When the British army mutinied and the country faced revolution

It is not often that one is able to pinpoint precisely the moment when a war is lost or won, nor the hour in which a revolution becomes successful and the existing regime overthrown. In the case of the Russian Revolution, we know the exact moment that the downfall of the Romanovs, who had ruled Russia for over three centuries, was assured without the shadow of a doubt. It happened early on the morning of Monday, 12 March 1917.

During the days approaching this fateful date, the troops of the Imperial Army had shown a marked reluctance to act against the crowds of strikers and demonstrators who thronged the streets of Petrograd; the modern-day city of St Petersburg. Even the Cossacks, the traditional means in Russia of dispersing crowds of discontented citizenry, had refused to ride down the protesters, let alone draw their sabres and attack them. They would not even wield their whips against the people of Petrograd. So far, the armed forces had displayed passive disobedience, rather than engaging in open mutiny. This all changed abruptly on that Monday morning, when a certain Sergeant Timofeyef Kirpichnikov marched the Volinsk Regiment from its barracks in good order, with the band playing. Disregarding the regiment’s officers, this NCO took charge of the unit and marched it through the streets of Petrograd to the barracks of the Preobrazhensky and Litovsky regiments; where he called upon them to join his men in fighting against the established order and throw in their lot with the rebellious crowds of strikers and unemployed workers. As soon as the Tsar and his government could no longer rely upon the army to obey orders; they were in desperate straits. On the day that a body of troops declared themselves to be actively opposed to the existing regime; the Russian leadership were altogether lost.

Mutiny in the armed forces has always been treated with great severity in Britain. The death penalty for murder was abolished in the 1960s, but it was to be another 30 years before those convicted of mutiny were freed from the possibility of being sentenced to death. It was not until 1998 that this offence ceased to attract the ultimate penalty in this country. The reason is easy to understand. The power of any government rests in the final analysis in the ability to use overwhelming force to impose its will; either upon the country it governs or against other nations, with whom it may be at war. As Mao Tse Tung observed, ’Political power grows from the barrel of a gun’. If your soldiers conspire together to disobey the orders of superior officers, so that you can no longer rely upon them to do as you wish; then you have really lost your ability to govern in any meaningful sense of the word. It is for this reason that mutiny has traditionally been seen as being on a par with treason; it strikes against the very authority of the state. This was the position in which the government of Lloyd George found itself as 1919 began. It could no longer rely unconditionally upon the loyalty of the armed forces and, just as in Russia in 1917, there was a very real chance of units transferring their allegiance to an authority other than the Crown.

Before going further, it might be helpful to explore in a little detail the position of soldiers and police officers in the United Kingdom. All civil servants, army officers, police constables, and government ministers in Britain owe their allegiance not to the Prime Minister or any other political figure, but to the Crown. The same of course goes for the Prime Minister himself. This loyalty filters down from above and is the ultimate source of authority upon which all public servants rely. The Prime Minister is an agent of the Crown and it is this capacity that he instructs his Minister of Defence; who then tells generals and field marshals what is required. They in turn pass on orders to their subordinates, all the way down to junior officer and NCOs, who are in charge of the ordinary soldiers and sailors. At each stage, the ministers, civil servants and officers are acting not in a personal capacity, according to their own whims and fancies, nor as followers of this or that political party, but rather as conduits for the authority of the Crown. In this respect, a strike by police officers or disobedience by soldiers is of a qualitatively different nature to industrial action by workers in a factory or mine. Setting one’s self in opposition to an employer is not to be compared with rebelling against the Crown.

Throughout 1919, first the army and then the police suffered from what, on the face of it, appeared to be merely a tendency to strike and oppose the authority of their superiors in a way which was superficially similar and to some observers indistinguishable from the wave of militant action bedevilling industry at that time. However, a railway worker going on strike may still maintain his loyalty to the state or the crown; he is just engaged in a dispute with his bosses about wages and working conditions. Such strikes can be an awful nuisance, but do not necessarily represent a challenge to the established order; although of course some do. When soldiers elect their own committees though and, rejecting the orders of their officers, follow the instructions issued by their own representatives, something very different is going on. These are men who have rejected the power of the state, as embodied by the Crown, and are moving off into the territory of creating their own, alternative state; whether they realise it or not. The same is true of striking police officers, which is of course why it is illegal for the British police to go on strike or even belong to a trade union; a state of affairs which arose as direct consequence of the events in 1919.

