Chapter 3 Rearmament, the merchants of death and the preparation for war

Nerve centres and the knock-out blow

If the interwar period was characterised by ‘doomsday scenarios of the next war’, then the Air League’s role in the creation of such scenarios warrants examination.³ This is especially so as the league proved particularly influential in the construction of the ‘knock-out blow’ theory. Much has been written about the shadow of the bomber in the interwar years and the anticipation of strategic bombing.⁴ This is unsurprising, especially given the extent to which apocalyptic warnings about the bomber featured in literature, films, newspaper columns and the pronouncements of military theorists and politicians – perhaps best encapsulated in Stanley Baldwin’s often-quoted ‘the bomber will always get through’ speech.⁵ Despite this, the Air League’s role in the construction – and promotion – of the knock-out blow theory has not received the same attention. However, the league frequently warned of ‘attack, sudden, terrific, devastating, conclusive, launched from the skies’ and that ‘a hostile attack by air could lay London in ruins and paralyse all the nerve centres of the country’.⁶ More broadly, there was certainly something of the Edwardian ‘cult of the expert’ in much of the league’s work, while the organisation boasted a strong intellectual base comprising a number of influential military theorists and technocrats.⁷ Notably, the author H.G. Wells and the journalist R.P. Hearne – some of the earliest theorists of strategic bombing – were among the Air League’s initial supporters.⁸

One of the first, and most influential, theories concerning the nation’s vulnerability to strategic bombing was that advanced by Lord Montagu of Beaulieu at a public meeting in early 1909. Although aviation was still in its infancy, Montagu cautioned that London lay open to strategic air attack. He spoke of ‘nerve centres’ (government buildings, the Houses of Parliament, railway stations, the stock exchange and so on) and the ‘paralysis which would result from a single well-directed blow … airships would come so swiftly, and strike so directly at the centres that the nation would be almost paralysed before armies or navies could come to her aid.’⁹ Montagu’s ‘nerve centre’ speech was highly influential, although fears surrounding the potential devastation caused by a ‘knock-out blow’ to both civilians and the urban environment only increased after 1918.¹⁰

Little more than a year after the armistice, Moore-Brabazon expressed such concerns to the House of Commons, warning that industrial centres would be the first object of an air attack in any future war and that ‘there is no defence against aircraft today … The only answer is to have a bigger Air Force so as to have the potential power of hitting back.’¹¹ Perhaps most significant in popularising the knock-out blow theory, however, was P.R.C. Groves. As part of a series of highly publicised letters to The Times starting in early 1922, Groves predicted that in future wars ‘each side will at once strike at the heart and nerve centres of its opponent … at those nerve ganglia of national moral – the great cities’. Groves argued that ‘owing to the development of aviation war has altered its character’ and that future conflict would take place across ‘areas’, not ‘fronts’. He bemoaned the size of Britain’s aircraft industry and stated that, if Britain’s air force remained small, only ‘death, damnation and disaster’ awaited.¹² Following Groves’s appointment, Air League literature increasingly emphasised that the country ‘if undefended in the air, is powerless’ and that ‘of all states in the world’ Britain was the ‘most vulnerable to aerial attack’.¹³ In popularising the knock-out blow theory, which by the 1930s had ‘almost become an orthodoxy, accepted and promoted by pacifists and militarists alike’, the Air League contributed to the strategic and eventual financial priority accorded to the RAF by ‘emphasizing the decisive role that an air force would play in future war’.¹⁴

‘Remember the power of the newest bombs’

Although the Air League did not want it to be thought that its ‘sole concern was with war and with military aviation’, its rhetoric was often suffused with ‘warlike overtones’ and it exerted considerable effort in shaping popular and parliamentary attitudes to the military potential of the aeroplane.¹⁵ This is important to highlight because, as Uri Bialer suggests, public opinion supposedly had a malign influence upon the ‘process of rearmament when not obstructing it altogether’.¹⁶ The Air League was responsible for considerable activity in the press and in parliament at crucial junctures in the history of the Air Ministry and the RAF. In the early 1920s, for instance, the league was a vocal advocate of maintaining the RAF as a separate service, with an independent Air Ministry. From late 1919, Winston Churchill held the position of secretary of state for war in tandem with the role of secretary of state for air. For many, this constituted a subordination of the Air Ministry to the War Office, even leading to the resignation of Seely as under-secretary of state for air.¹⁷ The Air League objected to Churchill’s position and worked closely with Seely following his resignation. Indeed, Seely felt that the league was ‘rendering invaluable service’ to British aviation and shortly thereafter became the organisation’s president.¹⁸

The league considered the issue of an independent Air Ministry as the ‘most important question that could exist with regard to aviation’ in the immediate post-war period, declaring that it was ‘absolutely essential if we are not to be beaten in the race for air power’.¹⁹ Prior to the air estimates in 1920 – in which funds were allocated to the nation’s air services – the league sent numerous telegrams to David Lloyd George, then prime minister, to advance the cause of an independent Air Ministry.²⁰ It also carried out propaganda in more public spheres, holding a well-publicised meeting at the Mansion House in June 1920. At the meeting, the league reaffirmed its aims and objectives and underlined the importance of developing civil and military aviation for the preservation of Britain’s island status. Once again, the shadow of the bomber was a key theme. As the Conservative MP Lord Hugh Cecil stated, it ‘was absolutely indispensable to the life of this country that we should not be exposed to a violent attack from the air’.²¹

Beyond its work relating to the maintenance of an independent Air Ministry, the league lobbied in parliamentary circles on numerous other occasions. For example, after the air estimates were introduced in the House of Commons in 1921, three of the principal critics in the ensuing debate were Seely, Joynson-Hicks and Edmund Bartley-Denniss – respectively president, a vice president and treasurer of the Air League.²² The Air League also supplied information to MPs for use in parliamentary debates on air estimates throughout the period and sent letters to MPs at all three general elections between 1922 and 1924, asking MPs and voters alike to remember that the question of the air was ‘one that vitally concerns the safety of the Empire, and that a large and efficient Air Force based on a prosperous and highly organized system of civil aviation and a flourishing aircraft industry are indispensable’.²³ The league urged its members to lobby politicians on a local level, reminding them to ‘see that your candidate promises to press for aerial development’ and to ‘remember the power of the newest bombs’.²⁴ It likewise asked its members to promote the importance of aviation in the 1929 general election and to pressure local candidates ‘to demand an enquiry into the whole air situation’.²⁵

Following Groves’s appointment, the Air League became even more vocal in its opposition to the perceived inadequacy of Britain’s aerial position. For instance, in the first issue of Air in late 1927, Groves wrote that the public had been ‘misled by the optimistic oratory of the past nine years, to believe that Britain is at least holding her own in the sphere of aviation’. ‘Nothing’, Groves continued, ‘could be further from the truth’.²⁶ Groves published on subjects including air power and its application in modern warfare, air power in relation to Britain’s navy, air debates in parliament, the progress of civil aviation and a number of other topics. As the editor of Air, Groves was a ‘fearless critic of the Government’ and used the journal as a vehicle through which to bemoan Britain’s aerial position and as a ‘spearhead of attack upon apathy, inertia and official ineptitude’.²⁷

Upon his appointment, Groves informed the Air League’s Executive Committee that he may have to take steps which would be considered ‘inimical to the Air Ministry’ and so it proved. It was not long until Groves attracted the Air Ministry’s ire, with the latter contacting Sutherland directly to complain about Groves’s writing.²⁸ Even leading aviation figures such as Moore-Brabazon considered Groves as an ‘avowed enemy of the Air Ministry’.²⁹ Accordingly, when the Air League requested that Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) become its patron, Air Ministry officials raised concerns. In particular, Sir Hugh Trenchard, then chief of the Air Staff, stated

I feel very strongly that he should not touch it … the Air League has carried on a great campaign against Sir Samuel Hoare and myself … But apart from this, there are many frightfully controversial subjects connected with the League, and I think it would be very inadvisable for the Prince to accept, especially as it is supposed to be run on the same lines as the Navy League, and it does undertake a great deal of propaganda.³⁰

The Air League was subsequently notified that the prince had to ‘abstain from personal association’ owing to the league’s propagandistic work.³¹ Nevertheless, this did not prevent the royal family from supporting the Air League in a number of activities as we shall see.

