Chapter 4 Nation and empire

Islandhood and insularity

An inherent love of the sea in the Briton was a recurring motif in much of the Navy League’s rhetoric throughout the interwar years. As The Navy put it in 1931, one of the ‘influences that has most powerfully contributed towards the greatness’ of the nation was the ‘sea spirit of our peoples; that sea spirit which comprises a true love of the sea and of adventurous wandering across the oceans of the world’.⁴ Such sentiments were not confined to the Navy League, but were echoed by the Prince of Wales at the league’s Trafalgar Day dinner the following year. ‘We are’, he declared, ‘a maritime race, and all maritime races have only been successful if they have been able to preserve the quality of sea-sense. The sea-sense is one of the most valuable of our heritages … and one that has helped us through our times of greatest stress and danger.’⁵ This connection has attracted the attention of numerous historians since. As Paul Readman notes, Britain’s inhabitants ‘have long celebrated the felicitous insularity of the sceptred isle, made safe from continental contaminations by the English Channel … Cut off by the Channel, Britain and British identities were inextricably connected to the sea.’⁶ The advent of the aeroplane, however, challenged the long-standing insularity afforded by the sea, for some even marking the end of Britain’s status as an island nation. The Air League certainly subscribed to this viewpoint, warning ‘this country is no longer an island’ and that the ‘English Channel no longer exists’.⁷

Unsurprisingly, the Navy League did not share this position. It declared that ‘[i]n spite of all the contributions which the engineer and the scientist have made to human progress, we remain islanders. We draw our strength from the sea.’⁸ Despite mounting concerns surrounding the destructive potential of the aeroplane, the Navy League emphasised the navy’s continued importance for both national and imperial defence. Commenting in late 1935 on those who suggested that Britain was ‘no more an island power and the seas no longer kept us safe and “made us we”’, the Navy League stated ‘they are silent now. Great and vital as the air arm is, it is now once more accepted that the Navy alone can secure our trade routes, bring us food and cargoes, defend us from invasion and defeat, make sure of victory, and give us any certainty of peace.’⁹ In fact, for the Navy League, the navy was so central to the national character that when the LNU called for naval disarmament, the league described the union as being ‘neither British nor in favour of freedom’.¹⁰

Pride, patriotism and technology

In light of increasing threats to Britain’s insularity, the Navy League drew upon themes of naval heritage, nostalgia and patriotism. Writing prior to the opening of the National Maritime Museum in the late 1930s, for instance, the league enthused that the public would be able to see ‘treasures which for the first time under one roof will illustrate the greatness of the British race of seafarers’, with the museum ‘perpetuating the glorious traditions of England as a sea power’.¹¹ As we shall see, Trafalgar Day, in particular, was used to point to the navy as an enduring symbol of national pride and prestige, but there were other ways in which the league connected the navy and nation. In celebrating St George’s Day, the league hoped to remind the public ‘what chivalry, loyalty, and patriotism have stood for in the past’. In particular, it sought to ‘focus the attention of all patriotic Englishmen upon England and the place that it occupies in the great commonwealth of nations proudly known as the British Empire’.¹² As the Zeebrugge Raid, in which an attempt was made to prevent the passage of German submarines by blocking the ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend, took place on St George’s Day in 1918, the league issued St George’s Day messages to link notions of duty, patriotism and national identity with the sea. In 1926, it stated that its purpose on St George’s Day was to

teach the lessons of duty and devotion which are enshrined in the white flag and red cross of St George, and to see that the memory of such deeds as the storming of the Mole at Zeebrugge live as a great inspiration in the minds of generations to come. It is for this that we ask the support of all those who love their country and have grasped the secret of their greatness.¹³

While the Navy League used the annual event to commemorate those who carried out the Zeebrugge Raid, it also disseminated a range of propagandistic messages. St George’s Day messages criticised disarmament, pacts and international agreements, with the league calling on Britons to instead remember ‘the great deeds of our sailors, which, together with those sister services, have upheld the honour, prestige and renown of our nation’.¹⁴ Although defence and security were vital issues in promoting the navy and nation, the league also highlighted the long-standing links between the sea, national identity and British prestige.

In seeking to reinforce connections between the navy and the nation, the league was careful to distinguish between its promotion of navalism and militarism. As Arnold White declared in 1919: ‘Never again should educated politicians and statesmen be allowed with impunity to confuse the public mind by telling them that Sea Power and Militarism are the same thing; or that British “Navalism” is a form of Prussian Militarism’.¹⁵ As Prussian militarism was invariably linked with a ‘regimented and militarized civilian population’ – as well as the ‘political preponderance of the military class’ – the league attempted to distance itself from such associations by framing it as a ‘foreign’ problem.¹⁶ Moreover, as the navy was central to the national character, Britain’s status as an island nation and ‘seen – uniquely – as an institution which ensured British freedoms’, this ostensibly helped the league avoid associations with continental forms of militarism.¹⁷ Nevertheless, this did not prevent the league from reminding parliament and the British people that the navy remained the ‘Sure Shield of our national existence and the stalwart guardian of the national honour’.¹⁸

Despite widespread concerns regarding the nation’s vulnerability to aerial bombardment, the Air League promoted the aeroplane as a symbol of patriotism, pride and national identity. One way of doing so was through celebrating the pioneering achievements of British aviators, whose feats had political and symbolic significance and, although not inherently militaristic, were frequently linked to the celebration of nation and national identity. Of course, this aligned with the league’s political ambitions and its promotion of airmindedness. For example, upon Sir Alan Cobham’s return from his flight to Australia in October 1926, the league declared that

It is impossible to over-estimate the educational and propaganda value of Sir Alan’s flights … We are, as a nation, unreceptive of new ideas, and the revolutionary aspect of aviation has in the past found no great favour from a British point of view … Sir Alan has achieved a great feat, by stirring British minds into enthusiasm with regard to his individual achievements, and necessarily such appreciation involves a greater realisation of the great future that awaits the aeroplane.¹⁹

Bernhard Rieger suggests that aviators ‘became the subject of popular curiosity verging on the obsessive’ following the First World War and the response to Cobham’s arrival certainly suggests this is the case.²⁰ Some estimated that hundreds of thousands gathered to witness Cobham’s landing on the Thames, leading the Air League to declare that the British people ‘could, and did, indulge in hero worship’.²¹

The Air League ascribed similar significance to Amy Johnson’s flight from England to Australia in 1930. Upon her arrival in Australia, the league congratulated Johnson on her ‘magnificent flight’ and hoped she would ‘inspire British aviation and raise it from its apathy’.²² Like the Air League, both Cobham and Johnson used their platforms to promote airmindedness and British aerial supremacy. Shortly after her return to England, Johnson declared: ‘All I want is that England should lead the world in aviation’, while Cobham later urged that ‘the importance of flying … the development of flying cannot be exaggerated. It is so essential that the public of Britain should become airminded.’²³ Given these statements, it is, perhaps, natural that the Air League worked closely with such figures and that the league’s leadership contained an array of pioneering aviators. More broadly, it was clearly important to the league to commemorate and celebrate those who championed and advanced British aviation, modernity and technological innovation. Beyond Cobham and Johnson, the league eulogised the achievements of a range of aviators including Lady Heath, Lady Bailey, the Duchess of Bedford, Peggy Salaman and James Mollison (among others).²⁴ Themes of Britishness, modernity and technological mastery were also evident in the league’s promotion of another notable form of interwar aerial theatre – the Schneider Trophy.