Mutiny, the rebellion of soldiers against their superiors, had been a negligible problem in European armies at the beginning of the First World War. As the years passed though, it grew to such serious levels that two of the major participants in the war, Russia and Germany, were forced to stop fighting, simply because their armies would no longer go to war when told to do so. The French army had enormous difficulties with large scale mutiny in the latter half of the war, which they only managed to suppress by the most savage reprisals against those regiments thought to be in danger of disaffection. In 1917, it was not uncommon for five men to be selected from each mutinous company and then summarily shot. In the final year of the war, there were over 20,000 cases of mutiny in the French army and if the war had continued for much longer, it is entirely possible that France too might have found itself in the same unenviable situation as Germany and Russia.

There had been odd cases of mutiny in the British army in France during the First World War, but they were freakishly rare; resulting in only a tiny handful of executions, compared with the hundreds of soldiers who were shot for cowardice, desertion and other military offences.

In the British army, it was not until the war had technically ended that mutiny became so widespread as to longer appear at all remarkable. The first of these post-war mutinies took place at an army base in the Sussex seaside town of Shoreham. Before looking at the mutinies of 1919, we should note that mutiny in the British army was traditionally a random and haphazard business, consisting of individuals or small groups of men rebelling spontaneously against their NCOs and officers. Such outbreaks of indiscipline, while prejudicial to good order in the army or navy, were fairly easy to deal with. The organised and peaceful mutinies of 1919 were another matter entirely.

Dissatisfaction about the demobilisation of those who had been conscripted into the army began within 48 hours of the signing of the armistice on 11 November 1918. This, the first mutiny to take place in the British army after the end of the war against Germany, set a dangerous precedent which was to have serious consequences over the coming year. On 13 November, a major at the camp in Shoreham had abused a conscripted man and then pushed him into some mud. This was enough to cause almost every soldier at Shoreham, of whom the vast majority were conscripts, to rebel. A mass walkout was organised and the men made it plain that they would not be obeying orders and felt that now that the war had ended, they should be released at once from the army. Over 7000 men marched the six miles to Brighton Town Hall, in perfect order and without any officers supervising them, and held a rally there. The gist of their demands was that they should be demobilised at once, as the war was now over. Both the Chief Constable and the Mayor, Alderman Herbert Carden JP, met the soldiers and the Mayor made a speech from the balcony of the Town Hall, telling the troops that he agreed with them and would contact the government on their behalf. The next day, a general was sent from London to talk to the men and issue orders which he hoped would be followed without question. They were not and not one of the men did as they had been ordered and returned to their posts.

The official response to this mutiny of thousands of soldiers was simply astonishing. The day after the general had visited the camp, a thousand of the men were demobilised. More were released over the following days. The message seemed to be very clear; it paid to mutiny. This immediate and ill thought-out response to an unexpected crisis sent quite the wrong signal to other conscripts hoping to be sent home soon. It seemed that organised opposition to officers would be rewarded with demobilisation!

In December 1918, the United Kingdom’s first general election for eight years was held. It had been delayed by the onset of war in 1914, but with the signing of the armistice, there could be no excuse for Lloyd George not going to the country. Conscious of the public mood regarding the continuation of conscription, Lloyd George made public statements which were interpreted by many as a promise to demobilise all conscripted men as speedily as possible. Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff and overall head of the British army, was horrified. He already had plans for armies of occupation, consisting mainly of conscripts, to be sent to France, India and elsewhere. This was to say nothing of the new commitment to the military adventure in northern Russia. Writing in his diary in 1919, when mutiny had become practically a way of life for the army, Wilson said, ‘The whole trouble is due to Lloyd George and his cursed campaign for vote catching’.

Lloyd George had been re-elected as Prime Minister and was, at the beginning of 1919, agonising about the best way to deal with demobilisation and the possible end to conscription. Meanwhile, Henry Wilson had found an ally within the cabinet; a man who, like him, wished to topple the Bolshevik regime in Russia and at the same time maintain an enormous army which would police the world. Sir Winston Churchill, later to lead Britain to victory during the Second World War, was appointed Secretary of State for War in Lloyd George’s new administration. He at once set about frustrating any attempt to demobilise the conscripted troops in a hurry. In secret meetings with the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Churchill laid plans that the two men would later that year present to the Prime Minister as a fait accompli.