This was not the only occasion that the Air Ministry curtailed the Air League’s work. When the Air League was invited to give three talks on aviation by the BBC in late 1927, the Air Ministry informed the BBC that the talks should not ‘in any way advertise the Air League’ and should ‘deal only with civil aviation’.³² The talks were subsequently cancelled, with the BBC considering the Air League’s aims to be ‘controversial’ and that the planned broadcast ‘amounted to a serious attack upon the present policy of Air Defence’.³³ For the league, it was apparent that the BBC was ‘under instructions to prevent anything that might savour of criticism of the Government or the Air Ministry’.³⁴

Despite such endeavours, the league’s activities in parliamentary circles were limited for much of the late 1920s and early 1930s. As noted in Chapter 1, this was a period in which the league underwent major structural changes. It had limited funds and no effective secretary general between Groves and Chamier, with Thwaites only serving as acting secretary general (largely without the Executive Committee’s confidence).³⁵ Furthermore, it was admitted internally that, as this had been a period ‘when there had been no threat to British Aviation, either military or civil’, the league ‘had been forced into the difficult position of marking time’.³⁶ Following Chamier’s appointment, it once again became influential in parliamentary spheres. As Chamier revealed to the league’s Executive Committee at the beginning of his tenure, he had already established ‘personal contacts with many of the friends of aviation in the House of Commons’.³⁷

To keep the issue of aviation at the forefront of parliamentary discussions, Air League members (and league associates) initiated two of the three parliamentary debates on air power which took place between November 1933 and July 1934. Significantly, these debates were opened only a month after the German withdrawal from the World Disarmament Conference – prior to the formal acknowledgment of German rearmament – and occurred at a time when calls for the internationalisation of civil aviation and the creation of an IAPF were widespread.

In November 1933, two debates on Britain’s strength in the air were opened: one in the House of Lords by Sutherland (supported by Lord Lloyd) and the second in the House of Commons by Sueter. In the House of Lords, Sutherland expressed anxiety regarding the RAF’s strength in relation to European powers and argued that Britain’s frontiers had changed due to the development of air power. Sutherland declared that ‘if London were destroyed, England would be destroyed. The heart and brain of the country would be destroyed.’ He was careful to emphasise that he did not initiate the debate ‘in any martial spirit’, nor did he suggest Britain should ‘rattle the sabre by advertising to the world our intention of increasing our forces in the air’, yet opposition from Lord Arthur Ponsonby, a founding member of the UDC, and Lord Cecil suggests that Sutherland’s fears of appearing militaristic were seemingly well founded. Nevertheless, Sutherland argued that a powerful air force, making Britain as impregnable as possible, would be one of the strongest arguments Britain could use in the ‘peace councils of Europe’. He concluded that ‘we should all work, hope, and pray that there would never be another war … but we should all see, if it did come, in spite of every human effort to the contrary, that we were not found hopelessly supine and apathetic’.³⁸

In the House of Commons, Sueter put forward a similar motion that ‘this House views with grave disquiet the present inadequacy of the provision made for the air defence of these islands, the Empire overseas, and our Imperial communications’, welcoming ‘the need for a one-power standard in the air’.³⁹ Supported by the Air League stalwarts Moore-Brabazon and Guest, the motion was seconded by Balfour. Baldwin drew the debate to a close, stating that Britain’s inferiority in the air was due to a sincerity to secure disarmament which could only be achieved by a ‘matter of will and not of armament’. Baldwin accepted the resolution, but asked for the tone of it to be altered. He felt that if it were passed, it would create the ‘worst possible atmosphere’ in Germany by suggesting Britain wanted to rearm as quickly as possible.⁴⁰ These simultaneous motions received widespread coverage and support from newspapers and aviation periodicals alike, while Sutherland suggested the debates ‘proved of very considerable value in directing the attention of the public to the unsatisfactory state of British air power in comparison with England’s neighbours’.⁴¹

In attempting to further influence parliamentary debates and cultivate political allies, the Air League had a number of representatives on the Parliamentary Air Committee (PAC). Sueter, considered an ‘old friend of the Air League’ by Sutherland, was the PAC’s chairman, while numerous Air League figures – or individuals with strong links with the league – sat on the committee. The PAC was an effective pressure group, numbering around eighty MPs (predominantly Conservative and ex-servicemen) by 1934. The PAC often pursued similar aims to the Air League: it lobbied the government on the necessity of maintaining an independent air force, and thereafter a strong RAF, criticised plans for disarmament in the early 1930s and supported the retention of air bombing for police purposes.⁴² Alongside shared aims and objectives, the Air League also arranged events for the PAC, including visits to aerodromes and aeroplane manufacturers, while members of the Air League attended PAC meetings and formed part of a PAC deputation sent to lobby Andrew Bonar Law, then prime minister, on the importance of the RAF in the early 1920s.⁴³ As such, the committee provided a further rostrum from which Air League figures promoted aviation in parliamentary circles.

The Navy League and ‘air protagonists’

While Air League members were among the key contributors to the knock-out blow theory, there was a greater reluctance within the Navy League to engage with issues deemed to be of a technical nature, despite the many naval authorities, former naval officers and senior Admiralty figures contained within its ranks. As Lloyd reflected, it had ‘always been an unwritten rule of the Navy League that no part should be taken in controversial matters of technical detail connected with the ships of the Fleet’.⁴⁴ For Lloyd, this principle formed an important part of the league’s relationship with the Admiralty. As he underlined in 1938:

our relations with the Admiralty have never been better … that is because we have steadily refused to take upon ourselves duties which are not within our competence to perform. It is not our duty to criticise the Admiralty on technical matters … Our job is to preach the sea services up and down the country.⁴⁵

He felt that while it was ‘always the business of the Navy League to press for a strong Navy’, it was ‘seldom its duty to interfere in matters of detail’.⁴⁶ Although Lloyd previously stressed that it was ‘necessary to avoid any tendency for the Navy League to become a mere appendage of the Admiralty’, such pronouncements clearly highlight a desire within the league to avoid antagonising officialdom.⁴⁷

If the Navy League was reluctant to comment upon issues of a technical nature, then it was far more willing to discuss the Royal Navy in relation to air power. In the early 1930s, Navy League officials noted that while ‘[p]eople are going about the country saying we ought to be “air minded” … they ought to be “navy minded” first’.⁴⁸ By the mid-1930s, such concerns had intensified. In early 1936, Admiral Stephenson called for increased Navy League propaganda to counteract the ‘grossly misleading and dangerous propaganda in favour of a supreme Air Force’ which he felt was attempting to ‘drive a wedge between the two services’.⁴⁹ Admiral Thursfield likewise criticised the ‘extreme propaganda at present indulged in by some of the air protagonists’ which he asserted ‘was a menace and was seriously misleading the Public’. In combating such sentiments, however, Thursfield urged caution ‘lest the impression be given that the Navy League was old fashioned and not alive to modern developments’.⁵⁰

Fears that the RAF was being built at the expense of the Royal Navy also featured at the league’s GCMs. In 1936, the league’s Chelsea Branch resolved that no increase in Britain’s air forces could be considered as a substitute for a modernised fleet, yet Thursfield warned that there should be no antagonism between the two services and argued that they both had a common object: ‘the security of the Country and of the Empire’.⁵¹ Such fears display a desire to avoid inter-service rivalry, but equally highlight an understanding that aviation – and the shadow of the bomber – perhaps had more hold upon public and parliamentary consciousness than naval threats. They are also interesting because, for the most part, the Navy League argued in favour of balanced armaments and was certainly alive to the importance of aviation for national defence. The Navy repeatedly downplayed inter-service rivalry, stating that ‘the squabble between the two services, chiefly fomented by an air-minded press, should be encouraged to die’.⁵²

Such anxieties were shared at a more official level. As Chatfield, then first sea lord of the Admiralty, bemoaned, the navy had been ‘suffering from the most virulent attacks for a long time’ largely from ‘air protagonists [and] protagonists of air firms who want to rise to power on the ruins of the Navy’.⁵³ Despite this, the Navy League emphasised that it had ‘at all times stood for balanced armaments’. Expressing his satisfaction that Sir Cyril Newall, chief of the Air Staff from 1937 to 1940, was one of the principal speakers at its Nelson Day dinner in 1937, Lloyd re-affirmed the league’s belief that co-operation between the services was a ‘source of security’. Churchill, another key figure at the dinner, spoke with ‘particular pleasure about the British Navy’ and about the Navy League itself ‘which has played so great a part in maintaining its strength and not only maintaining its strength when these matters are common property and everyone’s sentiments, but in the years when so often defences are neglected’. Nevertheless, Churchill stressed that the ‘Air Force are in the front line now’ and that no ‘advocate of the Navy, no champion of the Navy League would go so far as to say Naval Defence would be able to defend us alone’.⁵⁴