Held in Britain in 1919, 1923, 1929 and 1931, the Schneider Trophy was the most famous international air race of the period and afforded the chance ‘to prove that Britain led the world in aircraft design and engine manufacture’.²⁵ Following Britain’s victory in 1927, the league co-organised a dinner for the winning team, at which Lord Thomson, former (and future) secretary of state for air, declared that the victory was ‘the greatest triumph of British aviation for the last few years. It was a triumph of organisation, method, manufacture, skill, and grit.’ Trenchard similarly proclaimed that the team ‘worthily upheld the honour of aviation in this country’.²⁶ The league then staged an exhibition of the winning seaplane, a Supermarine S.5, on Horse Guards Parade, Whitehall. The machine was a source of national pride, with one newspaper describing it as the ‘Glory of England’.²⁷ Over the space of a week, nearly 100,000 people attended the exhibition.²⁸

After Britain’s Schneider victory in 1929, the league again expressed its satisfaction: ‘we have drawn attention once more to the supremacy of British technique and to the skill of British pilots’.²⁹ While commending the victory, the league criticised the government’s lack of support for the nation’s aircraft industry. In doing so, it echoed Sempill’s assertion that

The results of this contest have far-reaching effects; they have repercussions in industry, in commerce, in our national defence, in our technical knowledge, in our international prestige. The nation winning the trophy is regarded as the supreme leader of aeronautical progress, and it is vital that we should strain every nerve to retain it.³⁰

It is unsurprising, then, that when the Labour government confirmed in early 1931 that it would no longer finance the race, this resulted in widespread criticism. The Air League was one of the principal opponents, describing the decision as ‘disastrous and blundering’.³¹ The league immediately contacted Sir William Mackenzie (1st Baron Amulree), secretary of state for air from 1930 to 1931, outlining its opposition.³² It also issued a public declaration that ‘never before has anyone interested in the Nation’s prestige in the air world been so shocked as by the unutterable stupidity of the Government’s present decision’. It continued, stating that victory in the race was more than an advertisement of British aircraft and pilots but was the embodiment of the country’s intellect, numerous industries and a ‘symbol of national skill’. The league warned that to ‘permit a stupid, fuzzy-brained Cabinet to throw away a national asset of this order simply must not be tolerated. By such deeds shall we be brought to disaster.’³³ Such pressure undoubtedly contributed to MacDonald’s announcement that RAF personnel and machines could be used in the race, provided that the RAC could raise £100,000 to cover the costs. It was Lady Houston who donated the £100,000 required to fund the British team, with Houston noting that she was ‘utterly weary of the lie-down-and-kick-me attitude of the Socialist Government … I live for England and want to see England always on top.’³⁴ The Schneider Trophy was an important means through which to promote a particularly ‘airminded nationalism’ in the period, with hundreds of thousands of spectators attending the event.³⁵

Beyond promoting individual aviators and the Schneider Trophy, the Air League celebrated the technological innovation and modernity of British machines more broadly. It frequently advertised and promoted flying races such as the King’s Cup – asserting that the event ‘showed that in the development of light aeroplanes England is supreme’ – as well as organising its own events.³⁶ The league staged flying races including the ‘Air League Challenge Cup’ and in 1931 it held a ‘Speed Ball’ which paid tribute to ‘British speed victories on land, sea and in the air’.³⁷ While the Air League celebrated British engineering and technology in relation to civil aviation, it was equally aware of the military capabilities of British machines. When two of the RAF’s Vickers Wellesley bombers broke the world’s long-distance record in 1938, flying non-stop from Egypt to Australia, the league wrote that it was ‘one of the really valuable records … A machine which can fly for over 7,000 miles can unite the Empire in peace and war … Alternatively, for shorter distances it can carry vast quantities of military load. It must be, and is, a most valuable addition to our forces.’³⁸

Pioneering flights, flying demonstrations and other forms of aerial theatre occupied an important place in the popular civic ritual of interwar Britain. The Air League was an active proponent of spectacle and theatre – both as a promoter and an organiser. Indeed, the league was keenly aware that aerial theatre was a politically and culturally popular way of promoting flight, technology and modernity – particularly in relation to nation and national prestige.

Trade, communication and security

Although the Navy League celebrated Britain’s islandhood as a point of national pride, it was keenly aware that this made the nation uniquely vulnerable: ‘There is no parallel in the long record of the ages to the absolute dependence of the forty-five million people of this country upon the sea’.³⁹ To advance this message, the league engaged in its usual channels of dissemination including public meetings, articles in The Navy, letters to the press and the production of a broad range of pamphlets.⁴⁰ It also frequently lectured to empire-minded bodies such as the Royal Empire Society, the Imperial Institute and the Women’s Guild of Empire.⁴¹ On a local level, the league further connected the navy and the empire, with the league’s Glasgow Branch taking part in naval displays during the Glasgow Civic and Empire Week.⁴² The league’s leadership also disseminated the navalist message beyond Britain, with senior figures carrying out tours to New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.⁴³ Such tours, the league suggested, allowed it to achieve one of its key objectives – namely promoting ‘the maintenance of the sea sense throughout the Dominions and the Empire’.⁴⁴

The Navy League attracted a range of prominent imperialists such as Amery, Curzon and Churchill, all of whom used the league to promote both sea- and empire-mindedness.⁴⁵ As the league’s president, Lord Lloyd in particular used the league as a platform from which to connect naval supremacy with empire and imperial sentiment. Described by one Navy League stalwart as an ‘apostle’ of a ‘united, powerful, and self-confident Empire’, and by historians since as ‘the greatest of imperial patriots’, Lloyd frequently impressed upon the British public ‘a sense of their Imperial privileges, obligations, and responsibilities’ with the navy representing ‘the indispensable instrument in achieving that object’.⁴⁶

To maintain Britain’s status as an island nation, trade and commerce were, of course, vital issues. The Navy League warned Britons that their dependence on overseas commodities and food supplies was, in fact, so great that ‘if the sea were closed to them and the heavily laden ships could not pass over the eighty thousand miles of sea routes of the Empire, they would be condemned to starve in impotent idleness’.⁴⁷ Furthermore, it cautioned that the ‘paralysis of all industry at home, and slow starvation through the cutting off of our supplies’ would be ‘no less painful an end than extermination by high explosives or poison gas’.⁴⁸ Such warnings, while doing little to distance the Navy League from charges of alarmism, were constantly issued by the league throughout the period.