A great cause of anger among the conscripted men was the grossly unfair way that demobilisation was being managed. In an effort to avoid flooding the country with unemployed men, the government adopted a scheme which allowed for the immediate discharge of what were called ‘pivotal’ men; those who already had jobs to go to in important branches of trade and industry. Because there had been a deliberate system of not calling up men doing ‘pivotal’ jobs, until it was really necessary, these tended to be conscripts who had been in the army for just a few months; some having been drafted only during the Ludendorff Offensive in the spring of 1918. This was a time when every man was needed to contain the German advance; which at one point threatened even the channel ports of Belgium and France. Clearly, now that the crisis was over, then the sooner such men were released to go back to important jobs which had been kept open for them, the better.

This policy meant that demobilisation was, in effect, being conducted on the basis of ‘last in, first out’; which was obviously unjust. Men who had been called up in the spring of 1916 and then endured the horrors of Passchendaele and the Somme, were being kept in the army, while others who had been conscripted only a month or two earlier were allowed to return to civilian life. The sheer, monstrous injustice of this absurd situation helped to provoke one of the most extensive mutinies that the British army had ever known. It took place not on some distant battlefield, but in the Kent port of Folkestone.

A number of soldiers who had been on active service in France were granted leave so that they could return to England to be with their families over Christmas and the New Year. Many of these men understood that once back in Britain, they would then be demobilised. Lloyd George’s electioneering speeches helped to confirm them in this view. To their amazement, after their leave was ended, instead of being demobilised; they were ordered to return to France. Worse still, rumours began circulating to the effect that some of them were to be shipped off to the Arctic to fight what Winston Churchill described in a speech at the Mansion House in London that year as the, ’foul baboonery’ of Bolshevism.

The majority of the thousands of men who arrived at Folkestone harbour, where they were due to board ships to France, were in a sullen and uncooperative mood. On 3 January, the simmering tensions exploded and in perfect discipline, 2,000 soldiers quietly took over the port and announced that no military vessels would be allowed to sail. Pickets were posted on the dockside and as troop trains reached Folkestone, they were met by representatives of the troops who had brought the port to a standstill and invited to join them. Most did so and by the next morning, Saturday 4 January, something in the region of 10,000 soldiers were running their own affairs without officers and patrolling the quayside to ensure that no boats sailed for either France or Russia.

There could hardly have been a more alarming situation; either for the government in London or the commanders of the army. This was no undisciplined rabble on the rampage, but thousands of men peacefully setting up their own committees and refusing to obey any orders unless they came from the men they had themselves chosen to lead them. It was in fact, precisely what had happened in Russia when the army changed sides and refused any longer to support the monarchy and also later when they followed the advice of their own soviets, rather than the orders of the provisional government in Petrograd. Already, there were fears about the mood of the country’s industrial workers, strikes were running at a record high, and the well-founded apprehension was that these disaffected and mutinous soldiers might make common cause with rebellious workers.

A half-hearted effort to stamp out the mutiny by the use of force failed miserably. A squad of Fusiliers under the command of an officer took up position at the dockside with fixed bayonets and their rifles loaded. As they were approached by some of the mutineers, one of the Fusiliers raised his rifle, as though about to fire. He evidently thought better of it though, because the scene passed off peacefully. The Commander in Chief of the Home Forces, Sir William Robertson, was driven from London to Folkestone and promised the men that there would be no reprisals for their actions and that their leave would be extended. Once again, the staging of a mutiny appeared to have reaped rich rewards for the soldiers involved. Little wonder that the trouble then spread to the nearby port of Dover, where again, additional leave was granted.

It must have seemed to the conscripted men who were organising these protests that the authorities were weak and ready to concede any demands made. On 6 January, the trouble reached Downing Street itself. Men of the Army Service Corps, based at Isleworth just outside London, had heard that their regiment was likely to be one of the last to be demobilised. They commandeered lorries and drove to Downing Street to protest in person to the Prime Minister. When they arrived at Downing Street, which they blocked with their lorries, it was to find that Lloyd George was not himself present and so they discussed their concerns with civil servants from the Ministry of Labour. Four days later, many of them were demobilised.

The generals could see the army melting away before their eyes, such was the reaction of a government which was anxious at all costs to avoid any violent confrontation. Other mutinies took place over the course of the next few weeks at camps in various parts of southern England. Although he hoped to resolve the crisis without bloodshed, the Prime Minister must have known that he could not let this sort of thing continue unchecked. Even if he did not fully agree with Henry Wilson’s estimate of the numbers of troops needed to run the British Empire effectively, Lloyd George was keenly aware that he was likely very soon to need large numbers of soldiers upon whom he could rely absolutely to obey orders. These would be operating not in India or Mesopotamia, but in Britain itself and unless he could be sure of their loyalty, then the country faced its greatest test since the end of the English Civil war, almost 300 years earlier.

