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ABSTRACT
Worcester was the site of one of the earliest branches of the Navy League. It attracted the support of leading political figures in the area, as well as working- and lower-middle class members. It channelled imperialist enthusiasm in the locality and had access to local schoolchildren. Its efforts met with little opposition, though it encountered mockery in some quarters. The widespread acceptance of its message, however, did not mean that the branch was able to maintain the momentum of its early growth. Membership stagnated as rival patriotic leagues emerged that were better able to harness local sentiment. The branch’s decision in 1906 to concentrate on schools did little to stem its decline, and an effort to revive it on the eve of the First World War was undermined by that conflict. Examining the Navy League in Worcester reveals how a section of the city’s community promoted imperial patriotism and the limits of what they could achieve.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to acknowledge the assistance and generosity of the Worcester Sea Cadets.
Disclosure statement
The author reported no potential conflict of interest.
Notes
1 The Times, 27 January 1898, p. 4.
2 D. Whitehead, The Book of Worcester: The Story of the City’s Past (Chesham: Barracuda Books, 1976), p. 131.
3 N. C. Fleming, ‘The Navy League, the Rising Generation, and the First World War’, in Histories, Memories and Representations of Being Young in the First World War ed. by M. Andrews, N. C. Fleming and M. Morris (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 102–104.
4 H. Pelling, Social Geography of British Elections 1885–1910 (London: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 192, 201; S. Koss, Nonconformity in Modern British Politics (London: B.T. Batsford, 1975), pp. 15–75; J. P. Parry, Democracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party, 1867–1875 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 200–28; H. McLeod, Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City (London: Croom Helm, 1974), pp. 171–75.
5 M. Kinnear, The British Voter: An Atlas and Survey since 1885, 2nd edn (London: Batsford, 1981), pp. 13–37.
6 C. O’Leary, The Elimination of Corrupt Practices in British Elections 1868–1911 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), pp. 198, 220–22.
7 Pelling, British Elections, pp. 192–93.
8 S. Ball, Portrait of a Party: The Conservative Party in Britain 1918–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 159.
9 M. Pugh, The Tories and the People 1880–1935 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), pp. 236–37.
10 B. Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 222–3.
11 See M. Johnson, Militarism and the British Left, 1902–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013), pp. 66–89.
12 F. Coetzee, For Party or Country: Nationalism and the Dilemmas of Popular Conservatism in Edwardian England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 3–8; I. Cawood, The Liberal Unionist Party: A History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), pp. 73–6; N. C. Fleming, Britannia’s Zealots, Volume I: Tradition, Empire and the Forging of the Conservative Right (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), pp. 55–6.
13 F. Coetzee and M. S. Coetzee, ‘Rethinking the Radical Right in Germany and Britain before 1914’, Journal of Contemporary History, 21, 4 (1986), 515 − 37.
14 Coetzee, For Party or Country, p. 7.
15 House of Commons Debates, 31 July 1907, vol. 179, cols 987. See C. K. Melby, ‘Rethinking British Militarism before the First World War: The Case of “An Englishman’s Home” (1909)’, English Historical Review, 137, 588 (2022), 1377–401.
16 Coetzee, For Party or Country, pp. 26–31, 72–84, 108–114; A. S. Thompson, Imperial Britain: The Empire in British Politics, c. 1880–1932 (London: Longman, 2000), pp. 110–32; D. Redford, ‘Collective Security and Internal Dissent: The Navy League’s Attempts to Develop a New Policy towards British Naval Power between 1919 and the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty’, History, 96, 321 (2011), 48–67; B. Cesario, New Crusade: The Royal Navy and British Navalism, 1884–1914 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), passim.
17 A. J. Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era, 1880–1905 (London: Frank Cass, 1972), p. 55.
18 Fleming, ‘The Navy League’, pp. 109–18. For impact in Worcestershire see M. Andrews, A. Gregson and J. Peters, Worcestershire’s War (Stroud: Amberley, 2014), pp. 9–23.