For the Navy League, the only way to protect the nation from invasion and to maintain trade and security was through a ‘Navy strong enough to police the ocean routes in times of peace, and to meet any emergency that may arise in time of war’.⁴⁹ The league was among those who continued to advocate the use of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ to maintain the imperial system and to protect its overseas possessions and people.⁵⁰ As an article in The Navy put it, the ‘Navy has to be ready to land forces to protect lives and property against rioting natives’. ‘Education and a smattering of civilisation’, the article continued, ‘has not prevented the natives getting wildly excited and losing all control of their actions, in which event the steadiness, discipline and good nature of the bluejacket and marine makes him the ideal policeman’.⁵¹ Yet, imperial policing was not aggressive or expansionist, according to the league, but was rather an extension of Britain’s long-standing global commitments. The league stated that ‘from time immemorial it has been the function of the British to act as the policeman of the seas’, with the navy representing the ‘guarantor of peace, not only for ourselves but for all mankind’.⁵² Expenditure on the navy, and cruisers in particular, was not, therefore, a ‘jingo idea’ or in the ‘nature of “militarism” or waste, but of necessary insurance’.⁵³ More broadly, maintaining the ‘highways of the ocean’ was deemed to be a measure of global prestige. If the navy was not kept at sufficient levels, the league suggested that ‘our trade and our prestige must suffer. If prestige is lost, security is lost; if security is lost, trade is lost; if trade is lost, all is lost.’⁵⁴

Although the Navy League promoted the navy as a means of reinforcing both national and imperial security, it also highlighted the ways in which the navy could act as a tool of unity capable of strengthening the ‘imperial bond’ with Britain.⁵⁵ As the league’s Nelson Day message in 1930 emphasised, the ‘navy is more than ever the “Sure Shield” of Britain, her Dominions and her Colonies, of the supplies which are the lifeblood of the homeland, and of the sea communications which hold our family of nations together’.⁵⁶ The tendency to think of the empire as ‘one body politic, with its capital in London’ was a common refrain in the league’s rhetoric.⁵⁷ Indeed, Navy League figures described the empire as ‘a human entity, the British Isles being the heart, the Dominions the limbs and the numerous sea trade-lines the arteries. If any of the arteries were severed trouble and suffering would ensue, and eventually the whole British Empire would be endangered.’⁵⁸

It is important to underline, however, that the ‘obsession with navalism and the Empire reinforced one overarching feature of imperial unity: that navies remained the preserve of a Westernised, European population’ and that the concept of a British ‘ “Sea Empire” stressed the racial union of its white leadership and precluded the participation of non-white elements’. This can be traced through elements of the Navy League’s work. When ‘ “native gentlemen” in Bombay approached the League to form a branch in 1905, it “politely declined”’.⁵⁹ The league was also not above stoking ‘xenophobic sentiments in order to create public rancour against the presence of foreign seamen on British ships’, instead demanding ‘British men for British ships’.⁶⁰ While the league’s hostility towards ‘foreigners’ and ‘lascars’ in the merchant services was particularly prevalent prior to the First World War, the ‘principle of British men for British ships’ was maintained after 1918.⁶¹ Navy League speakers called for an ‘All-British Merchant Service’ and stated that the ‘30,000 foreigners’ and ‘aliens’ employed in ‘British ships at the outbreak of war … had been a source of great danger in the hour of crisis’.⁶² Despite the emergence of a ‘gentle’, ‘domesticated’ imperialism after 1918, the outlook and propaganda of the league was, on occasion, characterised by racism and xenophobia.⁶³

As in the Navy League’s case, the theme of imperial unity featured prominently in the Air League’s public pronouncements. J.M. Kenworthy believed that the aeroplane was ‘one of the best means of consolidating and developing the Empire’ and could ‘do much for world peace by improving communications between peoples, helping them to understand and know each other better and thus assist in breaking down prejudices and avoiding international hostilities’. Although the aeroplane had ‘obliterated frontiers’, Kenworthy hoped that ‘man’s conquest of the air’ was ‘one of the great steps towards peace’.⁶⁴ One way the league attempted to improve communications between Britain and the self-governing dominions was through supporting the development of aerial transport for mail alongside calls for the creation of a formalised Empire Air Mail Scheme in the 1930s. By dramatically increasing the speed at which mail could be transported, the Air League suggested that this would bring ‘the Dominions and the Colonies nearer to the Mother Country … The British overseas States earnestly wish to be nearer to the homeland in terms of time and space as well as in sentiment.’⁶⁵ Yet, while the Air League suggested that the use of ‘aerial post’ would help to maintain the nation’s commerce and communications, it also suggested that ‘commercial supremacy in the air means a powerful reserve for our Flying Forces should the country be in danger of an attack from the air’.⁶⁶

As a way of further connecting the ‘imperial core and periphery’, air transport provided a means through which to ‘modernise, maintain, protect, reassert and legitimate Empire’.⁶⁷ Alongside its support for imperial air mail schemes, therefore, the Air League lobbied for the creation of British commercial air services to the empire.⁶⁸ In late 1923, the league criticised both the speed of negotiations surrounding the creation of a National Air Company and the delays in placing the commercial air services of the country under government subsidy and supervision.⁶⁹ Following the creation of Imperial Airways in 1924 – merged from four existing British airlines – the league claimed that ‘there is good reason to believe’ that its propaganda, particularly letters to national newspapers, ‘materially assisted to bring about the formation of the Imperial Airways’.⁷⁰ As the ‘profile and performance’ of Imperial Airways was ‘bound up with Britain’s rating on the world stage, and with imperial propaganda’, it served to reinforce the Air League’s work in linking the aeroplane to the empire.⁷¹ Descriptive articles and adverts for Imperial Airways subsequently appeared in Air League literature, calling for Britons to ‘Think Imperially, Act Imperially, Travel Imperially’.⁷²

While the Air League did much to promote the work of Imperial Airways, Imperial Airways and bodies such as the Empire Marketing Board (formed in 1926 to persuade British consumers to purchase goods from the empire) advanced the cause of the Air League in return. Major Wilfred Theodore Blake, pioneer aviator and author, worked on the Air League’s behalf on a lecture tour organised by Imperial Airways and the Empire Marketing Board.⁷³ Imperial Airways even provided the Air League with aeroplanes to use in its propagandistic work, while the league secured discounted air travel for its members with Imperial Airways in an attempt to ‘stimulate air travel by the creation of a class of regular air travellers genuinely interested in aviation’.⁷⁴ In addition, leading Imperial Airways figures attended important Air League events. At the Air League’s first annual dinner in 1928, Sir Eric Geddes, chairman of Imperial Airways, was one of the principal speakers and used the event to express his concern that the country was falling behind in the sphere of commercial aviation. To remedy this, he called on the Air League to pressure the government to develop imperial air lines and to contribute to the cultivation of an ‘air sense’ across the empire.⁷⁵

Despite promoting the aeroplane as means of strengthening communications, commerce and imperial unity, the Air League also emphasised the centrality of the aeroplane as a method of imperial control. Following the First World War, air control was widely used by Britain as a tool of imperial policing in Africa, India and the Middle East. To maintain its newly acquired mandates, particularly in Iraq, Britain resorted to the aerial bombardment of villages and tribes ‘to put down unrest and subversive activities’.⁷⁶ Despite high civilian casualties, and subsequent criticism, aerial policing provided the RAF with the ‘independent peacetime function’ needed to preserve its institutional autonomy.⁷⁷ This was especially so as the RAF offered a cost-effective alternative to military occupation.⁷⁸ Given that proponents of air control admitted that ‘terror was the scheme’s underlying principle’, it is striking that re-enactments of aerial attacks on ‘native’ villages and the bombing of ‘savages’ were performed at the Hendon Air Display, while Empire Air Day featured simulated aerial bombardments of a ‘tribe of marauding natives who had attacked a peaceful village’, a ‘gun attack on a “native village”’ and a bombardment of a ‘desert village’ which was ‘quickly reduced to ashes’ following an attack by the RAF.⁷⁹ While the imperial elements of aerial displays should not be overstated, it is easy to see why such set pieces have been labelled as ‘tasteless and xenophobic’.⁸⁰