It is sometimes forgotten that for most of British history the guardians of public peace have been not the police, but the army. Even after the establishment of the first police forces in this country during the nineteenth century, the army’s role in maintaining order was crucial. Whenever the police found themselves unable to handle anything from riots to peaceful gatherings of striking textile workers; then the magistrates in an area could, and frequently did, enlist the aid of the army in crushing anything which appeared to smack to the authorities of rebellion or sedition. At the beginning of 1919, this role of the armed forces was no historical curiosity; one didn’t need a long memory to see what role the army was expected to play when things threatened to get out of hand. It was only necessary to look back to the terrible events of 1911; the year that saw what became known as the ‘Great Unrest’.

During 1911, over a million workers came out on strike in Britain. Transport workers, seamen, dockers, miners and railwaymen were all on strike at various times and the government resorted to the time-honoured expedient of calling out the military to deal with the strikes and riots which were plaguing the country. In August, a national strike of seamen began and in the northern port of Liverpool, thousands of other workers laid down their tools in sympathy. Almost 100,000 strikers filled the streets and, fearing that they were facing the beginning of large-scale disorders, the authorities arranged for the Riot Act to be read and then cavalry were used to clear the streets. In the resulting riot, windows were smashed, fires started and barricades erected. The following day, armoured cars and soldiers with fixed bayonets patrolled the streets. Reinforcements were brought in from nearby army bases and within 48 hours, some 3,500 soldiers had taken control of public order in Liverpool and the city was virtually under martial law.

Just as in the aftermath of the rioting in English cities in 2011, it was thought that a few lengthy sentences for public order offences might discourage future episodes of disorder. Some of the men arrested during the initial street fighting were taken to court and given stiff terms of imprisonment. A detachment of thirty hussars, soldiers on horseback, were given the task of escorting the vans taking the prisoners from the magistrates’ court to Walton Prison. As they passed through the streets, angry crowds gathered; perhaps with the intention of rescuing the men being taken off to prison. A few daring protestors grabbed at the reins of the cavalry troopers, whereupon an officer gave the order to open fire. Two men were killed and another three wounded. Michael Prendegast, one of those killed, had been shot twice through the head.

Incredibly, the violence in Liverpool was not the worst to be seen in Britain that summer. Troops also opened fire at Llanelli in Wales. During the resulting fighting, which included saboteurs setting fire to a railway truck containing explosives, six people were killed. Tredegar, also in Wales, saw the first anti-Jewish pogrom in Britain since the Middle Ages. Once again, the army was called in to restore order; elements of the Somerset Light Infantry and the Worcester Regiment making bayonet charges along the streets of Tredegar. Cavalry were also used to drive off looters and those intent upon burning shops.

The capital became an armed camp, with 12,500 soldiers billeted in tents in Hyde Park. Troops guarded railway stations and patrolled the lines leading in and out of London. The fear was that sabotage might be attempted. Without the assistance of the army, it is unlikely that the police alone would have been able to deal effectively with the situation that year.

This then was another great fear of Lloyd George and his government at the beginning of 1919; that social unrest and industrial action might increase to such a level that the police would be unable to cope with the situation. In the usual way of things, the army would at this point have been brought in to help, but it was becoming increasingly clear that many units simply could not be relied upon to obey orders. As if that was not a disturbing enough possibility, it was also the case that the police themselves might not do as they were told by the authorities. There had already been one police strike in 1918 and the signs were that another might be on the way. If the police walked out and the army refused to act; what would become of the nation?

Just before the outbreak of war in 1914, a police trade union had been formed; the National Union of Police and Prison Officers. By 1918, this union had become strong enough to call a strike of police officer in London. Twelve thousand Metropolitan Police officers, the majority of the London police force, walked out in a dispute over various issues, including pay. Troops were deployed at key positions across London and Prime Minister Lloyd George gave in to nearly all the demands made by the striking officers. In the event of another such strike, the army might not be available to act. There were those in the cabinet who were beginning to think that the country was facing a Bolshevik revolution, like that which had seized power in Russia.

Also at the forefront of Lloyd George’s mind must have been events in Germany; both in November 1918 and also on the very day that the men of the Army Service Corps seized lorries and drove to London to try and confront him. The downfall of Germany’s Kaiser was caused by mutinies in the army and navy. It was when he realised that he was no longer in control of Germany’s armed forces that Kaiser Wilhelm knew that the game was up and that he no longer held power; just as had been the case with Tsar Nicholas the previous year. The army and navy were the key to the continued existence or overthrow of any regime.