19 The definitive study remains W. M. Hamilton, ‘The Nation and the Navy: Methods and Organization of British Navalist Propaganda, 1889–1914’, (PhD diss., University of London, 1977).
20 J. M. McKenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), pp. 1–12; Thompson, Imperial Britain, pp. 1–132.
21 W. M. Hamilton, ‘The “New Navalism” and the British Navy League, 1895–1914’, Mariner’s Mirror, 64, 1 (1978), 38.
22 Hamilton, ‘New Navalism’, 124.
23 Cesario, New Crusade, pp. 57–59.
24 Worcestershire Chronicle (WC), 6 April 1901, p. 6.
25 Berrow’s Worcester Journal (BWJ), 15 February 1902, p. 5
26 BWJ, 15 February 1902, p. 5; Cesario, New Crusade, passim.
27 M. Czisnik, ‘Commemorating Trafalgar: Public Celebration and National Identity’, in Trafalgar in History: A Battle and its Afterlife ed. by D. Cannadine (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 139–54.
28 Hamilton, ‘New Navalism’, 42.
29 Navy League Journal (NLJ), no. 23 (May 1897), pp. 1–2.
30 NLJ, 19, 5 (May 1914), p. 134–35.
31 Fleming, ‘The Navy League’, pp. 115–18.
32 Morning Post (MP), 25 January 1897, p. 6. There were an additional seven branches overseas, in Malta, New Zealand, British Guiana, South Africa and Australia.
33 Leamington Looker-On, 27 November 1897, p. 17.
34 WC, 6 April 1901, p. 6.
35 BWJ, 22 February 1902, p. 4.
36 WC, 13 September 1902, p. 4.
37 WC, 24 November 1900, p. 5.
38 WC, 22 February 1902, p. 6.
39 WC, 26 October 1895, p. 3; BWJ, 26 October 1895, pp. 2, 4.
40 BWJ, 24 October 1896, p. 6.
41 BWJ, 4 January 1896, p. 8.
42 BWJ, 11 January 1896, p. 4.
43 MP, 27 November 1896, p. 2.
44 BWJ, 12 December 1896, p. 5. The same notice was published the following week, see BWJ, 19 December 1896, p. 1.
45 MP, 15 December 1896, p. 2.
46 BWJ, 19 December 1896, p. 8.
47 MP, 24 December 1896, p. 4.
48 BWJ, 26 December 1896, p. 3.
49 MP, 24 December 1896, p. 4.
50 BWJ, 26 December 1896, p. 3.
51 MP, 14 April 1897, p. 2.
52 WC, 31 March 1900, p. 7.
53 WC, 8 July 1899, p. 5.
54 Hamilton, ‘Nation and the Navy’, p. 124.
55 Rev. Poyntz Sanderson; J. A. Steward; General Davies; Inspector-General Cowan, RN; the Mayor of Kidderminster; Canon the Hon. H. Douglas; Canon Teignmouth Shore; Mr and Mrs F. Ames; F. Corbett; John Corbett; T. Tempest Radford; C. Raymond; Mrs Roland Berkeley; Dr McCarthy; Captain Sherwill; Mrs Ashton; G. E. Francis; J. A. McNaught; Raymond Ross; Robert Clarke; Michael Tomkinson; Charles Williams; W. H. Maxey; R. Cliff; and A. J. Wetherall.
56 WC, 8 July 1899, p. 7.
57 WC, 31 March 1900, p. 7.
58 WC, 15 July 1899, p. 5. See A. Summers, ‘Militarism in Britain before the Great War’, History Workshop Journal, 21 (1976), 104–23; J. Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society: British Youth Movements, 1883–1940 (London: Croom Helm, 1977); M. Rosenthal, The Character Factory: Baden-Powell and the Origins of the Boy Scout Movement (London: Collins, 1986); A. Warren, ‘Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the Scout Movement and Citizen Training in Great Britain, 1900–1920’, English Historical Review, 101, 399 (1986), 376–98; R. H. MacDonald, Sons of the Empire: The Frontier and the Boy Scout Movement, 1890–1918 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).