As questions concerning the abolition of bombing and proposals for an IAPF became increasingly pressing in the early 1930s, the ‘inhumanity of air control’ took on renewed importance.⁸¹ Despite this, the British government was reluctant to subject air control to ‘international oversight’. When it proposed prohibitions on aerial bombardment at the World Disarmament Conference, it did so on the proviso that aeroplanes used ‘for police purposes in certain outlying areas’ were exempt.⁸² While this prompted widespread opposition, it was supported by the Air League, with Chamier expressing satisfaction that he was able to inspire a counter-motion against calls for the government to relinquish its use of police bombing.⁸³ At the league’s AGM in 1933, Lord Mottistone suggested that ‘the conquest of the air by man was a great civilising power and capable of bringing great benefits to mankind’, including the possibility of making war ‘less inhumane’ and ‘less cruel’.⁸⁴ Chamier, meanwhile, claimed that it was ‘incorrect to assume that British squadrons … were for ever “mercilessly slaying and bombing” hill tribe villages. Police action was what it amounted to … There was nothing inhuman about the procedure. Air patrolling had the right psychological reaction on unruly tribes.’⁸⁵ A writer in Air Review even suggested that ‘at its worst, compared to an ordinary army – underpaid and bloodthirsty … the bombing aeroplane is a dove of peace’.⁸⁶

While the Air League supported the use of air control for the maintenance of empire, suggesting it was the only means by which to maintain ‘law and order in primitive parts of the world’, it complained that public opinion could not always distinguish between aerial bombardment ‘after due warning, of rebellious tribesmen in wild country and the bombing of towns in civilised countries’.⁸⁷ Clearly, the league was far more reluctant to advocate the use of aerial bombardment against supposedly more ‘civilised’ European powers. For instance, following the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 – in which Italian aircraft not only provided air support to advancing troops, but deliberately used mustard gas, phosgene and arsine against civilians – the league suggested that the conflict was ‘likely to cause suffering to comparatively few’ and that little would be gained by forceful intervention by the League of Nations.⁸⁸ Imagining the use of an international air force by the League of Nations, the Air League asked ‘Will it bomb Italian towns and thus ensure a holocaust of civilians without regard to age or sex – in the cause of peace? Will it bomb Italian transports and murder thousands of young men whose only crime is that they are obeying orders?’ It suggested that if it was successful in bombing the ‘Italian field force out of Africa’ then it would ‘bring about one of the greatest massacres in history, for at the first sign of weakness the Abyssinians would sweep over Italian Africa like wolves on the fold’.⁸⁹ Seemingly, the Air League was among those who deemed the casualties of imperial air control to be of a ‘different calibre than calculated attacks on European or British civilians’.⁹⁰

Empire, imperial exhibitions and education

To connect the empire with the navy and the aeroplane in the public mind, each league drew upon a series of tangible links ranging from trade, commerce and communication to emigration, travel and warfare. Yet, such connections were also mediated and reinforced through the ‘realm of the imagination’, with both leagues employing spectacle, military theatre and imperial exhibitions – both in Britain and beyond – to propagate and publicise the centrality of the navy and the aeroplane to the maintenance of empire.⁹¹ For the Navy League, the Empire Cruise of 1923 to 1924, in which Britain dispatched a ‘Special Service Squadron’ of battlecruisers on a tour across the globe, provided a setting in which to propound the navy, empire and imperial unity. Millions of spectators witnessed the cruise, including in Sierra Leone, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada and the Caribbean (among other places).⁹² Navy League dominion branches took advantage of the tour to inspect visiting warships and to arrange social events for men of the fleet.⁹³

As one of its primary purposes, the tour emphasised that the ‘navy was a common bond of empire linking the “Mother Country” with its overseas possessions’.⁹⁴ While the Navy League had no formal connection with the cruise, its message of imperial unity and a common maritime heritage closely aligned with many of the league’s objectives. As The Navy declared:

The presence of the ships in the ports visited has served to impress upon the minds of the thousands of our kinsmen overseas the fact that, as it is by the sea that we as a nation live, so we must see to it that the British Navy, which has ever acted as the guardian of the sea routes, the arteries of the Empire, shall ever be kept at a strength adequate for the fulfilment of that purpose.⁹⁵

Of course, while the tour sought to underline the navy as a tool of imperial unity and provide a reminder of Britain’s prestige on the international stage, there were competing responses to the cruise, ranging from unofficial, unsanctioned events to more explicit opposition from anti-colonial nationalists.⁹⁶ Due to these contrasting narratives, the Navy League included largely sanitised first-hand accounts of the cruise in The Navy and published messages that reinforced the idea that the ‘King’s ships, flying the White Ensign, will bring home proudly to the minds of all of British descent, that unity of strength and purpose for which the Royal Navy stands’.⁹⁷

In addition to promoting the Empire Cruise, the Navy League advanced themes of empire and imperial unity in a range of other settings. In 1924, it organised the ‘All-Empire Navy League Fair’, which was attended by the high commissioners and agent-generals of the self-governing dominions. The fair included stalls, orchestral music and concerts and, while not overtly political, was undoubtedly of propagandistic value for the league. This was especially so as Earl Beatty used his opening speech to praise the Navy League in its attempts to ‘inculcate into the minds of all the importance of the Navy in the defence of the Empire’ stating that it was a ‘great national asset’.⁹⁸

The British Empire Exhibition, held at Wembley from 1924 to 1925, provided the league with another important (and highly visible) space through which to promote both navy and empire – particularly as approximately 27 million people visited the event.⁹⁹ Writing shortly after the exhibition’s inauguration, the league asserted that it was only through the ‘never ceasing protection’ afforded by the British navy that the empire existed. The league hoped that by visiting the exhibition, attendees would understand that ‘it is the duty of all far-seeing patriots to see to it that … the efficiency of our Navy to continue to maintain its proud position as the “Sure Shield” of the Empire is never imperilled.’¹⁰⁰ To further its message, the league had its own stall at the exhibition, where it disseminated its publications alongside pictures, postcards, photographs and books on naval subjects. In addition, the stall included flags, naval charts and even furniture repurposed from broken-up ships.¹⁰¹ The league was also granted space in the government pavilion, where it displayed a series of naval pictures and relics.¹⁰² In 1925, the league used this space to show ‘the supreme naval position occupied by the British Empire at the conclusion of the war’ alongside the ‘position as it will be in three years’ time unless adequate provision is made to replace existing cruisers and small craft that are rapidly becoming obsolete’.¹⁰³

The British Empire Exhibition represented an equally promising site for the Air League to connect nation, empire and the aeroplane. In early 1924, however, the league expressed concern that ‘the authorities have totally failed to produce or influence the production of any organised scheme of flying in connection with the forthcoming exhibition’.¹⁰⁴ In response, the league initiated plans for an ‘Air Day’ at Wembley, although the scheme was met with an ‘apparent unwillingness’ on the part of the exhibition’s organisers and so was abandoned.¹⁰⁵ The league was similarly frustrated in its attempt to disseminate its propaganda and publications. When the Air League made enquiries about holding a series of lectures at the exhibition, it was informed that no space was available.¹⁰⁶ When it attempted to sell its journal and educational literature, the league found the terms laid down by organisers ‘so onerous that it would have been impossible to sell literature … except at a heavy loss’.¹⁰⁷