On 6 January 1919, the same day that the discontented soldiers arrived in Downing Street to demand immediate demobilisation, an abortive revolution erupted in Berlin. Vast crowds gathered and were addressed by members of the Spartacist movement; later to be renamed the German Communist Party. A number of public buildings were occupied and one of the Spartacist leaders, Karl Liebknecht, proclaimed the creation of the German Soviet Republic. Red flags were raised across the city. The German communists were hoping to emulate the Bolshevik seizure of Russia, when the weak provisional government which took power after the Tsar’s abdication was itself overthrown.

As always, the army was the key to the whole thing and if the German army had not been loyal to the newly formed republic which had taken power in November 1918, then it is possible that Germany would indeed have seen the establishment of a ’Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, as Lenin had instituted in Russia. As it was, not only did the army stand firmly on the side of the republic, a number of right-wing militias were not prepared to stand by and see the country taken over by Marxists. Over the following days, the communists were routed and then hunted down and killed. It was a one sided contest, for those who were opposed to them had machine guns and artillery at their disposal. On 15 January, just nine days after the proclamation of the Soviet Republic, Karl Liebknecht was killed.

The message from Germany’s experience could scarcely be clearer. As long as the army were on the side of the government, then that government were secure; no matter what a handful of troublemakers and malcontents might do. The difficulty for the government in London was that it was looking as though their army was not altogether on the right side and if a firm line was not taken soon, then the British army was in danger of crumbling away as a force to be reckoned with. This was a terrifying prospect and perhaps explains why the next time that an organised mutiny took place, there was no question of acceding to the demands of the men. Instead, the gloves would be off and it would be made plain that those who disobeyed orders would find themselves in very serious trouble; even their very lives would be in danger.

It was not long before the opportunity arose to demonstrate this new resolve. It came in the middle of January, when over 5,000 soldiers in the port of Southampton went on strike, as they saw it. Of course, there can really be no such thing as a strike in the army and by any definition, what was really happening was simply the mutiny of thousands of soldiers. The soldiers took over the Southampton docks and it was observed that the inhabitants of the city appeared to be in sympathy with them. The main complaint being made was that the soldiers had understand that they had been told to report to Southampton so that they could be demobilised. Now though, they were being ordered to board ships for France. This was a point of view which was bound to generate sympathy among the residents of Southampton; all of whom had husbands, brothers and fathers in the same position. This is just what had happened during the mutinies in Dover and Folkestone; ordinary people seemed to agree with the grievances of the troops and behaved as though they wished to support and encourage the mutinies. When it became apparent that the same pattern was developing in Southampton, Sir William Robertson, the Commander in Chief of the Home Forces and the man who had negotiated a peaceful resolution to the trouble in Folkestone, knew that unless he acted firmly, there would soon be no soldiers upon whom he could rely to obey orders unconditionally. Instead of travelling down to Southampton and talking reasonably with the men about their demands, Robertson sent a general down to deal with the mutiny in any way he saw fit.

The man chosen to tackle the mutiny at Southampton was General Hugh Trenchard; former head of the Royal Flying Corps and later appointed Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. He had been taking a two month holiday, following the armistice, and was specifically recalled to active service to handle the Southampton mutiny in such a way as to send a clear signal to the rest of the conscripts in the armed forces that this sort of thing would no longer be tolerated.

Hugh Trenchard was a career soldier who had received his first commission in 1893, at the height of the Britain’s imperial power. He was a man who had for almost thirty years been used to others leaping to obey him when he issued orders. When he received the telegram instructing him to go down to the south coast, General Trenchard put on his uniform and set off; in the expectation that only a few sharp words from a very senior officer would be enough to nip this nonsense in the bud. He had had experience of mutinies in France and knew that in most cases it was simply one or two barrack-room lawyer types egging on others to disregard authority. This is how the army traditionally saw mutiny; a small number of ringleaders urging on the more weak-minded of their fellows to follow a ruinous course of action.

On reaching Southampton, Trenchard had a brief interview with the commander of the camp where the troops had been stationed. He formed the view that this was an indecisive and ineffective man, who had by his vacillating allowed a minor problem to snowball into a crisis. As the general had suspected all along, all that was needed was for a man of action to go and speak firmly to the men and the whole business would be over in a matter of minutes. Accompanied only by his aide-de-camp, Maurice Baring, and a clerk, Trenchard set off for the docks.