Despite concerns surrounding the activities of ‘air protagonists’, the Navy League worked closely with the Air League in certain endeavours, most notably in the production of the ‘Navy League Sea and Air Map of the World’, which displayed the world’s sea and air routes.⁵⁵ Many Air League figures also valued the propagandistic work of their Navy League counterparts, even if the Air League often felt it was unable to share public platforms with the Navy League owing to a divergence of aims relating to national defence.⁵⁶ Philip Foster, Conservative MP and Air League chairman from 1918 to 1929, hoped that Air League members ‘would help make the League what the Navy League had been … a great constructive force in our national affairs’.⁵⁷ Thwaites similarly argued that the ‘teachings of the Navy League had informed the nation’, while Moore-Brabazon felt that the Air League must do the ‘same for aviation as the Navy League has done for the Navy’.⁵⁸

Attempting to further limit inter-service rivalry, the Navy League suggested to the Air League that it might combine into one organisation on several occasions.⁵⁹ Many on the Air League’s Executive Committee were unreceptive to such suggestions, with calls for amalgamation in 1938 rejected by the Air League on the grounds that it had sufficient strength to retain its independence, however a letter did appear in The Times in July that year calling for closer co-operation to make ‘the widest possible appeal’.⁶⁰ While there was seemingly little opposition from within the Admiralty, Air Ministry officials were less enthusiastic about such proposals. Newall informed Chamier that ‘the Air League should not do anything which would, by any conceivable means, tie its hands when propaganda for the Air Ministry and the Royal Air Force was required’.⁶¹ Figures formerly connected with the Air Ministry such as Trenchard, by this point a member of the Air League following his resignation as chief of the Air Staff, ‘strongly deprecated’ the proposal, while similar ‘unofficial views’ were expressed by members of the Air Council.⁶² Accordingly, both leagues remained independent.

The many air leagues

Beyond the Navy League, there were few organisations concerned with the political promotion of British naval power in the interwar years. Although the IML was influential prior to 1914, its significance had dramatically waned by the outbreak of the First World War. The IML wound up in April 1921, although not before approaching the Navy League with proposals for amalgamation. This was ultimately rejected, drawing an end to the divisive relationship between the two bodies.⁶³ The Society for Nautical Research – formed in 1910 to promote research into maritime history and ‘raise an awareness of the Navy and the sea’ – was distinct from the political work of the Navy League. Instead, the society was primarily interested in research and the preservation of the nation’s naval heritage through initiatives including the restoration of HMS Victory, Admiral Horatio Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar.⁶⁴

In contrast, there were a number of societies that cut across the Air League’s work. Founded in January 1935 by Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail, the National League of Airmen (NLA) was the most notable of such organisations.⁶⁵ The NLA’s principal aim was to ‘make Britain air-minded and to make the rulers of Britain responsive to that air-mindedness’, while it equally hoped that ‘the condition of our aerial situation and development’ would become ‘a matter of discussion and knowledge in every home in the country’.⁶⁶ Captain Norman Macmillan served as president, with the organisation designed to be ‘entirely directed by airmen. It must not be a hotch-potch of civilians with a few airmen who are unable to make their influence felt.’⁶⁷ As Flight pointed out, the work of the NLA was bound to clash with the Air League’s activities and suggested ‘a wastage of effort will arise’.⁶⁸ Perhaps unsurprisingly, the latter also objected to the NLA.

The Air League initially considered approaching Rothermere to remove any misunderstanding between the two bodies, but Guest felt him to be ‘an extremely difficult man with whom to discuss a matter of this kind’.⁶⁹ Instead, the league wrote an open letter to Rothermere, to newspapers and to its members which stated that the aspirations of the NLA to create an air-minded nation was welcomed by the league, but it had a number of objections. It resented the NLA’s reference to itself as ‘ “The Air League” as though the Air League of the British Empire did not exist’, that ‘by the use of “hotch-potch of civilians” you [the NLA] should have disparaged the constitution and efforts of other organisations than your own who are engaged in like work’ and finally that the NLA gave the impression that it had ‘a monopoly of anxiety for the safety and progress of our nation in air matters’.⁷⁰ Despite such tension, Rothermere ultimately considered the NLA to have achieved its aims: ‘In awakening the country to its danger and the need for rearmament in the air, and in making politicians conscious of the rising tide of public opinion in these matters, the League did a wonderful work’.⁷¹ As a result, it ceased all activities in February 1938.⁷²

Beyond the Air League and NLA, aviators formed a disproportionate element of the membership of the BUF.⁷³ Mosley himself was a member of the RFC in the First World War – although only for several months after a crash brought his flying career to an end.⁷⁴ Nonetheless, the BUF promoted aviation among youth and formed flying clubs, while its journal, The Blackshirt, often published articles on the importance of maintaining a strong air force.⁷⁵ Although the personal and financial links between the Air League and BUF have been noted, the BUF and Air League also shared a number of objectives – at least in relation to aviation.

A final organisation on the political right, the Hands Off Britain Air Defence League, is worthy of mention. This league was established in June 1934 by Oliver Locker-Lampson, the right-wing MP. At the league’s inaugural meeting, which included speeches from Locker-Lampson, Sueter, Hannon and the Duchess of Atholl, Locker-Lampson called for a ‘winged arm of long-range bombers, which would make the voice of England paramount again. Our prestige had sunk to zero. Once the British whisper reverberated around the world. To-day we might bellow in vain. For we lacked mastery in the air.’ He stated it was ‘unfair that because a politician was interested in the security of his country, he should be called a war-monger’.⁷⁶ While Hannon and Sueter had previously been Air League members, and although Locker-Lampson served on the PAC alongside Air League figures, there were seemingly few direct connections between the two organisations.⁷⁷ The Air League offered little in the way of public opposition to Locker-Lampson’s league, although Chamier noted that while the Air League could not ‘claim a monopoly of trying to awaken the country to the needs of aviation … it is rather a pity that a new organisation should spring into action’.⁷⁸ The most notable propaganda carried out by the Hands Off Britain Air Defence League was the distribution of a pamphlet titled ‘England Awake’ which warned that ‘London can be bombed, battered and broken within a few hours’.⁷⁹ Despite such concerns, the league was short-lived and appears to have ceased operations in 1934. However, the work of the NLA, the BUF and the Hands Off Britain Air Defence League ensured that the Air League was not alone in calling for increased armaments or in its opposition to liberal internationalist ideas on aviation.

The merchants of death

The private armament manufacturer (otherwise known as ‘the merchant of death’) was a long-standing – albeit contested – feature of the British warfare state.⁸⁰ Despite opposition prior to 1914 – perhaps most notably encapsulated in George Bernard Shaw’s 1905 play Major Barbara – it was not until the early 1930s that the private manufacture of armaments experienced ‘renewed and unprecedented levels of public criticism’.⁸¹ Beverley Nichols’s Cry Havoc! (1933) was one of many publications to lament that ‘in our midst were these vast corporations, trading in death, profiting by death, owing their very existence to death’, while Fenner Brockway, the left-wing politician and anti-war campaigner, urged that ‘[m]ankind must either destroy the Bloody Traffic [the armament industry] or be destroyed by it’.⁸² Beyond the individual level, the LNU’s Peace Ballot asked the British public ‘Should the manufacture and sale of armaments for private profit be prohibited by international agreement?’, with 90 per cent of participants answering ‘yes’.⁸³ The UDC similarly called for the government to abandon ‘their unholy alliance with the vested interest in arms’.⁸⁴ More broadly, the Labour Party was a persistent critic of armament manufacturers, while on an international level the League of Nations shared such sentiments.⁸⁵

Such pressure eventually led to the establishment of the Royal Commission on the Private Manufacture of and Trading in Arms – an official inquiry into the armaments industry which sat for twenty-two public sessions between 1935 and 1936.⁸⁶ A vast quantity of evidence on the arms industry was generated by the commission which was supplemented by Noel-Baker’s publication of The Private Manufacture of Armaments in late 1936. While the Royal Commission may have suggested that the ‘tide of popular feeling was [now] running fiercely against private manufacture’ of arms, it failed to propose any concrete action against such manufacturers.⁸⁷ However, the commission, and later Noel-Baker, revealed the numerous ways in which armament firms used ‘patriotic’ societies such as the Navy and Air Leagues as instruments of propaganda.⁸⁸