Although the Air League was frustrated by the British Empire Exhibition authorities, it nevertheless utilised a broad range of aerial displays and spectacle to link aviation and empire. While the pioneering flights of aviators provided an important source of national pride, their exploits were also valuable for ‘spreading the gospel of airmindedness’ beyond Britain.¹⁰⁸ For example, the league telegrammed Sir Alan Cobham upon his arrival in South Africa in March 1926, congratulating him on his flight, requesting that he assist the league in forming a South African branch and stating that it wished to ‘take advantage of the valuable propaganda work you are undertaking in order to further [the] education of [the] public in air matters’.¹⁰⁹ Upon receiving a CBE for her flight to Australia, the Air League congratulated Amy Johnson and wished her success in stimulating ‘a firm resolve for an Empire as glorious in the air as it has been on the sea’. In response, Johnson assured the league that ‘I am doing my utmost to spread airmindedness throughout Australia’.¹¹⁰

Other notable aerial feats of the period – including the Houston Mount Everest Expedition of 1933, the first successful flight over Mount Everest – provided the Air League with additional opportunities to spread both national and imperial airmindedness. As part of the expedition, cameramen shot footage of the mountain from above, securing ‘the most complete photographic survey records of the Himalayas yet produced’.¹¹¹ As such, it was an important moment in the history of aviation, photography and surveying, yet it was also an act ‘rich with political significance’.¹¹² Indeed, the Air League was among those who not only saw the scientific value of the expedition, but interpreted it as a representation of ‘British imperial superiority’ and as a ‘national triumph of British aviation on the world stage’.¹¹³ The league praised the flight as ‘one of the greatest achievements in the eventful annals of British air history’. It also stressed that the expedition was ‘dependent for success upon the aircraft and engines whose efficient performance under such arduous conditions constitutes one of the most remarkable technical triumphs of British aeronautical engineering in recent years’.¹¹⁴ Beyond publicising the flight, former and future Air League figures were connected with the expedition: Sempill and Burnham, the latter of whom was fundamental in the league’s reorganisation in the 1920s and a generous financier, were both on the expedition’s committee, while the Marquess of Clydesdale, one of the pilots, later sat on the league’s Executive Committee.¹¹⁵ Clydesdale and David McIntyre, the expedition’s second pilot, also flew on Empire Air Day, while Empire Air Day exhibits included the camera used in the Everest expedition.¹¹⁶

To increase awareness of aviation in relation to imperial communications among its subscribers, the British public and members of parliament, the Air League engaged in a number of other activities. For its members, the league arranged special access to events, including an Imperial Airways exhibition at London’s Science Museum, that showcased the progress and development of imperial air routes.¹¹⁷ More broadly, in August 1928 the league staged an exhibition of the flying boat Calcutta on the Thames opposite the Houses of Parliament. This biplane was built by Imperial Airways to operate on the England to Australia air route. The exhibition drew vast audiences, both a ‘constant stream of members of Parliament’ and members of the public whose interest remained ‘unabated’.¹¹⁸

Both the Navy and Air Leagues took advantage of various manifestations of popular imperial celebrations, however they were also active in more-established forms of popular civic ritual surrounding empire. On Empire Day – staged from 1904 to celebrate the British Empire in schools and communities throughout Britain – the Navy League engaged in a range of activities and issued Empire Day messages.¹¹⁹ While Empire Day may have been increasingly contentious after 1918, the league used the annual event to remind members of the public that Britain’s empire was an ‘Ocean Empire’ made by ‘the adventurous sea-spirit of the British race’ which could only be maintained by ‘the sea spirit alone’.¹²⁰ Although the league promoted the ‘unity and continuity of our Imperial heritage’, such messages also issued more stark warnings.¹²¹ In its 1925 Empire Day message, the league stated: ‘It is essential that we have the strength to protect the trade routes of the Empire, for if we lost the power of ocean transport we are doomed to perish’.¹²² Like the Navy League, the Air League used Empire Day to promote the military strength of the nation. Empire Air Day, as explored fully in Chapter 7, emphasised the importance of the aeroplane for imperial unity, communication and security, while empire was a key theme in much of the rhetoric surrounding the annual event.

In addition to its annual Empire Day messages, the Navy League engaged in a range of educational activities on Empire Day, organising essay competitions and providing lectures to thousands of children in schools.¹²³ The SCC, meanwhile, was also active in Empire Day events, including annual parades in Hyde Park, organised by the League of Empire and attended by hundreds of Navy League boys. The corps also attended religious services in St Paul’s Cathedral.¹²⁴ More broadly, the Navy League’s popular wall map – showing the British empire, its naval stations, trade routes and steamship lines – was displayed in classrooms and public buildings across the country and the empire and was an important means of ‘representing the navalist message visually’.¹²⁵

Beyond spectacle and theatre, the Air League similarly underlined the imperial aspects of aviation to the nation’s youth. In Facts about Flying and the Civil Uses of Aviation, a pamphlet that was circulated widely in schools, the league informed its readers that the development of civil aviation was a ‘vital need’ for the British Empire. It declared that

[I]t may be stated that on the development of our air power will the Empire’s safety depend. As in the past our great shipping industry has been the bulwark of our great industries, so now must the air come into its own place of importance and thus, and thus only, will the ‘British Commonwealth of Nations’ be linked up and retain its supremacy in the world.¹²⁶

Empire and aviation were central themes in essay competitions run by the league. These were held for its young members, attendees of public exhibitions aimed at schoolchildren and children in public schools. Subjects included ‘The Importance of Air Communications for the Development of the British Empire’ and ‘The Importance of the Aeroplane to the British Empire’.¹²⁷ The educational endeavours of the league seemingly had some success. For instance, the winning entry of an essay competition held in 1927 featured an imaginary flight through the empire and the reflection that to the ‘British Empire the growth of air communications is of vital importance; indeed, it may be said without exaggeration that on the strength of our air power will the safety of the Empire depend’.¹²⁸ Although it is difficult to measure how the Navy and Air Leagues’ messages relating to empire were received by both adults and children alike, and while the extent to which the empire resonated with those in the metropole is the subject of extensive and long-standing scholarly debate, it is not the case that by the 1920s ‘all residual imperial sentiment had been destroyed’.¹²⁹

Branches beyond Britain

To spread its message beyond Britain, the Navy League maintained an extensive and wide-ranging network of dominion and overseas branches. While there is not adequate space to explore such organisations fully, the league had branches in India, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Ceylon as well as multiple divisions in Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Branches varied in size, effectiveness and levels of autonomy, although the British Navy League took pride in their work. For the league, this ‘world-wide organization’ was ‘an invaluable link between Great Britain and her peoples beyond the seas’.¹³⁰ Furthermore, Navy League figures such as Sir Cyril Cobb suggested that the ‘Overseas Dominions give us much more enthusiastic support – in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa’ than ‘we get in Bournemouth, or Eastbourne, or Margate’.¹³¹ The fortunes of dominion branches waxed and waned (as in the case of domestic branches), but many were long-standing organisations, with bodies such as the Auckland Branch being formed as early as January 1896.¹³²

To further consolidate the relationship between Britain and its overseas branches, the Navy League held a number of ‘All-Empire Navy League’ conferences throughout the 1920s. Attended by overseas delegates, the conferences provided a forum in which to discuss naval policy and to achieve ‘closer co-operation between the various elements of the Navy League throughout the Empire’.¹³³ While collaboration was a guiding principle of such meetings, they did not always attempt to establish a distinct, unifying policy or common set of objectives. As Linlithgow noted in 1925, while the British Navy League realised the ‘immense benefit’ of the conferences and the work of its overseas branches, ‘the same problems present themselves in somewhat different lights in different parts of the Empire’ and so a ‘certain amount of elasticity’ was required.¹³⁴ Nevertheless, there were issues upon which the British and dominion branches agreed, including a shared opposition of those who advocated unilateral disarmament and the belief that further reduction of Britain’s navy would ‘not only jeopardise the security of this country and the Empire’ but would ‘imperil world peace’.¹³⁵