When he approached the dock gates and demanded to be allowed in to address the thousands of soldiers who were occupying the area, it did not once occur to General Trenchard that he would be received with anything other than the respect due to a senior officer. He was sadly mistaken, because as soon as they caught sight of his uniform, the boos, catcalls and angry shouting began. To his utmost amazement, the abuse escalated from the verbal to the physical. He was grabbed and roughly manhandled, before being ignominiously ejected from the docks. Many years later, Trenchard still recalled with disbelief the treatment he had received;

It was the only time in my life I had been really hustled. They did not

want to listen to me. They told me to get out and stay out.

Seething with fury, the general went off and telephoned the garrison commander at nearby Portsmouth, demanding that he be sent 250 armed troops and also an escort of military police. The men occupying the docks were all unarmed, which Trenchard knew. He had resolved to teach them a lesson for their atrocious conduct; if need be by instigating a massacre.

General Trenchard’s request for urgent military assistance had set alarm bells ringing in the higher echelons of the army in southern England. In the middle of the night, Trenchard was called to the telephone to take a call from the General Officer in charge of the Southern Command. This man informed him that under no circumstances must Trenchard give the order to open fire in Southampton. Since he outranked the officer, Trenchard merely informed him coldly that he was not seeking anybody’s permission for what he was about to do.

The next day, General Trenchard was waiting at the station for the troop train to arrive from Portsmouth. When the soldiers he had requested had disembarked, they were ordered to load their rifles and fix bayonets. These were instructions which, in the usual way of things, were only issued before a battle was about to commence. The soldiers were then marched to the docks. Most of the mutineers had spent the night in the customs hall; a huge, barn-like structure, with an open front. Trenchard drew up his men and then ordered them to cock their weapons and to be prepared to fire on the word of command. Nobody present had the least doubt that the general who had been humiliated by the men in the custom hall was perfectly ready to initiate a bloodbath if he did not get his way.

Once more, Trenchard began to address the crowd. A sergeant shouted an obscenity and was immediately seized by the military police. The overwhelming force was effective and all but a 100 men holed up in some buildings agreed to surrender. At General Trenchard’s command, the windows were smashed and men who had barricaded themselves in the buildings had fire hoses turned on them until they too capitulated. The mutiny was over. Trenchard personally identified those who he thought were ringleaders and they were taken off in the custody of the military police.

In February, when Trenchard was summoned to London and offered by Winston Churchill the post of Chief of the Air Staff, Churchill, who was by now both Secretary of State for War and also Secretary of State for Air, congratulated him on his actions in Southampton; referring to Trenchard’s ‘masterly handling’ of the ‘Southampton riots’.

Towards the end of January, the War Office sent a circular stamped ‘Secret’ to all Commanding Officers throughout the United Kingdom. This secret document revealed the deepest anxieties of the government in London; showing precisely why they wished to be sure of the mood of various units of the armed forces. Because of the mutinies which had been taking place, it was hoped to discover how many troops would actually be likely to obey any orders to come to the aid of the civil power. The officers were to furnish Whitehall with weekly reports, to arrive ’not later than first post each Thursday morning’, telling the War Office which units could be relied upon in a domestic crisis of the sort which was expected that year. Among the questions were;

Will troops in various areas respond to orders for assistance to preserve

the public peace?

Will they assist in strike-breaking?

Will they parade for draft to overseas, especially to Russia?

There were also questions about outside agitation, the growth of trade unionism and the formation of soldiers’ councils. No sooner had the circular been issued, than another mutiny took place at the British bases in the channel port of Calais. This was an even worse situation than the ones which had been seen in Southern England that year. Men from the Royal Army Ordnance Corp and the Army Service Corps were refusing to operate the ports and had joined forces with French workers to bring the railways and shipping to a halt. At the same time, Units of front-line troops waiting at Calais refused to obey orders. The men involved described their actions as a ‘strike’, but since they were paralysing one of the key ports being used by the British army and preventing the movement of both troops and military supplies to the army currently stationed on the German border, it was clear that their actions were jeopardising the whole of Britain’s efforts on the continent.

The rebel forces, for there is really no other way to describe them, had formed a committee to run both their own affairs and also to take control of the port of Calais. This organisation, the Calais Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Association, was effectively controlling thousands of British troops in the camps around Calais. The demands of the men on ‘strike’ varied from improvements in rations to speedier demobilisation. It is impossible to say just how many men were actually taking part in this episode; estimates ranging from 4000 to 20,000 soldiers, as well as French railway workers who were refusing to assist in the movement of British troop trains and so on.