When Groves was appointed to the Air League as secretary general, Frederick Handley Page offered the Air League an annual sum of £5,000 for two years on the condition that Groves was appointed with a free hand. Founder of the aircraft manufacturing company Handley Page Limited, Handley Page stressed that the offer was made ‘entirely without condition as to the future policy of the Air League’ and that the league ‘would be free to settle its own affairs in its own way without dictation from any political body, trade interest or otherwise’.⁸⁹ Although some within the league were concerned that associations with aircraft manufacturers might hamper its independence, the league’s Executive Committee accepted the offer. It was undoubtedly Sir Edmund Bartley-Denniss, the sole dissident regarding the offer and a figure who had previously considered the league’s links with manufacturers as potentially ‘disastrous, not only to the League but to the country’, who leaked the story to The Times.⁹⁰ After the newspaper published proceedings of the league’s meeting the following day, the offer was withdrawn. As Handley Page stated, the ‘worst possible effect was being created by the suggestion that General Groves was the nominee of some body outside the Air League, and that the offer was made on behalf of those interested in production’.⁹¹

Despite repeated assurances that the Air League was not ‘pleading for the interest of aeroplane constructors’, one of its publicly stated aims was ‘the establishment of a thriving aircraft industry’.⁹² Unsurprisingly, this drew the attention of figures on the political left. Clement Attlee, for example, reflected upon the league’s links with armament firms in the House of Commons in 1926. This was much to the league’s annoyance: ‘The suggestion conveyed in Major Attlee’s remarks that the Air League is a sinister organization, created to develop markets for some of our armament firms, is wholly incorrect.’ The league argued that ‘the names of well-known men, some of whom may be possibly interested directly or indirectly in aviation, from a manufacturing point of view, appear in the list of personnel of the League is only natural’.⁹³ Also natural, perhaps, was that manufacturers were among the friends of many Air League figures.⁹⁴

As well as being among its personnel, aeroplane manufacturers were actively contacted by the Air League in the hope that they would contribute articles to its official organ (before the league later reversed the decision).⁹⁵ Manufacturers did, however, occasionally attend Executive Committee meetings, the league’s public gatherings and social events.⁹⁶ In January 1926, in response to Hoare’s announcement that the Air Ministry intended to slow down the rate of RAF production, the Air League held a luncheon to protest the decision. One of the key speakers was C.R. Fairey, founder of the Fairey Aviation Company and former chairman of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors (SBAC). Fairey was conscious of speaking from a position of vested interest, noting that ‘when an aircraft manufacturer expresses any opinion on the subject of aerial defence, he lays himself open to the charge that the aircraft industry are very interested parties’. Nonetheless, he used the platform to criticise Hoare’s decision.⁹⁷

This was not the end of the Air League’s links with aircraft or armament manufacturers. Perhaps most remarkably, the league invited Sir Basil Zaharoff, the arms dealer and archetypal ‘merchant of death’, to join it on public platforms and to become an honorary vice president in the early 1920s.⁹⁸ Banquets were also hosted by the Air League for aircraft manufacturers such A.V. Roe, while Roe paid an annual membership subscription to the league.⁹⁹ A number of manufacturers (Fairey, Rolls-Royce, Saunders-Roe, Armstrong-Whitworth and the Gloster Aircraft Company) supported the Air League by allowing visitors to attend their factories on Empire Air Day (fully explored in Chapter 7), with eminent manufacturers such as Geoffrey de Havilland and A.V. Roe contributing to Empire Air Day programmes.¹⁰⁰ Programmes on Empire Air Day were similarly replete with adverts for aircraft manufacturers.¹⁰¹ Armament manufacturers also contributed to the league’s educational activities: the ADCC attended lectures at the factories of aeroplane manufacturers, while the league arranged tours of such sites for Boy Scouts. Vickers also donated to the ADCC and loaned the Air League material for its lectures at universities.¹⁰²

Beyond supporting the league on Empire Air Day and in relation to its educational programme, adverts for aircraft manufacturers frequently appeared in Air Review, while the league received direct financial support from manufacturers such as Vickers-Armstrong and Imperial Chemical Industries (as well as unofficially approaching Fairey when struggling for funds in the early 1930s).¹⁰³ Furthermore, the league organised a trip for thirty MPs to visit the Bristol Aeroplane Company in 1934, only weeks before the announcement of plans for RAF expansion, to tour its factory.¹⁰⁴

In addition to financial contributions, there were occasions where private manufacturers seemingly directed Air League policy (as in the case of Groves’s appointment) or at least heavily influenced it. For example, Sir John Siddeley, director of Armstrong Siddeley, approached Lindsay Everard during the World Disarmament Conference with ‘the suggestion that the Air League might take action to safeguard British air interests’.¹⁰⁵ The action taken was the appointment (with a contribution from Siddeley towards his salary) of Chamier as secretary general. It is also worth noting that Chamier served on the board of the Vickers-Supermarine group as a technical director before his appointment at the Air League.¹⁰⁶ Sir Henry White-Smith, the league’s honorary treasurer in the late 1920s, similarly had strong ties to the aircraft industry.¹⁰⁷ Chamier and White-Smith were not the only figures with links to the aircraft industry to sit on the league’s Executive Committee, although the presence of such figures was not without opposition. Included in the Air League’s restructuring in 1932, therefore, was the principle that no one actively associated with any aircraft manufacturer should have a seat on the Executive Committee. Accordingly, Sir Harry Brittain, Sir Alan Cobham, Sempill and Gordon England (all of whom had strong connections to the aircraft industry) were asked to resign.¹⁰⁸

Such links were mentioned in the Royal Commission’s report, which raised concerns that organisations such as the Air League were being ‘used by the armament firms as a means of exerting indirect influence in favour of increased national armaments’, and in Noel-Baker’s subsequent book.¹⁰⁹ Noel-Baker particularly focused on Handley Page’s offer: ‘In plain English, £10,000 was offered to the League to help it to create opinion in favour of increased armaments in the air’.¹¹⁰ In his evidence to the Royal Commission, Noel-Baker stated that the Air League should publicise its membership, subscribers and lists of donors and ‘ought not to have any connection with the industry by which … armed forces are to be produced’.¹¹¹ Given that there were a ‘number of generous donations’ from unnamed sources and a ‘generous offer of financial assistance’ from ‘certain aeronautical organisations and their friends’ to the Air League, it is little wonder that Noel-Baker suggested that such connections ‘will lead many people to deduce that there are at least some Manufacturers among those who so opportunely helped the League to save the day against “the common enemy Disarmament”’.¹¹²

Financial links between the Air League and manufacturers were also touched upon by others. Fenner Brockway and the journalist Frederic Mullally later suggested that such connections explained why the Air League so ‘assiduously pursued the “aim”’ of establishing a “thriving aircraft industry”’.¹¹³ The historian Alfred Vagts further noted that bodies such as the Air League were ‘heavily subsidized by industrial money’ and that the league was among those who represented ‘little more than screens for the promotion of interested air-mindedness’.¹¹⁴ However, given the often parlous financial condition of both the Air and Navy Leagues in the interwar years, and the fact that both declined subscriptions from armament manufacturers on occasion, financial links should not be overstated. While it may not be the case that either organisation was solely ‘moved by patriotism freed from politics’, neither league simply acted as a mouthpiece for armament firms.¹¹⁵

Like the Air League, the Navy League was conscious of both financial and political associations with the armament industry. When a scheme was placed before the league that relied upon shipbuilding, steel and armament firms to support its educational and lecturing work, this was rejected.¹¹⁶ Similarly, in his report to the Royal Commission, Sir Charles Craven, chairman and managing director of Vickers, revealed that Vickers-Armstrong offered subscriptions to the Navy League (and to the Air League) but that they were refused.¹¹⁷ As Lloyd explained, it ‘was imperative that no accusation that the League was supported by Armament Firms could be made with any justification’. G.O. Stephenson, then general secretary, similarly emphasised that if the league ‘accepted subscriptions from armament firms, they would not feel themselves entirely free to form whatever opinion they might wish. They might be accused of having their policy dictated to them.’¹¹⁸ However, in a later Executive Committee meeting, Lloyd discovered that the league had, in fact, been receiving funds from Vickers (alongside donations from Craven himself). Unaware of this, Lloyd was furious and stated that ‘in the full course of his career, he had never before been so badly let down as he had been in this instance’. In the same meeting, the league resolved to return a cheque for £100 to Imperial Chemical Industries due to the company’s production of armaments.¹¹⁹