In many respects, the activities of overseas Navy League branches closely reflected the work of the British Navy League. Many lobbied for increased naval armaments – particularly in relation to Britain’s cruiser programme – by holding public meetings and lectures, issuing newspaper articles, sending deputations to dominion prime ministers, producing articles in their own periodicals and sending telegrams and letters to the British Navy League which were forwarded to leading British statesmen and national newspapers.¹³⁶ As in Britain, many overseas bodies had ‘Ladies’ Committees’, ‘Ladies’ Auxiliaries’ or ‘Ladies’ Sections’ who were involved in various educational, charitable, social and organisational endeavours.¹³⁷

The commemoration of naval heritage and tradition formed an important component of the work of overseas branches. As Daniel Owen Spence observes, Trafalgar Day played a significant role in promoting sea-mindedness and fortifying imperial unity in Hong Kong after the First World War.¹³⁸ Writing on Trafalgar Day in 1924, meanwhile, the Navy League of South Africa hoped that the annual event would ‘always be venerated by the Navy League and its branches throughout the Dominions as a Festival of Honour’.¹³⁹ The New South Wales Navy League Branch in Australia similarly felt that it was the responsibility of overseas branches to celebrate the annual event to not only champion ‘Britain’s naval traditions and eminence’, but also the continued ‘supreme importance of sea-power’.¹⁴⁰ To do so, overseas branches engaged in a range of activities, including wreath-laying ceremonies at monuments and memorials, banquets, parades, dances, lectures and film screenings for schoolchildren. Most branches also sent either representatives or floral wreaths to Trafalgar Day celebrations in London.

Alongside Trafalgar Day, youth and education represented key areas of interest. Overseas branches provided lectures in schools, organised film exhibitions and visits to naval and mercantile marine centres, and distributed literature to children.¹⁴¹ Essay competitions for schoolchildren were also common, with subjects including ‘Sea Communications: Their Value and Protection’ and ‘The British Navy: Great Events in its History’.¹⁴² Many branches established connections with schools, with thousands of schoolchildren becoming juvenile members.¹⁴³ Dominion branches were similarly interested in training boys for naval careers. The Hawke’s Bay Branch, New Zealand, pressured both the country’s prime minister and the defence minister to establish a scheme for ‘sea-training equal to those provided for boys desiring military training’, while the league’s South Africa Branch had its own ship that trained boys for sea careers.¹⁴⁴ Moreover, Boys’ Naval Brigades were formed in South Africa, while SCC branches were created in Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere to keep ‘alive the sea spirit of our race’ and to ‘enable boys to become good citizens of the Empire’.¹⁴⁵ As with members of the SCC in Britain, the SCC overseas engaged in a variety of public rituals, militaristic displays and days of remembrance. In Australia, cadets in New South Wales took part in commemorative events such as Anzac Day, while boys in Melbourne appeared in a ‘Defence Week Tattoo’ and a ‘Naval Searchlight Pageant’.¹⁴⁶ As in Britain, activities relating to youth and education were not without opposition. Reflecting on the local Navy League branch’s work in schools, a Wellington educational committee criticised the league for spreading the ‘insidious propaganda of the profitmaking armaments manufacturers’.¹⁴⁷

Although dominion Navy League branches attempted to forge links with the metropole, they also provided a space for Britons to engage with homeland identity and culture while overseas.¹⁴⁸ Indeed, St George’s Day, Empire Day and Trafalgar Day were used to celebrate Britain and Britishness. Alongside this, dominion Navy League branches helped naval families settle in new and distant parts of the world, with the Navy League of Canada assisting 500 families in this process between 1929 and 1933 alone.¹⁴⁹ This was much to the British Navy League’s delight, with the league stating that Britons would take with them ‘their ideals, their loyalty and their love for the British Empire’ and that their emigration represented a ‘triumph of statecraft’.¹⁵⁰ Branches also proved valuable for servicemen abroad, with the Shanghai Branch running the Union Jack Club, which provided comfort, entertainment and recreation for those in the services.¹⁵¹ Branches in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere similarly held social events such as banquets, dances and concerts for British servicemen.¹⁵²

While the Navy League had an extensive network of overseas branches, and in many cases worked closely with such bodies, the formation of dominion Air League branches took place on a much smaller scale. The Air League certainly attempted to cultivate airmindedness beyond Britain, stressing that its policy was both ‘Imperial and National’.¹⁵³ In 1922, it expressed its satisfaction that a feature of its increasing membership ‘is that a very large number of Colonial members have joined the league, the interest in aeronautics not being confined to Great Britain’. In fact, the league stated that the ‘inhabitants of the Overseas Dominions and of the Crown Colonies individually appear to be far more alive to the value of aviation as a means of commercial transport than are the inhabitants of Great Britain’.¹⁵⁴

To assist its work overseas, the Air League formed a Consultative Dominion and Colonial Council which comprised the agent-generals for Tasmania, New South Wales, Western Australia, South Australia and the high commissioners for Australia, South Africa and India.¹⁵⁵ Among other activities, the council supported the Air League in attempting to further increase its overseas membership through the creation of branches and by promoting the ‘Overseas Prize Scheme’ – an Air League initiative that offered a £50 silver airship model to the person able to secure the greatest number of new members.¹⁵⁶ This work was supported by leading aircraft industry figures including Handley Page and the Air Ministry, the latter of whom included Air League literature in communications to ‘various Dominions and Colonies with regard to aerial development throughout the Empire’.¹⁵⁷

Although the Air League was able to increase its membership in the self-governing dominions with little resistance, it experienced more difficulty in countries under British rule. While the Air League initiated plans for an Indian branch in 1909, this was short-lived.¹⁵⁸ Moreover, the creation of the ‘Air League of India’ in early 1927 was not an Air League initiative but was instead formed by the influential British businessman Sir Montagu de Pomeroy Webb. While largely led by prominent Britons based in Karachi, the Air League of India did attempt to attract a wider membership through various subscription rates and by initiating plans to create branches in Calcutta and Bombay.¹⁵⁹ While representatives of the Air League of India stated that the league had ‘no desire to disassociate themselves from the Air League at home’, it was suggested that ‘political considerations make it essential that we should be an Air League of India’ and that the aims and objects of the British Air League had ‘no application to India with its different castes, religions, etc.’¹⁶⁰ Given the nature of British rule in India, the Amritsar massacre of 1919 and the rising tide of Indian nationalism, such a stance is hardly surprising. Nonetheless, while the Air League publicly stressed that it was ‘undoubtedly a wise arrangement that both bodies should exist and that both should co-operate’, certain members stated privately that ‘to speak of an Air League of India was a contradiction in terms for that limited it to a local effort instead of an Empire-wide League’.¹⁶¹ After months of discussion, the Air League informed the Air League of India that it was willing to recognise it as a federated body, ‘but retains the right to form a branch in India or to recognise any other air propaganda organisation which might hereafter be formed in India’.¹⁶²

Despite such difficulties, the Air League had formed branches in Australia, South Africa, Canada and New Zealand by the early 1930s, while it later labelled those associated with the Flying Club of Northern Rhodesia ‘Honorary Overseas Members’.¹⁶³ As international tensions increased in the late 1930s, the Air League’s attention shifted from fostering imperial unity to promoting national and imperial security. In doing so, it urged that ‘we must look, as we looked in the late war, to our Dominions to help us’ and called for an ‘Imperial Air Force’ which would ‘bind the Empire together by common ties’ and ‘fly wing tip to wing tip with the air force of the mother country in days of trouble’.¹⁶⁴