After the mutinies which had been seen in England and the ill effects of leniency on those actively involved, Commander in Chief of the British forces in France, Douglas Haig, was not in the mood for compromise. All else apart, Germany was not yet, despite the armistice, technically defeated and there existed the possibility that if a satisfactory peace treaty could not be put together, then the British and French armies would be forced to invade Germany. In such a case, the channel ports would be of crucial importance from a logistical point of view. Haig sent orders to General Byng, in charge of the Third Army, authorising him to move two divisions to Calais and put an end to the mutiny by any means necessary.

General Byng’s arrival in Calais on 27 January was delayed, because of the strikes which French railway workers were undertaking in support of the British mutineers. When he and the two divisions which Haig had allocated for this matter reached Calais, Byng showed that he was in no mood for pussyfooting around. He surrounded the camps which were at the centre of the mutiny and had his men set up machine-gun posts. The general then gave the men a straight choice. If they wished to make a fight of it, then he and his troops would oblige. Otherwise, they should lay down their arms and surrender. Having threatened to deal with the mutiny by the use of overwhelming military force, General Byng had four men whom he regarded as the ringleaders arrested and sent for court martial. Then he arranged for improvements in the conditions in the camps.

Haig wished to make an example of the men who organised what was called by some of those who set it up the Calais Soviet. Specifically, he wished to see them shot for mutiny. Secretary of State for War Winston Churchill overruled the C in C though and the four men were instead sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

By now, Lloyd George’s government were facing another crisis, this time on the industrial front and they needed to ensure that at least some of the army would help deal with what had come to resemble a Bolshevik revolution in the Scottish city of Glasgow.

Acting on the advice of Wilson, Prime Minister Lloyd George had recalled to Britain some units of the Guards, whose loyalty was unquestionable. Many of the men in the five Guards regiments were volunteers from before the war and would obey orders without hesitation. They comprised at that time; the Grenadier Guards, the Coldstream Guards, the Scots Guards, the Welsh Guards and the Irish Guards. It was vital to have such soldiers at the command of the government, because the country now faced a serious confrontation with strikers in important industries. The government believed, quite correctly, that these strikes were about more than the usual demands for shorter hours and higher pay. It was felt necessary to have troops ready to crush the strikers, by any means which might be needed.

Bringing the Guards back to Britain was intended in part as a show of force for those who were seeking to destabilise the country and, in some cases, conspiring to overthrow the established order. Lest this appear fanciful, we turn to the memoirs of an officer who served in the First World War and went on to become a respected academic and author. Charles Carrington’s biography of Rudyard Kipling is still, 60 years after its publication, regarded as being the authoritative work on the subject. In 1963, Carrington published Soldier from the War Returning; an account of his own experiences during and shortly after the war. He describes a parade through central London after some units of the Guards had been brought back to Britain;

…the Guards Division was brought home from France and paraded

through London in fighting order, ostensibly to allow the Londoners to

welcome their own familiar defenders, and with a secondary motive of

warning the seditious that force would be met with force… It was a

celebration, and at the same time a warning that there was still a

disciplined army.

In the event, the Guards were needed first not to tackle industrial unrest in the provinces, but in London itself.

On Friday, 7 February 1919, a large number of soldiers reported to Victoria Station. Some had thought that they were about to be demobilised; others believed that they were to be sent to France. In the end, neither of these things happened. It had been intended that the men would board trains and then travel to the coast and from there to France. However, due to a mix-up, no trains were available. The men, mostly from the North of England, were told to make their own arrangements for the next few days and to report back at Victoria Station the next day. This caused a great deal of anger. Those who had thought that they might be discharged from the army that day were dismayed to hear that they would instead be sent overseas. Even the ones who were resigned to another posting in France were angry that they were expected to find food and lodgings for themselves in the capital that night. Many had no money and faced the prospect of sleeping in the waiting rooms at the station.

On the Saturday, matters became serious. There were still no available trains and no provision had been made for accommodation or food for the stranded soldiers. Tempers flared and there was scuffling and raised voices; the officers present bearing the brunt of the displeasure being freely expressed by the indignant soldiers. It was at this point that the value of recalling various detachments of Guards’ regiments became obvious. Other units of conscripted men might have sympathised or even fraternised with the infuriated men. Not so the company of Scots Guards who were despatched from their barracks near Buckingham Palace. They marched to the station, halted long enough to fix bayonets and then cleared Victoria Station of civilians; isolating the rebellious troops in the station yard. These men were then surrounded and disarmed; being later taken under arrest to the Wellington Barracks.