59 WC, 15 July 1899, p. 5.
60 WC, 12 January 1901, p. 8.
61 BWJ, 4 January 1902, p. 2.
62 BWJ, 22 February 1902, p. 4.
63 R. Kennedy, The Children’s War: Britain, 1914–1918 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 130.
64 WC, 24 November 1900, p. 5.
65 WC, 31 March 1900, p. 7; BWJ, 31 March 1900, p. 9.
66 WC, 22 February 1902, p. 6.
67 D. Lowry, “The Boers were the beginning of the end’? The wider impact of the South African War’, in The South African War Reappraised ed. by D. Lowry (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 222.
68 WC, 24 November 1900, p. 5.
69 WC, 31 March 1900, p. 7.
70 BWJ, 3 March 1900, p. 2.
71 WC, 7 April 1900, p. 5; BWJ, 7 April 1900, p. 4.
72 BWJ, 31 March 1900, p. 9.
73 WC, 6 April 1901, p. 6.
74 WC, 22 February 1902, p. 6.
75 WC, 6 April 1901, p. 6.
76 WC, 6 April 1901, p. 6.
77 WC, 6 October 1900, p. 5; BWJ, 6 October 1900, p. 5. Martin was a Liberal Unionist, and his reply indicated that his wife was a member of the Navy League. Long had previously signalled his support earlier in the year, see BWJ, 14 April 1900, p. 4.
78 NLJ, 13, 6 (June 1908), p. 168.
79 Hamilton, ‘Nation and the Navy’, pp. 124–25.
80 See, for example, WC, 13 July 1901, p. 5.
81 WC, 13 September 1902, p. 4.
82 It was reported in March 1903 that Sanderson had been appointed rector of Doverdale, near Droitwich, and it seems that he remained on the committee of the Worcester branch after his resignation as secretary. But he did not take an active role in the branch, and he appears to have moved several times in the years that followed, see The Times, 28 March 1903, p. 13; The Times, 4 March 1903, p. 11; NLJ, 11, 4 (April 1906), p. 94. For his obituary, see Portsmouth Evening News, 18 December 1933, p. 9.
83 WC, 13 September 1902, p. 5.
84 See, for example, NLJ, 13, 4 (April 1908), p. 123.
85 NLJ, 11, 4 (April 1906), p. 94.
86 NLJ, 13, 5 (May 1908), p. 144.
87 See C. Bell, ‘Contested Waters: The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era’, War in History, 23, 1 (2016), 115–26.
88 N. C. Fleming, ‘Imperial Maritime League: British Navalism, Conflict, and the Radical Right, c. 1907–1920’, War in History, 23, 3 (2016), 296–322.
89 H. F. Wyatt and L. G. H. Horton-Smith, The Passing of the Great Fleet (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Company), pp. 165, 180, 185; BWJ, 20 July 1907, p. 4.
90 Worcester and Worcestershire are conspicuously absent from the lists of mayors, high sheriffs, and lords lieutenant published by the Imperial Maritime League to demonstrate influential support for its petition opposing the Declaration of London, see L. G. H. Horton-Smith, Perils of the Sea: How We Kept the Flag Flying: A Short History of a Long Fight (London: Imperial Maritime League, 1920), pp. 201a − 201×.
