socialist and women’s suffrage campaigner and the first woman to drive a car in Newcastle) to support women caring for families while their men were away, by promoting classes on both practical and more intellectual topics. She regularly addressed WEA meetings and pioneered the employment of women tutors, participated in demonstrations and wrote in The Highway in 1916 about a social experiment for delinquent children called the ‘Little Commonwealth.’ She, Lisbeth and Hilda Trevena were regular members of the Regional Committee, still largely dominated by men.

Sadly, the issue of pacifism drove a wedge between Ethel and the Simms when she opted for the pacifist route as opposed to their support for more conventional means to end the war.

“The war finally drove them apart,” sadly ending an association of like-minded people across the class divide which has characterised the work of the WEA ever since.

It is difficult to disentangle the effect of the war on women in the WEA, from the effects of other changes in society. But where the suffrage movement opened their horizons to possibilities which could be theirs, the WEA gave them chances to serve and to shine. A 1915 Highway editorial stated “Whatever the issue of the war we can be positive that the new era…will demand a better educated type of Englishman than ever before…and the chief burden will fall upon working men …and women.”

© IWM (Art.IWM PST 0402)

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Lynda H Todd

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P McGraw

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Ethel Williams Anne Sharp

Research volunteers stand beside the ‘Mud March’ banner in Robinson Library Special Collections

At her memorial service Dr Ethel Williams was described as “essentially feminine in her cultural interests” “with a tough streak... which carried her through trials and discomforts”... “always willing to lead... and pull out the extra ounce of strength”.1 After reading about Ethel Williams in essays by Nigel Todd2&3 I wondered what had motivated Ethel Williams and strengthened her resolve against the barriers and obstacles she encountered?

Dr Williams (initially a committed Liberal) first set up a practice with Dr Ethel Bentham (Labour) in Ellison Place, Newcastle, one of the first cities in England to permit women to do so. She was initially rebuffed by male colleagues. Without access to personal accounts, we do not know how much support, if any, Ethel received from her family. At the end of her first year she was “just able to pay the rent from the practice but after that the battle was not so hard”. Their practice grew and moved to larger premises at 3 Osborne Terrace. By 1906 Ethel had her own car, and is said to have been the first woman in the north-east to be able to drive. In 1909 she was appointed a member of the senate of Durham University.

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During the War, in addition to her busy work as a GP, Ethel campaigned for the WEA alongside Hilda Trevena and Lisbeth Simm. She was able to drive to branch meetings across the district, to launch new classes on health and inspirational women. Ethel also sat on the women’s advisory committee set up by Jack Trevena, and took a leading role in organising a lecture programme for the British Association of the Advancement of Science, which met in Newcastle in 1916.

During the War she also coordinated women’s organisations to supply refugees and women with clothing, health care and employment and, as secretar y of the Newcastle Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council, she organised an illegal, and ill-fated anti-war rally in Newcastle.

A commited Suffragist, Ethel also favoured peace, which led to conflict between herself and fellow WEA activist, Lisbeth Simm. In 1899 Ethel had signed the Declaration in Favour of Women’s Suffrage, had taken part in the “Mud March” in 1907, was a census evader and tax resister.4 Records and testimonials5 provide an insight into Ethel’s earlier life. Ethel Mary Nucella Williams, the eldest of three children, was born on 2nd August 1863, in Cromer, Norfolk, to Charles Williams Esq, a gentleman and Mary Elizabeth Williams Ketton Williams [nee Bunting]. She attended Norwich High School. I imagined a privileged family upbringing in the countryside.

However, Charles Williams died in 1880, and by 1881 Ethel aged 18 years, was living in Tunbridge Wells, with the family of Henry Williams. Henry formerly a headmaster in Norfolk, was now a

Ethel Williams at the height of her powers. All images in this article courtesy of the Ethel Williams Collection, Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle University.

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Looking forward: a young Ethel Williams

coal-merchant employing nine men; his son, Montague Williams was a medical student.

Mabel, a scholar was living in Hampshire with their mother, an annuitant, while their brother, Gerald, was at boarding school in Hertfordshire.