While the Navy League hoped to avoid the controversy surrounding Handley Page’s financial offer to the Air League, this did not stop it accepting contributions from Vickers to the SCC (or from contacting firms in the shipping industry for financial support for the corps). Lloyd also approached Sir Charles Craven for donations to the SCC, despite the league’s earlier refusal of subscriptions, yet there appears to have been no hostility towards these contributions.¹²⁰ Similarly, there was little opposition to Vickers’s offer to the Navy League of lantern slides for lecturing purposes, to the financial contributions made by aeroplane manufacturers and others within the aviation industry to the Navy League or to the inclusion of advertisements for armament manufacturers in The Navy.¹²¹ Alongside financial links, Lord Sydenham served on the board of Armstrong Whitworth, Patrick Hannon became a director of the Birmingham Small Arms company following his time with the Navy League in 1925, while Leo Amery was appointed as a director of the naval manufacturers Cammell Laird & Company in 1933.¹²² Despite such connections, the involvement of armament manufacturers in the institutional elements of the league appear to have been far less extensive than with the Air League. Of course, in lobbying for naval power and ‘the ships and guns which the Private Firms produce’, the league provided ‘free publicity of a particularly powerful kind’.¹²³

Although private manufacturers may not have dictated the policy of the Navy and Air Leagues, they certainly saw the propagandistic value of each organisation. Links of personnel, funding and objectives – especially in the Air League’s case – were extensive and influential. As Noel-Baker suggested, if the Air League ‘could claim with justice, as I believe it could, that it had “done much” by its “strong campaign” to bring a great increase in Air Armaments, it had done so in large part with money supplied by those who had a vested interest in making the aircraft for which it pressed’.¹²⁴ Beyond their bearing on league policy, associations with the ‘merchants of death’ did little to help either organisation distance itself from accusations of militarism.

The Air League, rearmament and defence from the air

Speaking at the Air League’s AGM in 1934, Sutherland lamented that Britain’s air force was ‘pitiably below strength’ and argued that

no reasonable person could really look forward with pleasure to our entry on a race in air armaments with other countries but no sane citizen could look with equanimity on our present position. There must be a speeding up immediately of the defence forces of this country … we had to get, by agreement or otherwise, an Air Force second to none in the world.¹²⁵

While the Air League may have been successful in awakening politicians and the public to the potential threat of the aeroplane, it remained unsatisfied with Britain’s aerial position. The league expressed ‘bitter disappointment’ over the 1934 air estimates, particularly the accompanying memorandum issued by Lord Londonderry, secretary of state for air, which described a ‘widening gap between the present strengths of the Royal Air Force and of the Air services of other great powers’.¹²⁶

Nevertheless, following the introduction of Scheme A – the first major expansion of the RAF since 1923 – and Baldwin’s statement that ‘since the day of the air, the old frontiers are gone. When you think of the defence of England, you no longer think of the White Cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine’, the Air League was less critical of both the state and the Air Ministry.¹²⁷ After the formal acknowledgement that Britain was pursuing parity with anyone within striking distance of its shores, Air Review wrote that ‘it is a good start and a courageous one. A Government still hoping for some agreement on the limitation of armaments, and beset by the apostles of internationalism, can do no more.’¹²⁸

The announcement of German rearmament did little to alter the league’s outlook. ‘The great lesson to be drawn’, Air Review stated, is that ‘any nation, though bound by Treaty and under constant surveillance by suspicious neighbours, can arm secretly if it intends to. The abolition of national military air forces would lead directly to this danger; the internationalisation of military or civil aviation can do nothing to remove it.’¹²⁹ The Air League’s opposition to the internationalisation of aviation and the creation of an IAPF was seemingly vindicated. According to the league, Britain had ‘listened too long to theorists and internationalists’ and the lessons were clear: ‘We must have an Air Force for the defence of this country equal at least to that of any other power within reach of our shores, and we must have it quickly’.¹³⁰

While some criticised the 1935 air estimates, the Air League suggested that an ‘ordered progress – a steady strengthening of foundations to carry a solid structure – is preferable to spectacular spending that might only erect a flimsy façade’. It noted that the RAF was suffering from ‘sixteen years of neglect’ which ‘cannot be remedied in one year’s Estimates’.¹³¹ Sutherland did, however, stress that ‘we must increase the Royal Air Force – and increase it rapidly – if we are to get out of a most dangerous situation’. He felt that it was, to some extent, due to the Air League’s ‘constant propaganda that we have obtained real public recognition of the position, so that our sober and peace-loving peoples realise that we can no longer take the risk of inferiority in the air’.¹³²

The Air League was equally vocal on issues of civil defence. In the process, it was particularly critical of the apparent wisdom of Baldwin’s ‘the bomber will always get through’ speech, suggesting that ‘we can confidently assert that the bombing of women and children, or bombing in reprisal of attacks on women and children, is the most foolish form of utilising air power which it is possible to conceive’. The league objected to the way in which the term ‘reprisals’ was used in reference to air power and dismissed suggestions that it was impossible to defend against aerial bombardment. It suggested that a more likely (or more efficient) scenario than the bombing of women and children would be that bombardment would be directed against a nation’s Achilles heel, stressing ‘only in the case of the most feeble-minded people would direct attack on the morale of the civil population come under this heading’. The best form of defence, so the league argued, was to attack the ‘air establishments of the enemy [which] will serve to diminish very greatly the scale of attack which can be brought to bear on us’.¹³³

The revelation of German rearmament led the league to reflect upon the potential form of any future conflict in similar terms. An article in Air Review asked its readers: ‘Which strategy is likely to triumph? – one that uses air power to choke docks with sunken ships, stop the production of munitions, and to attack the enemy air establishments? Or the one that attacks women and children and civilians in their homes?’ The journal declared: ‘Let us stop this constant cry of havoc … The sooner our possible enemies realise that we are not to be scared into surrender by the bombing of civilians the less likely are we to suffer from such attacks.’¹³⁴

While such comments suggest an increasing scepticism towards the knock-out blow theory, they also point to the league’s growing concern with civil defence. In light of increasing international tension, the Air League called for the country to ‘put our backs into defence as much as into counter attack’, with Chamier warning that, in future conflict, mustard gas could be ‘dropped like rain from the skies’.¹³⁵ Sutherland likewise urged in July 1935, the same month as the first Air Raid Precautions (ARP) circular was issued by the Home Office, that a ‘big drive should be made for air defence’. He felt that the question of defence had not been properly tackled and was of the opinion that ‘the country could be given a great measure of security against air attack’.¹³⁶ He further emphasised that ‘too much stress should not be given to the counter attack which was a poor consolation to the individual citizen’ and that anti-aircraft gunnery, searchlight and sound locator operations and other forms of defence should be promoted.¹³⁷ Air defence, although not as prominent as the counter offensive, was also part of Air League pronouncements surrounding the threat of the bomber in light of events beyond Europe. Writing on the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the league did not believe that

anything like sufficient attention has been given to this problem of defence – a defence which must involve every art which science can bring to our aid: aeroplanes, guns, searchlights, balloon aprons, aerial mine fields, camouflage, air defence training for civil population. Everything which can lessen casualties and prevent panic must have our urgent and earnest attention.¹³⁸

While the league hoped that events would not develop into a ‘European catastrophe’, it felt that Abyssinia underscored the importance of strengthening Britain’s air force, while emphasising the vulnerability of civilians to aerial warfare.¹³⁹