91 Fleming, ‘Imperial Maritime League’, 320.
92 NLJ, 14, 5 (May 1909), p. 142.
93 NLJ, 14, 11 (November 1909), p. 345; NLJ, 15, 7 (July 1910), p. 193.
94 NLJ, 18, 9 (September 1913), p. 267.
95 NLJ, 17, 3 (March 1912), p. 81; NLJ, 18, 5 (May 1913), p. 142.
96 NLJ, 18, 4 (April 1913), p. 113.
97 J. R. Anthony was appointed as chairman, assisted by Lieutenant C.F. Lousada as secretary, and C. Raymond as treasurer. In addition to Raymond, several other stalwarts from the branch’s early days were still members in this period, including F. Ames and Canon Chappell. See NLJ, 19, 8 (August 1914), p. 235.
98 NLJ, 23, 3 (April 1918), p. 42.
99 NLJ, 23, 5 (October 1918), p. 85.
100 See Thompson, Imperial Britain, pp. 81–109.
101 See MP, 21 September 1903, p. 3; D. Porter, ‘The Unionist Tariff Reformers 1903–1914’, (PhD diss., University of Manchester, 1976), pp. 258, 428; D. Thackeray, ‘Building a peaceable party: masculine identities in British Conservative politics, c. 1903–24’, Historical Research, 85, 230 (2012), 651–73.
102 O’Leary, Elimination of Corrupt Practices, pp. 197–198; BWJ, 21 December 1907, p. 6; BWJ, 27 January 1912, p. 6.
103 A. Sykes, Tariff Reform in British Politics 1903–1913 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 162–3; MP, 24 January 1908, p. 8.
104 D. A. Hamer, The Politics of Electoral Pressure: A Study in the History of Victorian Reform Agitations (Hassocks: Harvester, 1977), p. 4. For local debate on this practice, see BWJ, 29 June 1907, p. 4.
105 M. Connelly and P. Donaldson, ‘South African War (1899–1902) Memorials in Britain: A Case Study of Memorialization in London and Kent’, War and Society, 29, 1 (2010), 20–46.
106 WC, 7 February 1903, p. 4; WC, p. 7 March 1903, p. 5.
107 BWJ, 7 September 1907, p. 6.
108 BWJ, 23 February 1907, p. 5.
109 BWJ, 31 August 1907, p. 5; BWJ, 7 September 1907, p. 5.
110 BWJ, 22 June 1907, p. 4; BWJ, 31 August 1907, p. 5.
111 BWJ, 7 September 1907, p. 6.
112 See, for example, BWJ, 19 August 1911, p. 2; BWJ, 5 October 1912, p. 7; Gloucester Journal, 26 April 1913, p. 10.
113 C. M. McHardy, British Seamen, Boy Seamen and Light Dues (London: Navy League, 1899).
114 WC, 8 July 1899, p. 7.
115 Hamilton, ‘Nation and Navy’, p. 150.
116 NLJ, 11, 4 (April 1904), p. 100.
117 N. C. Fleming, ‘Navalism and Masculinity before the First World War’, in Negotiating Masculinities and Modernity in the Maritime World, 1815–1940: A Sailor’s Progress? ed. by J. Begiato, K. Downing and J. Thayer (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), pp. 245–65.
118 NLJ, 13, 7 (July 1908), p. 224.
119 Navy, 17, 1 (January 1910), p. 22; Navy, 17, 4 (April 1910), p. 107; Navy, 17, 8 (August 1910), p. 223.
120 Evesham Standard and West Midland Observer, 24 June 1905, p. 6. The council’s decision is in marked contrast to its earlier hesitation about cooperating with the Navy League’s ‘British seamen for British ships’ campaign, see WC, 23 March 1901, p. 6; WC, 15 June 1901, p. 7.
121 Navy, 11, 9 (September 1904), pp. 243–44. See Fleming, ‘Navalism and Masculinity’, pp. 257–259.
122 Rosenthal, Character Factory, p. 281.
123 BWJ, 20 May 1911, p. 5.
124 See BWJ, 9 September 1911, p. 2.
125 WC, 31 March 1900, p. 7.
126 M. A. Conley, From Jack Tar to Union Jack: Representing Naval Manhood in the British Empire, 1870–1918 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009); C. McKee, Sober Men and True: Sailor Lives in the Royal Navy, 1900–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002) pp. 1–12; M. S. Seligmann, Rum, Sodomy, Prayers and the Lash Revisited: Winston Churchill and Social Reform in the Royal Navy, 1900–1915 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 14.