Between 1882 and 1885 Ethel attended lectures at Newnham College, Cambridge, but could not, as a woman, be awarded a degree. She took the MB at the London School of Medicine for Women in 1891, and followed this up with the Diploma in Public Health in 1899. Facing prejudice against women doctors in England, she trained in Vienna and Paris, before working as the resident Medical Officer at Clapham Maternity Hospital and for the Dispensary for Women and Children at Blackfriars. Working in unhealthy, poverty-stricken areas of London and Newcastle, influenced Ethel who tried to combat infant mortality in the poorer areas of Newcastle, by purchasing milk for infants at her own expense 6 ; at an Education Conference she campaigned forcefully for “adequate facilities for feeding and medical treatment of necessitous children” – “she did not spare our deficiencies”7 and took real interest in an experimental educational ‘colony’ for rebellious children, which she visited in Dorset.8

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Ethel eventually became a member of the Newcastle Education Committee and a justice of the peace, she co-founded the Monkton Home for Mental Defectives, the Northern Women’s Hospital and the Medical Women’s Federation.

For recreation she was a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society, enjoyed walking and gardening, and built up a network of like-minded women, with regular meetings and visitors to Osborne Terrace. These gatherings would continue at her home ‘Bramble Patch’ in Stocksfield, to which she retired in 1924, and shared with mathematician Frances Hardcastle, until she died in 1946.

An independent individual, committed to lifelong personal development and learning, any obstacles and setbacks seemed to strengthen Ethel’s drive to campaign, cooperate, coordinate and organise, for the education and welfare of others, and for an equal and peaceful society.

Without further research into records and correspondence we can only conjecture the experiences and influences that may have motivated the woman Ethel Williams to become the indefatigable and truly inspirational Doctor that she was.

Looking backward: Ethel Williams in later years

Sandy Egan-Fowler

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The Finger Post

Excerpt from July 1918 edition of The Highway

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This regular feature of The Highway was a forum where branches and districts could update the national organisation on aspects of their work.

Along similar lines, we have included some current day updates from a few of our current branches.

Bridges To Learning is an exciting project that helps people achieve professional qualifications and employment opportunities, whatever their starting point: and to build a union role in lifelong learning and workforce development.

The project is a partnership between UNISON, the Open University and the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA). We have, through our Project Workers who are also Union Learning Representatives, provided Information, Advice and Guidance to around 20,000 individuals across the region in a variety of workplaces. We provide a variety of training and learning opportunities, including conferences, workplace learning and CPD workshop across the North East region; working with participants from local authorities, schools and the NHS. We are actively involved in Functional Skills courses in Maths & English; working with the WEA and NHS Trusts to organise these. Our success in this area has enabled learners to find progression routes onto Degree level courses. Also, each year the project contributes to Adult Learners’ Week; nominating learners and organising learning activities in the workplace.

Durham Branch of the WEA goes from strength to strength and continues to offer a wide range of courses to its learners. Subjects include Archaeology, Astronomy, History, Art, Music and Languages. Self-taught study groups are proving to be popular and successful. In addition, course organiser Tony Bulloch co-ordinates around forty Community Courses per term. Volunteers help to promote the work of the Branch through social media. Their reports, stories and photographs make interesting reading!

Newcastle Branch Two Botanical Painting classes with the expert tutor Jane Wolfendon and the popular Literature in Context course with tutor Clare Jackson will run during the summer term. In addition, in July, the Branch will hold an enrolment day for all the courses to be held in the autumn. These include three new topics – Mosaics and Pottery, Georgian History and ‘Calling all Pop Pickers’ which is a history of popular music 1955–1980. In the Autumn the Branch will also hold a free ‘WEA Taster Day’ which will consist of three one hour teaching sessions to give students, old and new, an idea of how good it is to learn with the WEA. Lunch will be provided. Information about these events and much more can be found on our Facebook page – do look us up!

South Tyneside Branch In South Tyneside the WEA Branch is still supporting local communities with great learning opportunities and courses include Painting and Drawing, Crafts, Art Appreciation, Local History and Politics. They have been successful in securing additional funding to run programmes of learning to meet the needs of the local community and enhancing employment opportunities. The Branch not only continues the good work started over a hundred years ago in the area, but is constantly building and improving on their curriculum offer, has a committed membership and is looking forward to a bright future!

Sunderland And Washington Branch As well as running a range of WW1 courses across the city over the last 2 years in reminiscence of the centenary, we recently completed as part of the WW1 project a History research course and an evaluation of the project for our area delivered

by Sharon Vincent.

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Additional branch projects include: • Community interpreters, immigration & law – in response to a changing landscape • Functional skills – literacy, maths & ESOL • Supporting targeted provision – including for those with learning disabilities/difficulties • CSI – Crime, Scene, Investigation • Family history • Courses in History Botanical painting • Green Tools – Eco course • Sport Counts Project – family learning – embedding maths within sport • Exhibition at Sunderland Museum & Winter Garden – celebration of learning • Numerous learning journeys / class visits and enriched activities • The WEA also support local Community Lectures with the University of the 3rd Age The WEA Green Branch was set up in 2010 by WEA volunteers and environmental activists from the North East.