Beyond such pronouncements, Chamier revealed to the league’s Executive Committee in June 1937 that he had received ‘highly confidential proposals’ for the Air League to organise a ‘National Air Defence Exhibition’ at Olympia.¹⁴⁰ The exhibition did not materialise, yet proposals for an exhibition on air defence, only months after the German bombing of Guernica, suggest that civil defence and the preparation for conflict were becoming increasingly pressing. Relatedly, the Air League was approached in March 1938, only weeks before the German annexation of Austria, with a scheme for the evacuation of schoolchildren from large towns to specially built schools in the country in the event of war.¹⁴¹ Chamier himself was closely involved in national defence schemes. In July 1938, he was appointed secretary of the Air Ministry’s Civil Air Guard, an organisation that aimed to provide a body of men and women between the ages of eighteen to fifty ‘with a knowledge of flying to assist in time of emergency the Royal Air Force or in any other direction concerned with aviation for which their services might be required’.¹⁴² While civil in character, it was admitted that the Civil Air Guard’s ‘eventual utility to the Royal Air Force, if war should ever come, was its main purpose’.¹⁴³

Of course, events on the international stage made the threat of aerial bombardment more tangible. Following the Munich Conference in September 1938, the league declared that ‘whether we are fighting to achieve peace with honour or struggling to maintain the peace secured to us by statesmanship, our efforts in our own defence must be intensified’. It argued that ‘[w]e must pay no heed to those who, drawing false lessons from the Spanish or Japanese wars, say that aeroplanes are inconclusive’ and warned that ‘[w]hen aeroplanes are skilfully used on a large scale they can destroy the sinews of war by striking ammunition works, factories and communications. Weakness in our air defence organisation might lead to our defeat.’¹⁴⁴ The league also called for more active, and radical, defence measures. It noted that most ARP schemes aimed at getting the majority of the population in underground air-raid shelters, with the defence of the country left to those in the services. In contrast, the league asserted that there was room for more active civilian participation. It suggested that civilians could lay smoke screens in the event of an air raid and that it was feasible to arm ‘civilian “soldiers”’ with light machine guns to combat low flying aeroplanes, asking: ‘Is it so hard to train a man to fire with some accuracy against low flying aircraft? Would not the volume of fire make up to some extent for any inaccuracy?’¹⁴⁵ The militarisation of civil society was a theme of further articles in Air Review in 1939. The league stressed that if Britons were to be forced underground, ‘into holes like rabbits’, and industry, commerce and communications were disrupted, then ‘utter chaos’ would ensue and any war would be lost. It stated that it was ‘on active defence that we must concentrate. If we can shoot down the enemy, or ward off his attack, the losses which will be inflicted upon our people will diminish.’¹⁴⁶ Clearly, the Air League felt civilians had an active role to play in conflict.

The Navy League, the Merchant Navy and the preparation for war

Following the second London Naval Conference in 1936, the Navy League felt that ‘the need for extensive and intensive lecturing had for the time being ceased’ and that its propagandistic work ‘should be devoted to other channels, particularly in regard to the Merchant Navy, and an extension of the Sea Cadet Corps’.¹⁴⁷ At its GCM the following year, Lloyd noted that ‘after ten or fifteen years of persistent preaching, it has come home to the people of this country and to their leaders how manifest is the impossibility of achieving any success in foreign policy … without adequate force behind it’. He felt that the Navy League had done its duty and that it could feel gratified at its role in bringing about rearmament. Yet, the extent to which the league directly influenced Cabinet policy was made clear by Lloyd himself: ‘Our main task has been to provide public opinion throughout the country and although we can claim some measure of success in this connection, we cannot claim to have influenced the counsels of the Cabinet; no voluntary organisation can expect to do that’. Despite this, Lloyd was satisfied that the league’s ‘persistent propaganda against apathy and emotional pacifism has been largely instrumental in giving to the Government that united support for armaments which it has got now’.¹⁴⁸ Such sentiments were not confined to the Navy League. Commenting upon Britain’s increasing rearmament programme, one official from the Defence Requirements Committee reflected upon the ‘extraordinary’ effect of public opinion, the press and the ‘Lord Lloyd-Churchill group on the minds of the ministers’.¹⁴⁹

While the Navy League was increasingly content with the preparedness of the Royal Navy by the late 1930s, the same could not be said for the Merchant Navy. As Lloyd declared in late 1936, the league was determined to make ‘the people of this country understand the terrible and dire effect which a depleted Mercantile Marine must have on the whole of the Empire’.¹⁵⁰ In attempting to disseminate its message, the league engaged in an extensive programme of political lobbying that included lecture tours, letters to the press, public meetings and pronouncements in the House of Commons and House of Lords. Navy League literature and local branches also increasingly lobbied for improvements in Britain’s Merchant Navy. As the league’s Edinburgh Branch argued, one of Britain’s most ‘urgent naval needs to-day was the provision of an adequate Reserve, properly trained and fully equipped in the strategy of defensive warfare … A shortage of seamen and ships in our Merchant Navy might prove disastrous in war.’¹⁵¹ Beyond these visible, public methods of dissemination, the league used more informal channels. In July 1936, for instance, Lloyd formed part of a secret deputation that met with Stanley Baldwin to express its concern regarding the nation’s shipping industry.¹⁵²

For the Navy League, naval supremacy rested not only upon a powerful Royal Navy, but also on a vibrant shipping industry and a large Merchant Navy with the capability to carry out trade, supply Britain’s food and provide a reserve of manpower. A powerful Merchant Navy was also important for British prestige. In early 1938, the league objected to the ‘scandal’ resulting from the ease with which registration to the Merchant Navy and consequent protection of the British flag could be obtained by foreign vessels. Lloyd contacted Neville Chamberlain directly, receiving a response noting that no further temporary registration would be granted by British Consuls without reference to the Board of Trade and that a number of provisionally registered British ships had reverted to their foreign registration.¹⁵³ The league additionally considered pressing for the appointment of a Minister of Marine, although felt it could not be pursued owing to the political pressure it would involve.¹⁵⁴ However, this did not prevent further propaganda on behalf of the Merchant Navy. In attempting to increase its influence in this sphere, the league appointed representatives of the Merchant Navy to serve on its Executive Committee, while Lloyd stated that, just as every Admiral of the Fleet was a Navy League vice president and supporter, ‘so we desire that the Chairman and Directors of every Shipping Company and Shipbuilding Company shall join our ranks’.¹⁵⁵

Alongside the Navy League’s extensive public programme, Lloyd was a constant champion of the Merchant Navy in the House of Lords. Drawing attention to the decline of British shipping in the Pacific in June 1936, he declared that if the Merchant Navy – ‘its men as well as its ships’ – was ‘ineffective or enfeebled’, it could herald Britain’s ‘downfall as surely as naval defeat’. He stressed that no other country ‘is in so precarious a state as regards its food supplies as our own’ and that if the nation’s ports were closed or its ships sank, then the British people would starve.¹⁵⁶ He again brought the matter of the Merchant Navy before the House of Lords several weeks later. He warned that Britain could not rely upon neutral tonnage to assist its Merchant Navy in a future war as it had done during the First World War, nor could it rely upon the fact that its cargo-carrying tonnage had increased. He stated that it was not the tonnage that counts, but the number of ships and that a ‘torpedo or bomb does not sink a percentage of tonnage; it sinks a ship’.¹⁵⁷ Lloyd was part of numerous other debates as the decade progressed, while Commander Marsden, Navy League Executive Committee member and Conservative MP, lobbied for the Merchant Navy in the House of Commons.¹⁵⁸ Despite such work, Lloyd was ‘amazed at the complacency of Parliament, amazed that at the most critical period probably in the whole of our history we should not be more interested in or more concerned at the depletion in our shipping’.¹⁵⁹

At the league’s GCM in 1938, the decline of the Merchant Navy was once again the central topic of discussion. Lloyd felt that as the Royal Navy was rapidly rearming, the decline of the Merchant Navy was the issue which ‘all our energies and [the] country’s attention must be directed because the position is extremely grave’.¹⁶⁰ He felt that there was little indication that either the government or the public appreciated the severity of the situation. Reflecting on his own work, Lloyd stated that he had spoken in Parliament, addressed important meetings throughout the country, was in constant communication with the Shipping Federation (founded in 1890 to promote the interests of shipowners) and almost every important shipowner in the country. He nevertheless referred to the decline of British shipping in the Pacific and in the Baltic and criticised the lack of protection to Britain’s coastal trade.¹⁶¹ Others shared Lloyd’s sentiments and urged that the ‘public must be roused from their comfortable coma to acute awareness of the disagreeable fact that the Red Ensign is being gradually ousted off the seas by the foreigner, and that the trident is being snatched from the hand of Britannia’.¹⁶²

