Why did workers flock to sign up for the First World War?

A serious topic but still time for a laugh: Prof Putkowski left

By New Worker correspondent

IN THE early years of the 20th century working class awareness and socialist ideas were growing. The leaders of the labour movement recognised the imperialist nature of war and opposed it.

And yet once the First World War was declared in August 1914 thousands of working class men flocked to join the army, most of them during the first three months of the war.

Professor Julian Putkowski last Monday evening delivered a very interesting account of his researches into the reason for this flood of volunteers at a well-attended meeting in Housmans Bookshop, organised by Veterans for Peace.

“How come so many working class people dutifully marched off to war?” he asked. “The scale of change in the national outlook was perplexing.”

He pointed out that Britain, unlike most European countries, did not have a conscript army at that stage. Britain’s defence investment had for centuries favoured the Royal Navy and, in peacetime, the army was effectively a mobile back-up police force.

When war broke out a massive recruitment campaign was necessary to get men to volunteer.

Julian Putkowski told the meeting that the education provision for the working classes, through compulsory board schools, was rudimentary, heavily loaded with religion, nationalism, racism and a culture of unquestioning obedience to authority.

But there was a stronger motive than that, which drove hundreds of thousands of men to the recruiting officers: hunger.

The start of the war coincided with an economic crisis. Official unemployment figures were not so high but millions were trapped in unskilled casual employment whose income was precarious and changed from day to day – never mind week to week.

Once the war had been declared the United States stopped sending cotton to Lancashire – they were afraid of losing valuable ships and cargoes to German submarine attacks.

This brought the cotton mills to a full stop and all the other peripheral industries and trades that went with them – throwing thousands of people into poverty.

It also brought ports to a standstill – merchant ships were afraid to set sail to and from the Channel and North Sea ports. Thousands of dockers were laid off.

In London and other big cities, service industries including domestic service that provided thousands of low-paid jobs were cutting back wining and dining and travelling. The earnings were low but vital to working class households where the women and children of any age were engaged informally in producing knick-knacks and decorations, or in street trading.

A big factor in the attraction of the army was the recent extension of dependants’ allowances for serving soldiers.

These economic pressures did not last; within months the demands for munitions and army uniforms had improved employment opportunities and women were welcomed into trades previously done only be men. And the Government had offered insurance to merchant shipping lines to get trade moving again. But for the first three months of the war, it was literally sign up or starve for hundreds of thousands.

And the recruiting doctors were passing almost anyone as fit to serve, they were not fussy and there was pressure on them to accept as many as possible. Many under-age boys were accepted after being advised to lie about their age.

Throughout the war a total of 2.5 million signed up and the first million of those joined between August and November 1914. The peak was in September.

Later, as employment prospects improved and accounts of the reality of fighting at the front filtered back to Britain, volunteering declined and the Government introduced conscription, sending another 2.5 million into the war.

Few socialist leaders opposed the war but they included Kier Hardy and Sylvia Pankhurst.

Professor Putkowski will be addressing more meetings on the topic of resistance to war in the near future – to be notified. And Veterans for Peace have organised a memorial meeting for Brian Haw, the peace campaigner who camped opposite Parliament for many years, this Sunday 18th June at 2pm in Parliament Square.

Remembering Laurence Housman

by Theo Russell

PEACE activists and supporters of Housmans Bookshop gathered at the shop in London’s Kings Cross in July to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of pacifist, socialist, campaigner for women’s suffrage, writer, playwright, and art nouveau illustrator, Laurence Housman, who described himself as “a committed socialist and pacifist”.

Housman was born into a brilliant family – the poet A E Housman, author of  A Shropshire Lad, was one of his brothers – and until his death in 1959 he was a household name in Britain and famous for his BBC radio broadcasts in the 1940s.

In 1907 Housman was one of the founders of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage, and he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Women's Social and Political Union, writing, addressing meetings and producing banners for the movement. In 1911 he helped to organise the boycott of the census by the suffragists.

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 the suffrage movement split; Christabel Pankhurst called on the WSPU to support the war effort and launched the jingoist magazine Britannia in 1915. Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst later founded The Women's Party, which gave out white feathers to all conscientious objectors.

During that war Housman joined the No Conscription Fellowship, and worked closely with Sylvia Pankhurst, who’s East London Federation of the WSPU opposed the war and was expelled from the WSPU in 1914.

The East London Federation later became the Workers' Socialist Federation, and its newspaper, Women’s Dreadnought, was renamed the Workers' Dreadnought.

Housman wrote for the Workers' Dreadnought, and in 1916 he visited the United States to lobby for the creation of a League of Nations.

The Workers' Socialist Federation supported the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland and the October Revolution of 1917, backing the "Hands off Russia" campaign, and was the first party in Britain to affiliate to the Third International.

Although Housman’s thinking was averse to the idea of political parties, he was close to the Independent Labour Party, which also took an anti-war position in the First World War.

He was also an anti-colonialist and a friend of Mahatma Ghandi, and denounced the Versailles Treaty’s vindictive punishment of Germany.

In 1922 Housman became a Quaker and he was a strong supporter of the Peace Pledge Union created by Dick Sheppard in 1934, and later played a leading role in War Resisters' International.

It was Laurence Housman who suggested the creation of both Housmans Bookshop, which opened in Shaftesbury Avenue in 1945, and Peace News, to which he contributed regularly over many years. In 1959 the shop moved to its current home at five, Caledonian Road near Kings Cross station.