• We provide educational activities about sustainability. We run workshops and courses for community groups, political groups, unions and at work. Each activity is tailored to a group’s needs.

• We run an annual community conference to bring people together to share knowledge and make new contacts so that local environmental projects are more successful. Our last conference was on community orchards.

• We support people to set up environmental activities that they are passionate about.

The projects we work on are either developed

by Green Branch members or by people who approach us for support. If you have an idea for a project and would like some support to make it happen come along to one of our meetings or get in touch. Or if you would like to learn more about sustainability and help us with what we do already we would love to hear from you. No prior knowledge or experience required, just enthusiasm! We have some limited funding for people to attend conferences and events so that they can learn more.

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We have worked on projects linked to energy efficiency and renewables, saving water, nature trails for families, and local, sustainable food.

The WEA Greening Wingrove Project is working closely with partners in the project area to deliver a number of different projects. In March we awarded £46K work of funding to local community projects to deliver activities and engage the communities. The projects include: • ‘Green Radio Show’ on Spice FM, • Community Bike Club by CHAT Trust • Development of the pavilion building in Nunsmoor Park by the Greening Wingrove CiC • Neighbourhood gardening in New Mills by West End Womens and Girls, • Market Makers by Your Back Yard CiC • Reclaim the Lanes by the Greening Wingrove CiC • Bike Garden Development, planning and events by Time Exchange The project will also be engaging more than 300 households this year to deliver energy efficient in the home. Residents will have the opportunity to learn how to reduce their energy use and bills, helping to save money and carbon emissions. We are also commissioning work in three primary schools in the area to develop a classroom lesson to KS2 children. The children will get to learn about their local environment and the significance of their actions both locally and globally.

Spring Time kicks off with a series of vertical veg sessions for the community where they will learn how to maximise their growing space. The community will be growing their own food, learning how to best use it and will have the chance to showcase their produce to fellow gardeners. The project is also hosting four large events this year to help bring the community together, get them involved and enthuse them to help their local environment and live more sustainably.

Jimmy’s Letter To Mum Lelah McDermott Hi mum well that’s basic training over.

May get some extended leave and a travel pass before we get our proper posting.

Nobby and Joe are going home this weekend as they only live down the road, they nice lads asked me if i wanted to go with them to see their folks.

How’s sis granddad and granny, When is dad getting home on leave?

The work on the farm must be gettin harder now, don’t any of you overdo things, wish i was back home able to help.

Miss you all, it’s strange down here all flat fields that stretch on forever no hills fences or walls to break it up The beer tastes watery after drinking Tetleys.

Miss your stew and dumplings and i would die for some of your home made rice pudding especially with the yummy brown bit on top.

Ask sis to keep writing her great chatty letters the lads all love them and laugh at the stories she tells, one of the lads would like to write back to her if that’s okay love you all, hope to see you soon Jimmy

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References 19

Widening Horizons: An Enjoyable Education For All Lauren Wood 1. ‘Relation of WEA to the University Tutorial Classes’, The Highway,Vol.12, No.2 (1919),p.36.

2. Lawrence Goldman, ‘The First Students I the Workers’ Educational Association: Individual Enlightenment and Collective Advance’, Stephen K Roberts (ed.), A Ministry of Enthusiasm: Centenary Essays on the Workers’ Educational Association (London: Pluto Press, 2003),pp.41–43.

3. Frank Granger, ‘Proposed East Midland University’, The Highway, Vol.11, No.4 (1919), p.31.

4. ‘University Lecturers and the WEA’, The Highway,Vol.11, No.10 (1919),p.108.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Cecil F. Melville, ‘Education In The B.E.F.’, The Highway, Vol.11, No.4 (1919).

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. ‘The Highway of Books’, The Highway, Vol.11, No.4 (1919),pp.32–33.

11. Douglas Halliday Macartney, ‘Our Soldier Apprentices’ The Highway, Vol.11, No.4 (1919).

12. Ibid.

22

A WEA Student Goes To War Mary Pitt 1. Commonwealth War Graves Commission 2. (Cooper Family Tree – coopers153 Ancestry) Sources: i. The English Camp in Groningen 1914–1918 (part 5) http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/englishcamp/ ii. The Highway, February 1915, Vol. V11 No. 77 Page 81

28

Jack Trevena WEA North East District Secretary: Conscientious Objector Kath Connolly 1. Informal interview with the author (March 2016).