The league’s work in relation to the Merchant Navy received extensive press coverage and was supported by members of the royal family – including Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) – and a number of Admiralty figures including Admiral Sir Roger Backhouse, first sea lord of the Admiralty from 1938 to 1939; Sir Roger Keyes, admiral of the fleet; and Alfred Duff Cooper, first lord of the Admiralty from 1937 to 1938.¹⁶³ Lloyd also received the backing of Sir Samuel Hoare, then first lord of the Admiralty, at the league’s Nelson Day dinner in 1936. Hoare paid tribute to the ‘sincerity of purpose, to the resolute courage and to the unshaken patriotism that Lord Lloyd has always shown to the country and to the Empire during the many years of his distinguished career’. Hoare also noted that while the Admiralty and Navy League had a ‘particularly independent line of action and they do not always agree, both of us are engaged in the same task’.¹⁶⁴

By 1939, Lloyd felt that the league could claim ‘quite definitively that during the last two or three years we have done more than any other body to compel the Government to make proposals for subsidies for the Merchant Service’.¹⁶⁵ The league expressed satisfaction that the government had passed the Merchant Shipping Assistance Act in early 1939, granting large financial aid to the shipping industry, and felt this was due to its long campaign on behalf of the Merchant Navy.¹⁶⁶ It considered the act as an important contribution to the ‘security of our country’ and that the league ‘merit[ed] the gratitude of both Government and people’.¹⁶⁷ Such sentiments were shared by Duff Cooper, who remarked that ‘the splendid state of the Navy owed much to the vigilance and energy of the Navy League’.¹⁶⁸

Conclusion

By the late 1930s, Britain’s rearmament programme was concentrated on two key technological arms – the Royal Navy and the RAF – both of which ‘were among the very strongest in the world’.¹⁶⁹ Moreover, ‘in absolute terms Britain spent at least as much as any other country on warfare, and about the same as it had spent in the Edwardian years’.¹⁷⁰ As Edgerton notes, the Royal Navy ‘out-built all other navies in nearly all periods of the interwar years and in nearly all classes of warship’. The RAF was accorded strategic priority in the 1930s and, in terms of total expenditure, subsequently overtook the Army in 1937 and the Royal Navy in 1938.¹⁷¹ In 1940, Britain was the leading aircraft manufacturer in the world, producing 50 per cent more airframes and engines than Germany.¹⁷² Although the two leagues may not have influenced the shape of rearmament, both organisations exerted considerable effort to keep issues of military strength within public and parliamentary consciousness. In many respects, the Navy and Air Leagues were among the chief proponents of Britain’s development as a warfare state.

Notes

1. The Navy, January 1935, 1.

2. Air Review, August 1934, 75–6.

3. Michele Haapamaki, The Coming of the Aerial War: Culture and the Fear of Airborne Attack in Inter-War Britain (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 3.

4. See for example Uri Bialer, The Shadow of the Bomber: The Fear of Air Attack and British Politics (London: Royal Historical Society, 1980); 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); Haapamaki, The Coming of the Aerial War; Barry D. Powers, Strategy Without Slide-Rule: British Air Strategy, 1914–1939 (London: Croom Helm, 1976); Tami D. Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945 (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002). See Brett Holman, The Next War in the Air: Britain’s Fear of the Bomber, 1908–1941 (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2014), 16–18 for an overview.

5. Hansard, HC, 5th series, vol. 270, c. 632 (10 November 1932).

6. Air League Bulletin, June–July 1923, 33; February 1926, 7–8.

7. Matthew Johnson, Militarism and the British Left, 1902–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 65.

8. Holman, The Next War, 31; Michael Paris, Winged Warfare: The Literature and Theory of Aerial Warfare in Britain, 1859–1917 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), 90; AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 19 May 1909, 1–2.

9. The Times, 26 April 1909, 19.

10. Holman, The Next War, 32; 24.

11. Hansard, HC, 5th series, vol. 123, c. 103 (15 December 1919).

12. The Times, 21 March 1922, 13–14. Emphasis in original. While Groves was not formally appointed to the Air League’s Executive Committee until June, he worked with the league before then. AL, AL Minute Book, AGM, 1 June 1922, 1; MEC, 28 April 1922, 3. On Groves’s articles in The Times, see Brett Holman, ‘The Shadow of the Airliner: Commercial Bombers and the Rhetorical Destruction of Britain, 1917–35’, Twentieth Century British History, 4 (2013): particularly 503–7.

13. London Metropolitan University, Trades Union Congress Library Collections, Labour Research Department Pamphlet Collection, 2/C/2, Air League of the British Empire 1925–7, Air League of the British Empire, Pamphlet, 1927, 4; Air League of the British Empire, Circular, 9 July 1927, 1.

14. Holman, The Next War, 23; Haapamaki, The Coming of the Aerial War, 44.

15. AL, AL Minute Book, AGM, 10 July 1934, 2; Harald Penrose, British Aviation: Widening Horizons, 1930–1934 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1979), 223–4.

16. Uri Bialer, ‘Elite Opinion and Defence Policy: Air Power Advocacy and British Rearmament during the 1930s’, British Journal of International Studies, 6 (1980): 32.

17. Richard Overy, The Birth of the RAF, 1918: The World’s First Air Force (London: Allen Lane, 2018), Chapter 4. See Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Mottistone Papers, MSS Mottistone 38, Press cuttings, 1917–1920 for his resignation.

18. The Aerial League Bulletin, 20 January 1920, 45.

19. The Times, 31 January 1921, 11.

20. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 22 January 1920, 2.

21. Air League Bulletin, July 1920, 75.

22. Air League Bulletin, March 1921, 119.

23. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 25 February 1926, 1; Air League Bulletin, December 1923, 9–11; AL, AL Minute Book, 22 October 1924, 4.

24. BL, Air League of the British Empire, ‘Remember the Power of the Newest Bombs’, 1922, 1.

25. Air, May 1929, 228–9.

26. Air, December 1927, 7.

27. Air, July 1929, 357; December 1929, 543.

28. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 10 June 1927, 3; 20 October 1927, 1.

29. RAF Museum, Brabazon Papers, AC 71/3, Box 75, 22, Letter from J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon to Colonel the Master of Sempill, 25 April 1928, 1.

30. RA, EVIIIPWH/PS/MAIN/2161, Air League of the British Empire, Letter from Sir Hugh Trenchard to Lionel Halsey, 2 October 1929, 1–2.

31. RA, EVIIIPWH/PS/MAIN/2161, Air League of the British Empire, Letter from Lionel Halsey to Norman Thwaites, 16 October 1929, 1.

32. LHCMA, Groves Papers, Box 6, Letter from W.F. Nicholson to the BBC, 15 October 1927, 1.

33. Air, December 1927, 56.

34. Air, April 1928, 55.

35. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 9 July 1929, 2; 12 May 1931, 2.

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

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

38. The Times, 30 November 1933, 7.

39. Hansard, HC, 5th series, vol. 283, col. 958 (29 November 1933).

40. Hansard, HC, 5th series, vol. 283, col. 1012; 1016. Air League members were also prominent in debates on air power in mid-1934. Hansard, HC, 5th series, vol. 286, c. 2027 (8 March 1934).

41. AL, AL Minute Book, AGM, 10 July 1934, 1.

42. The Times, 10 July 1922, 10; Flight, 10 November 1932, 1043; 6 July 1933, 665.

43. Air Review, September 1934, 80; AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 10 April 1934, 2; Air League Bulletin, October 1923, 28.

44. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/28, NL Minute Book 1936–42, MEC, 2 December 1936, 3.

45. The Navy, August 1938, 1.

46. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/28, NL Minute Book, MEC, 15 June 1938, 2.

47. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/28, NL Minute Book, MEC, 18 November 1937, 4.

48. The Naval & Military Record and Royal Dockyards Gazette, 12 March 1930, 170.

49. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/27, NL Minute Book, MEC, 4 March 1936, 2.

50. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/27, NL Minute Book, MEC, 26 March 1936, 2.

51. The Navy, June 1936, 6.

52. The Navy, April 1936, 89.

53. Bialer, ‘Elite Opinion’, 48–9.

54. CAC, Churchill Papers, CHAR 9/126, The Navy, November 1937, 332–6.

55. National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, The Navy League Sea and Air Map of the World (1930).

56. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 9 January 1928, 1.

57. Cited in Philip Noel-Baker, The Private Manufacture of Armaments: Volume I (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1936), 327.