Conclusion

In promoting nation and empire, the Navy and Air Leagues made use of written propaganda alongside spectacle, pageantry and popular civic ritual. Conventional methods of dissemination, including newspaper articles, articles in the official organs of each league, public meetings and lectures, were augmented by established and emerging rituals of nation and empire. In seeking to foster national and imperial sentiment, the Navy League drew upon tradition, heritage and the navy’s long-standing centrality to the nation’s status as an island nation. The Air League, meanwhile, was among those who claimed that Britain was no longer an island and sought to champion technological innovation and modernity in the air. Of course, while many felt that the navy remained the ‘Sure Shield’ of the nation and the empire, and that Britain ‘must not risk giving up the command of the sea’, few Britons would have argued with the Air League’s assertion that the aeroplane had ‘annihilate[d] time and space’ and that the ‘conquest of the air has robbed these islands of “splendid isolation” and while providing a new medium of transportation has provided also a new medium of attack. We can no longer afford to think only in terms of maritime strength.’¹⁶⁵

Notes

1. The Navy, July 1923, 189.

2. Air League Bulletin, July 1922, 56.

3. Angela Bartie et al., ‘ “And Those Who Live, How Shall I Tell Their Fame?” Historical Pageants, Collective Remembrance and the First World War, 1919–39’, Historical Research, 90 (2017): 649; Martin Pugh, ‘We Danced All Night’: A Social History of Britain Between the Wars (London: Bodley Head, 2008), 398–9.

4. The Navy, June 1931, 155.

5. The Navy, December 1932, 364.

6. Paul Readman, ‘ “The Cliffs Are Not Cliffs”: The Cliffs of Dover and National Identities in Britain, c.1750–c.1950’, History, 49 (2014): 242.

7. The Aerial League Bulletin, February 1920, 50; Daily Mail, 25 March 1925, 9.

8. The Navy, November 1925, 301.

9. The Navy, November 1935, 320.

10. Headway, January 1931, 2.

11. The Navy, February 1936, 45–6.

12. Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 23 April 1924, 7.

13. The Navy, May 1926, 136.

14. Hull Daily Mail, 23 April 1927, 2; The Navy, May 1930, 137.

15. The Navy, August 1919, 108.

16. Matthew Johnson, Militarism and the British Left, 1902–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 90.

17. Duncan Redford, ‘The Royal Navy, Sea Blindness and British National Identity’, in Maritime History and Identity: The Sea and Culture in the Modern World, ed. Duncan Redford (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 61.

18. The Navy, January 1927, 1.

19. Air League Bulletin, October 1926, 20.

20. Bernhard Rieger, Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany, 1890–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 117.

21. Dundee Courier, 2 October 1926, 5; Air League Bulletin, October 1926, 20.

22. The Times, 26 May 1930, 14.

23. Daily Mail, 27 August 1930, 7; ‘National Aviation Day’ (London: British Pathé, 1932–5).

24. Air, February 1929, 65; September 1929, 422; AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 8 December 1931, 2; Air and Airways, September 1932, 202–4.

25. Pugh, ‘We Danced All Night’, 309.

26. Flight, 13 October 1927, 714; The Scotsman, 12 October 1927, 9.

27. The Sphere, 10 December 1927, 6.

28. The Daily Telegraph, 7 December 1927, 12.

29. Air, October 1929, 456.

30. Air, October 1929, 456–7.

31. Daily Mail, 27 January 1931, 8.

32. The Daily Mirror, 27 January 1931, 2.

33. The Yorkshire Post, 22 January 1931, 16.

34. Jack Williams, ‘The Upper Class and Aeroplane Sport Between the Wars’, Sport in History, 28 (2008): 460–61.

35. Williams, ‘The Upper Class’, 456; Jeremy R. Kinney, ‘Airminded Nationalism: Great Britain and the Schneider Trophy Competition’, in Aviation in the Literature and Culture of Interwar Britain Aviation, ed. Michael McCluskey and Luke Seaber (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 251–2.

36. Air, August 1929, 363.

37. Flight, 2 August 1923, 457; AL, AL Minute Book, AGM, 12 May 1931, 2.

38. Air Review, December 1938, 10.

39. The Navy, November 1925, 301.

40. For an example of such literature, see NMM, MSY/6/6/1/2, Navy League Pamphlets, 1920–29, ‘Cruiser Forces’, 1926; ‘Relative Strength of Fleets’, 1 November 1927 and MSY/6/6/1/3, Navy League Pamphlets, 1930–39, ‘Peace Duties of the Royal Navy of Great Britain’, undated.

41. NMM, MSY/6/2/6, NLAR 1931, 4.

42. The Navy, July 1931, 207.

43. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/28, NL Minute Book, MEC, 2 December 1936, 4; 15 June 1938, 3; The Navy, March 1938, 61.

44. The Navy, March 1938, 61.

45. N.C. Fleming, Britannia’s Zealots, Volume I: Tradition, Empire and the Forging of the Conservative Right (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 130.

46. The Navy, January 1931, 13; John Charmley, Lord Lloyd and the Decline of the British Empire (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), 4.

47. The Navy, November 1925, 301–2.

48. The Navy, April 1924, 96.

49. The Navy, June 1925, 167–8. On earlier invasion fears, see David G. Morgan-Owen, The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

50. See, for example, NMM, MSY/6/2/6, NLAR 1926, 1; The Navy, May 1927, 122. For a discussion, see Matthew Heaslip, Gunboats, Empire and the China Station: The Royal Navy in 1920s East Asia (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

51. The Navy, May 1929, 130.

52. The Navy, June 1925, 167–8; September 1933, 250.

53. The Navy, June 1927, 169; October 1930, 279.

54. The Navy, April 1935, 103.

55. As in the case of naval theatre. Rowan Thompson, ‘No More Parades? Navy Weeks, Naval Theatre and Navalism, 1927–38’, Historical Research, 96 (2023): 240.

56. The Navy, November 1930, 309.

57. David Edgerton, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History (London: Allen Lane, 2018), 22.

58. The Seven Seas, December 1925, 19.

59. John C. Mitcham, ‘Navalism and Greater Britain, 1897–1914’, in Maritime History, ed. Redford, 284–5.

60. Mary Conley, From Jack Tar to Union Jack: Representing Naval Manhood in the British Empire, 1870–1918 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 135.

61. 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. Maggie Andrews, N.C. Fleming and Marcus Morris (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 104.

62. Western Daily Press, 14 January 1920, 7.

63. Matthew C. Hendley, Organized Patriotism and the Crucible of War: Popular Imperialism in Britain, 1914–1932 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012), 174.

64. Air, July 1929, 308.

65. The Aerial League Bulletin, February 1920, 51; Air League Bulletin, December 1921, 173–4.

66. Air League Bulletin, August 1920, 81.

67. Gordon Pirie, Air Empire: British Imperial Civil Aviation, 1919–39 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 2.

68. Pirie, Air Empire, 3.

69. Air League Bulletin, December 1923, 11–13.

70. Air League Bulletin, September 1924, 28.

71. Gordon Pirie, Cultures and Caricatures of British Imperial Aviation: Passengers, Pilots, Publicity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), 2.