2. (p14 Todd The Right to Learn) 3. N. Todd The Right To Learn, ibid 4. N. Todd The Right To Learn, ibid 5. (IWM Conscientious Objectors: In Their Own Words, Margaret Brooks) 6. (Newcastle Daily Journal, July 29 1916) 7. (We Will Not Go to War, Felicity Goodhall 2010) 8. (Todd p 20 2010) 9. (WEA District Exec. Minutes 30 October 1918) 10. (Todd p 21 2010).

Sources: i. Stanley News Dec 1914 ii. The Highway, Oct/Dec 1914 iii. Cyril Pearce Database of Conscientious Objectors https://search.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/search/worldrecords/conscientious-objectors-register-19141918?lastname=trevena

36

The Place Of Memory In Education Alan 1. Edith J Morley, ‘The Place of Memory in Education’, in The Highway, VI/70, July 1914, 186–188

46

WEA Members In World War 1 Pauline Hilton 1 . Fr o m T h e S t o r y o f t h e 2 / 4 t h O x f o r d s h i r e a n d Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, by Captain G. K. Rose M.C. (Oxford: B.H. Blackwell, 1920)

54

The Road To Nowhere Gareth Rees 1. Highway Magazine WEA ideals Page 70 Vol. 10

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58

Just Not Good Enough!

Liz Armstrong Texts: i. Corbett, Ivan, 1980 ‘So Noble an Institution’: A history of the Workers’ Educational Association Northern District 1910–80 ii. Heatley, Phyllis, 1995 Something Sustained – The Newcastle upon Tyne WEA Branch (1912–) Newcastle upon Tyne, Northern District iii. Lee, Christopher, This Sceptred Isle 20th Century published

by BBC. Archive Material: Discovery Museum, Blandford Square, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 4JA iv. Newcastle upon Tyne WEA Branch Committee minutes 1913–1919 v. WEA Northern District Committee minutes 1910–1921 Online: v i. Telegraph 31/7/1915: G reat War and Education http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/110 05281/The-Great-War-and-education.html vii. Hansard: 2nd Reading of the Fisher Education Bill 13/3/8 Websitehttp://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1918/ mar/13/education-bill v iii. Meteorological Weather reports Mar ch 1918: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/library/archive-hiddentreasures/monthly-weather-report-1910s Supplied by WEA: ix. WEA Highway March 1918 / May 1918 /June 1918/July 1918

74

“Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty!”

Bill Lawrence 1. Mary Pitt did some searches after this paper was drafted and census data; military records; and births, marriage and death registers has enabled a more detailed story of what was a sad life for Thomas William Tortoise.

78

The Correspondence Bureau: The Workers’ Educational Association And The First World War Nigel Todd

84

Women In The WEA And The Impact Of The First World War Ruth Tanner Sources: i. Workers’ Educational Association, The Highway, 1913–19 ii. Workers’ Educational Association, District Minutes of the Northern District Council and Executive Committees 1910–16 iii. Articles on Ida Hony and Lavena Saltenstall in Workers’ Educational Association Women’s Committee, Raising Our Voices: 100 Years of Women in the WEA (2003) iv. N Todd, ‘A Working-class Hero is Something to Be: the Origins of the Workers’ Educational Association in the NorthEast to 1920’, in J Brown (Ed), The Right to Learn: the WEA in the North of England 1910–2010 (2010), 6–23

90

Ethel Williams Anne Sharp 1. Ethel Williams Collection, Special Collections, Robinson Library, Newcastle University – memorial 2. Todd, Nigel, 2010. A Working-class Hero is Something to Be: the Origins of the Workers’ Educational Association in the North-East to 1920, in Brown, John (ed), 2010. The Right to Learn: the WEA in the North of England 1910–2010. London: Workers’ Educational Association (p19) 3. Todd, Nigel, 1996, Ethel Williams: Medical and Suffrage Pioneer. North East Labour History Bulletin No. 30 4. Liddington, Jill Vanishing for the vote: Suffrage, citizenship and the battle for the census https://books.google.co.uk/books accessed 31/12/2014 5. Ethel Williams Collection, Special Collections, Robinson Library, Newcastle University – memorial 6. Todd, Nigel, 1996, Ethel Williams: Medical and Suffrage Pioneer North East Labour History Bulletin No. 30, p19 7. The Highway, May 1916 8. The Highway, Oct & Nov 1916