So chaotic and confused was the scene at Victoria Station, that the men of the Scots Guards who were dealing with one group of soldiers in the station yard failed to realise that a large contingent were assembling elsewhere. When these other men saw that the Scots Guards were intent upon disarming and arresting anybody protesting about the treatment they had received, they formed up into marching order and set off along Victoria Street in the direction of Parliament.

The situation could hardly have been more fraught, however much the government later tried to play it down. Almost a thousand rebellious soldiers, all armed with rifles and ignoring their officers, were now marching on the Houses of Parliament. Word was sent to the War Ministry, where the Secretary of State for War was at his desk, despite its being a Saturday. The first thing that Winston Churchill must have wondered was if this was the beginning of some kind of coup d’etat. Churchill telephoned Major-General Geoffrey Feilding, who, in addition to commanding the Brigade of Guards, was General Officer Commanding London District. Since the Scots Guards were fully occupied at Victoria Station, Churchill wished to know what other units were available at that moment to deal with a new threat from mutinous troops. General Feilding told Churchill that he had at his disposal a reserve battalion of the Grenadier Guards and two troops of the Household Cavalry. It was at this point that the Secretary of State asked the all-important question; would these troops obey orders? General Feilding assured him that there was no doubt at all about their loyalty.

From the window of his office, Churchill could see the hundreds of soldiers, rifles at the slope, marching down Whitehall. Perhaps worried about the consequences if they saw the man who was in overall charge of the army, Churchill backed away from the window and remained in his room as events unfolded outside. He later wrote in The Aftermath, ‘I remained in my room, a prey to anxiety.’

After realising that they were not likely to get anybody to listen to their complaints at the War Office, the soldiers moved on to Horse Guards’ Parade, where a civil servant addressed them. This was probably only a delaying tactic, because the more that the man spoke, the more angry and threatening became the soldiers. It was at this point that a troop of the Household Cavalry rode forward. At the same time, troops from the Grenadier Guards closed in from the other side of Horse Guards’ Parade, with bayonets fixed and apparently ready for any eventuality. Since every one of the soldiers occupying the area was also carrying a rifle, things could have gone badly. As it was, they allowed themselves to be arrested and were then taken to the Wellington Barracks.

It was in nobody’s interests to see a thousand court-martials held at that time and so all the men who had taken part in the disturbances at Victoria Station and in Whitehall were simply shipped off to France as planned.

This has been by no means an exhaustive account of the mutinies and strikes which took place in the British army in 1919. By some accounts, around 100,000 soldiers took part in mutinies at one time or another during the course of that year. This mood of militancy did not end abruptly when men were demobilised form the armed forces. After having taken part in the sort of actions at which we have been looking, those who left the army were often ready to stand up to authority again in various ways. Today, we might say that they had been politicised; even perhaps radicalised. It was noticeable that during the widespread riots and disturbances which were seen across the whole of Britain in the year following the end of the First World War, soldiers and ex-soldiers were generally in the forefront of the trouble. Men wearing old army greatcoats or medal ribbons often appeared to be the ringleaders when violent protests were taking place. Indeed, associations of ex-servicemen were thought to be among the most revolutionary and dangerous elements in Britain in the years following the end of the First World War. Basil Thomson, who was Director of Intelligence in 1919, wrote of these organisations;

In the months following the Armistice some of the societies of ex-

servicemen began to give anxiety. The most dangerous at the moment

seemed to be the Sailors’ Soldiers’ and Airmens’ Union, which had

whole-heartedly accepted the Soviet idea and was in touch with the

police-strikers who had been dismissed, with the more revolutionary

members of the Trades Councils, and with the Herald League.

It is time now to see what the army was really needed for in Britain and why it had been so important to find out which units would obey orders and which could not be trusted. In the last week of January 1919, the situation which had been so feared by Lloyd George’s cabinet finally arrived. Troops loyal to the government were needed to put down what the Secretary of State for Scotland, Robert Munro, described as, ‘a Bolshevist uprising’. Alarmingly, when it came to the crunch, it was found that the army units stationed closest to the trouble, could not be relied upon. They were confined to barracks and troops from much further afield had to be drafted in. The worst fears of the British government had come true; they could not, when the time came, rely unconditionally upon British soldiers to deal with disturbances in their own country.