72. Air League Bulletin, April 1924, 38–40; Pirie, Air Empire, 139; TNA, AIR 2/449, Souvenir of Empire Air Day, 25 May 1935, 8.

73. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 27 February 1928, 1.

74. The Times, 18 July 1927, 8; Air and Airways, October 1931, 216.

75. Air, May 1928, 39.

76. Priya Satia, ‘The Defense of Inhumanity: Air Control and the British Idea of Arabia’, The American Historical Review, 111 (2006): 16; David E. Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 39–59.

77. Susan Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 179; Omissi, Air Power, ix.

78. Omissi, Air Power, 37.

79. Satia, ‘The Defense of Inhumanity’, 34; Brett Holman, ‘The Meaning of Hendon: The Royal Air Force Display, Aerial Theatre and the Technological Sublime, 1920–37’, Historical Research, 93 (2020): 132; 150; Aberdeen Press and Journal, 31 May 1937, 9; Daily Mirror, 23 May 1936, 7.

80. Holman, ‘The Meaning of Hendon’, 132.

81. Satia, ‘The Defense of Inhumanity’, 40.

82. Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire, 167.

83. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 14 June 1933, 2.

84. AL, AL Minute Book, AGM, 5 July 1933, 3.

85. Edinburgh Evening News, 9 March 1935, 8.

86. Cited in Philip Noel-Baker, The Private Manufacture of Armaments: Volume I (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1936), 337.

87. RAF Museum, AC1998/23/43, ‘Air Disarmament’, 8 November 1932, 2; AL, AL Minute Book, AGM, 14 July 1937, 2.

88. Brett Holman, The Next War in the Air: Britain’s Fear of the Bomber, 1908–1941 (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2014), 68; Air Review, November 1935, 10.

89. Air Review, November 1935, 10.

90. Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire, 180.

91. A feature of the British experience of empire more broadly. Andrew Thompson, ‘Introduction’ in Britain’s Experience of Empire in the Twentieth Century, ed. Andrew Thompson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 6.

92. John C. Mitcham, ‘The 1924 Empire Cruise and the Imagining of an Imperial Community’, Britain and the World, 12 (2019): 67–8.

93. The Western Morning News, 14 June 1924, 4; 2 May 1924, 7.

94. Mitcham, ‘Empire Cruise’, 68.

95. The Navy, October 1924, 268.

96. Mitcham, ‘Empire Cruise’, 67.

97. The Navy, May 1924, 125–6; January 1924, 1.

98. The Navy, July 1924, 194.

99. Pugh, ‘We Danced All Night’, 401.

100. The Navy, May 1924, 118.

101. The Navy, July 1924, 204.

102. The Navy, June 1924, 174.

103. The Navy, July 1925, 182.

104. Air League Bulletin, April 1924, 19.

105. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 12 June 1924, 3–4.

106. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 12 October 1925, 4.

107. Air League Bulletin, June 1924, 11.

108. Air, February 1928, 49.

109. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 21 February 1926, 3–4.

110. Air, July 1930, 273.

111. Patrick Zander, ‘(Right) Wings over Everest: High Adventure, High Technology and High Nationalism on the Roof of the World, 1932–1934’, Twentieth Century British History, 21 (2010): 301.

112. Zander, ‘(Right) Wings over Everest’, 301.

113. Zander, ‘(Right) Wings over Everest’, 325; 322.

114. Air and Airways, May 1933, 53.

115. Air League Bulletin, March 1922, 206.

116. Daily Record, 25 May 1934, 3; The Citizen, 19 May 1934, 7.

117. Air Review, February 1936, 22.

118. The Times, 4 August 1928, 14.

119. Jim English, ‘Empire Day in Britain, 1904–1958’, The Historical Journal, 49 (2006): 247–76.

120. The Times, 23 May 1923, 7.

121. The Times, 24 May 1924, 8.

122. The Navy, June 1925, 160.

123. Westminster and Pimlico News, 28 May 1926, 8.

124. See, for example, The Navy, July 1924, 201; August 1926, 226; The Times, 29 May 1933, 17.

125. Fleming, ‘The Navy League’, 102.

126. NAL, Air League of the British Empire, Facts about Flying and the Civil Uses of Aviation (London: Air League of the British Empire, 1923), 15.

127. Air League Bulletin, February 1927, 6; Air, October 1930, 421.

128. Air League Bulletin, February 1927, 8–12.

129. There exists a broad range of works which detail the existence of imperial sentiment in Britain, however see, in particular, John M. MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986) and many of his subsequent works. For the most forceful challenge, see Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire, 1.

130. The Navy, October 1930, 279.

131. The Navy, June 1924, 158.

132. TLA, LCC/PC/CHA/04/039, NLAR 1938, 16.

133. The Navy, December 1924, 244.

134. The Navy, December 1925, 346.

135. NMM, MSY/6/2/6, NLAR 1929, 2.

136. NMM, MSY/6/2/6, NLAR 1925, 9; The Navy, June 1928, 167.

137. NMM, MSY/6/2/6, NLAR 1927, 10–11. For a sense of such work in South Africa, see The Seven Seas, March–April 1925, 14–17.

138. Daniel Owen Spence, Colonial Naval Culture and British Imperialism, 1922–67 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 187.

139. The Seven Seas, October 1924, 20.

140. The Navy League Journal (New South Wales Branch), September 1926, 1.

141. NMM, MSY/6/2/6, NLAR 1927, 12.

142. The Navy League Journal (New South Wales Branch), June 1920, 16.

143. NMM, MSY/6/2/6, NLAR 1926, 9.

144. NMM, MSY/6/2/6, NLAR 1925, 9; The Seven Seas, April 1922, 9–12.

145. The Seven Seas, May–June 1926, 10; The Navy League Journal (New South Wales Branch), October 1923, 31.

146. The Navy League Journal (New South Wales Branch), May 1923, 20; TLA, LCC/PC/CHA/04/039, NLAR 1934, 14.

147. John Griffiths, Imperial Culture in Antipodean Cities, 1880–1939 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 203.

148. On this phenomenon more broadly, see Tanja Bueltmann and Lesley C. Robinson, ‘Making Home in a Sojourner World: Organised Ethnicity and British Associationalism in Singapore, c1880s–1930s’, Britain and the World, 9 (2016): 161–96.

149. NMM, MSY/6/2/6, NLAR 1933, 17.

150. The Navy, February 1929, 31.

151. NMM, MSY/6/2/6, NLAR 1930, 14.

152. NMM, MSY/6/2/6, NLAR, 1928, 10–11.

153. Air League Bulletin, December 1925, 2.

154. Air League Bulletin, June 1922, 36.

155. Air League Bulletin, November 1924, 5; April 1925, 3.

156. Air League Bulletin, February 1925, 6–7; June 1925, 7.

157. AL, AL Minute Book, 16 June 1931, 1; 9 December 1925, 5; 8 January 1926, 6.

158. London Evening Standard, 31 December 1909, 3.

159. The Civil and Military Gazette, 27 February 1927, 7.

160. Air League Bulletin, April 1927, 6–7; AL Minute Book, MEC, 18 July 1927, 1–2.

161. Air League Bulletin, April 1927, 6–7; AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 18 July 1927, 1–2.

162. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 14 December 1927, 1.

163. AL, AL Minute Book, AGM, 13 July 1932, 2; 15 December 1936, 2.

164. Air Review, April 1936, 11.

165. The Navy, June 1925, 167–8; Air Review, August 1935, 14; Air, March 1931, 79.