127 WC, 6 April 1901, p. 6.
128 WC, 22 February 1902, p. 6; BWJ, 22 February 1902, p. 2; see G.R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency: A Study in British Politics and Political Thought, 1899–1914 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971), passim.
129 MP, 14 April 1897, p. 2.
130 WC, 8 July 1899, p. 7.
131 Hamilton, ‘Nation and the Navy’, pp. 147–149, 173; G. Best, ‘Militarism and the Victorian Public School’, in The Victorian Public School: Studies in the Development of an Educational Institution ed. by B. Simon and I. Bradley (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1975), p. 130.
132 See, for example, WC, 20 October 1900, p. 5; BWJ, 20 October 1900, p. 4.
133 WC, 8 July 1899, p. 7.
134 BWJ, 3 March 1900, p. 2; WC, 6 April 1901, p. 6.
135 WC, 23 December 1899, p. 4; ‘Opening of the Victoria Institute, Worcester’, The Library, 1 (January 1896), p. 568.
136 BWJ, 3 March 1900, p. 2.
137 Gloucester Citizen, 23 October 1905, p. 3.
138 BWJ, 18 May 1907, p. 2.
139 NLJ, 11, 4 (April 1906), p. 94.
140 BWJ, 12 April 1902, p. 2. See also NLJ, 14, 5 (May 1909), p. 142.
141 Standard, 21 September 1897, p. 2.
142 Nottinghamshire Guardian, 11 June 1898, p. 4.
143 Western Daily Press, 27 May 1902, p. 6.
144 WC, 4 November 1899, p. 7. Board members in attendance included Alfred Webb, Rev. Father Kernan, Alderman Harry Day, Martin Curtler, J. Mayglothling, J. Manning, G.B. Wetherall, J. Stallard Jun., and W. Noake.
145 WC, 23 December 1899, p. 4.
146 NLJ, 11, 12 (December 1906), p. 341–42.
147 WC, 19 October 1901, p. 8.
148 WC, 22 February 1902, p. 6.
149 WC, 2 August 1902, p. 7. A talk by Lieutenant Knox in Hereford, on 5 November 1906, heard the chairman and Mayor of Hereford, Alderman E.C. Gurney, call for a branch to be established there, see NLJ, 11, 12 (December 1906), p. 339.
150 WC, 8 July 1899, p. 7.
151 NLJ, 11, 5 (May 1911), p. 133.
152 Evesham Standard and West Midland Observer, 15 October 1910, p. 5.
153 Rosenthal, Character Factory, pp. 104–105; J. Benson, The Working Class in Britain 1850–1939 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003), pp. 148, 151; Kennedy, Children’s War, p. 91; S. Olsen, Juvenile Nation: Youth, Emotions and the Making of the Modern British Citizen, 1880–1914 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), p. 21.
154 Hull Daily Mail, 23 December 1940, p. 3; The Times, 30 March 1942, p. 2.
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N. C. Fleming
N. C. Fleming is Professor of Modern History, University of Worcester. He has been Visiting Fellow, St Catherine’s College, Oxford; Senior Associate Member, St Antony’s College, Oxford; Fulbright-Robertson Visiting Professor of British History, Westminster College, Missouri, United States; and Visiting Researcher, Åbo Akademi, Finland. His recent publications include Britannia’s Zealots, Volume I: Tradition, Empire and the Forging of the Conservative Right (2019), Histories, Memories and Representations of Being Young in the First World War (2020), Ireland and Partition: Contexts and Consequences (2021), and Aristocracy, Democracy, and Dictatorship: The Political Papers of the Seventh Marquess of Londonderry (2022).