58. Lieut. Col. Norman Thwaites, Velvet and Vinegar (London: Grayson and Grayson, 1932), 15; Flight, 16 May 1930, 532. On the Navy League and aerial defence prior to 1914, see Brett Holman, ‘The Phantom Airship Panic of 1913: Imagining Aerial Warfare in Britain before the Great War’, Journal of British Studies, 55 (2016): 99–119.

59. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 27 July 1922, 1; 25 April 1923, 3; NMM, MSY/6/3/3/25, NL Minute Book 1923, MEC, 17 May 1923, 2.

60. AL, AL Minute Book, Special MEC, 23 June 1938, 1; NMM, MSY/6/3/3/28, NL Minute Book, MEC, 7 July 1938, 5; The Times, 13 July 1938, 17.

61. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 20 July 1938, 1.

62. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 6 October 1938, 1; 20 July 1938, 1.

63. N.C. Fleming, ‘The Imperial Maritime League: British Navalism, Conflict, and the Radical Right, c.1907–1920’, War in History, 23 (2016): 321; NMM, MSY/6/3/3/24, NL Minute Book 1921–2, MEC, 11 March 1921, 1; 21 March 1921, 2.

64. Don Leggett, ‘Restoring Victory: Naval Heritage, Identity, and Memory in Interwar Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 28 (2017): 61.

65. On the NLA, see Viscount Rothermere, My Fight to Rearm Britain (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1939), 89–96; Brett Holman, ‘The Air Panic of 1935: British Press Opinion between Disarmament and Rearmament’, Journal of Contemporary History, 46 (2011): 300–301 and Holman, The Next War, 2–3.

66. Daily Mail, 31 January 1935, 10; 30 January 1935, 9.

67. Daily Mail, 30 January 1935, 9.

68. Flight, 7 February 1935, 146.

69. AL, AL Minute Book, Special MEC, 14 February 1935, 1.

70. Flight, 21 February 1935, 202.

71. Rothermere, My Fight, 95.

72. The Air Mail, February 1938, 1.

73. David Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane: Militarism, Modernity and Machines (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2013 ed.), 77.

74. Colin Cook, ‘A Fascist Memory: Oswald Mosley and the Myth of the Airman’, European Review of History, 4 (1997): 150.

75. Cook, ‘A Fascist Memory’, 149; 155–6.

76. The Times, 29 June 1934, 12.

77. The Western Morning News, 28 November 1934, 9.

78. RAF Museum, Brabazon Papers, AC 71/3, Box 75, 22, Letter from J.A. Chamier to J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon, 18 July 1934, 1.

79. Noel-Baker, Private Manufacture of Armaments, 322–3.

80. David G. Anderson, ‘British Rearmament and the “Merchants of Death”: The 1935–36 Royal Commission on the Manufacture of and Trade in Armaments’, Journal of Contemporary History, 29 (1994): 5–37; David Edgerton, Warfare State: Britain, 1920–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

81. Edward F. Packard, ‘Whitehall, Industrial Mobilisation and the Private Manufacture of Armaments: British State-Industry Relations, 1918–1936’ (unpub. PhD thesis, London School of Economics, 2009), 14–15.

82. Beverley Nichols, Cry Havoc! (London: Jonathan Cape, 1933), 28; Fenner Brockway, The Bloody Traffic (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1933), 19.

83. Packard, ‘Whitehall’, 16.

84. Union of Democratic Control, The Secret International: Armament Firms at Work (London: Union of Democratic Control, 1932), 48.

85. Andrew Webster, ‘Piecing Together the Interwar Disarmament Puzzle: Trends and Possibilities’, International Journal, 59 (2003/2004): 195.

86. Packard, ‘Whitehall’, 16.

87. Keith Krause, Arms and the State: Patterns of Military Production and Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 6.

88. Packard, ‘Whitehall’, 18.

89. LHCMA, Groves Papers, Box 4, Letter from F. Handley Page to Viscount Burnham, 17 December 1926, 1.

90. AL, AL Minute Book, AGM, 23 June 1926, 2; The Times, 14 January 1927, 14.

91. LHCMA, Groves Papers, Box 4, Letter from F. Handley Page to Viscount Burnham, 16 February 1927, 1.

92. Air League Bulletin, February 1926, 8.

93. Air League Bulletin, April 1926, 31.

94. Lord Brabazon of Tara, The Brabazon Story (London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1956), 46.

95. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 10 April 1924, 5; 24 July 1924, 3.

96. AL, AL Minute Book, Special MEC, 26 March 1925, 1–3; MEC, 16 May 1930, 1.

97. Air League Bulletin, February 1926, 18–33.

98. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 18 September 1918, 3; 2 June 1920, 2.

99. Air, June 1928, 24; AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 14 May 1930, 1.

100. Noel-Baker, Private Manufacture of Armaments, 331–2; Gloucester Journal, 25 May 1935, 9; TNA, AIR 2/449, Souvenir of Empire Air Day, 1935.

101. RAF Museum, 006870, Royal Air Force Official Programme: Empire Air Day 1939.

102. RAF Museum, X002-9256/007/004/074, Letter from Air League of the British Empire to Alex Henshaw, 11 April 1939; AL, AL Minute Book, Joint MEC and the Advisory Committee of Pilots, 5 February 1925, 2; The Times, 15 October 1938, 7; Air League Bulletin, November 1920, 89.

103. Royal Commission on the Private Manufacture of and Trading in Arms (1935–6), Report (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1936), 78; Royal Commission on the Private Manufacture of and Trading in Arms, Minutes of Evidence (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1935–6), 366; 453; AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 10 November 1931, 2.

104. The Times, 23 July 1934, 9.

105. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 6 April 1933, 1.

106. Air and Airways, June 1933, 100.

107. White-Smith did much for the Bristol Aeroplane Company and was one of the founders of the SBAC.

108. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 1 November 1932, 2.

109. Royal Commission, Report, 60.

110. Noel-Baker, Private Manufacture of Armaments, 330.

111. Royal Commission, Minutes of Evidence, 237.

112. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 1 November 1932, 2; Noel-Baker, Private Manufacture of Armaments, 331–3.

113. Fenner Brockway and Frederic Mullally, Death Pays a Dividend (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1944), 56–7.

114. Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism: Civilian and Military (London: Meridian Books, 1959 ed.), 358.

115. Richard Davenport-Hines, ‘The British Armaments Industry During Disarmament, 1918–1936’ (unpub. PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1979), 56.

116. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/26, NL Minute Book, MEC, 6 March 1930, 1–2.

117. Royal Commission, Minutes of Evidence, 366.

118. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/27, NL Minute Book, MEC, 8 November 1934, 1; Noel-Baker, Private Manufacture of Armaments, 305.

119. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/27, NL Minute Book, MEC, 6 December 1934, 3; MSY/6/3/4/6, FGP Minute Book, Meeting of the Finance and General Purposes Sub-Committee (MFGPSC), 6 July 1933, 4.

120. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/28, NL Minute Book, MEC, 18 March 1937, 3; CAC, Lloyd Papers, GLLD 19/7, Letter from Lloyd to Sir Charles Craven, 14 December 1938.

121. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/26, NL Minute Book, MEC, 18 December 1923, 6; 6 November 1930, 4; The Navy, March 1931, 91.

122. Davenport-Hines, ‘The British Armaments Industry’, 183; Simon Haxey, Tory M.P. (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1939), 62–5.

123. Noel-Baker, Private Manufacture of Armaments, 304.

124. Noel-Baker, Private Manufacture of Armaments, 341.

125. AL, AL Minute Book, AGM, 10 July 1934, 2.

126. Air Review, April 1934, 9.

127. Hansard, HC, 5th series, vol. 292, c. 2339 (30 July 1934).

128. Air Review, September 1934, 13.

129. Air Review, May 1935, 9.

130. Air Review, June 1935, 10–11.

131. Air Review, April 1935, 9–10.

132. Air Review, August 1935, 27.

133. Air Review, March 1934, 13–15.

134. Air Review, May 1935, 10.

135. The Scotsman, 15 November 1935, 14; Air Review, May 1935, 10.

136. AL, AL Minute Book, AGM, 10 July 1935, 2; Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire, 201.

137. AL, AL Minute Book, AGM, 14 July 1936, 1–2.

138. Air Review, November 1935, 18. Cf. Air Review, October 1937, 7–8.

139. Air Review, November 1935, 14.

140. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 8 June 1937, 3. The source is not revealed in the league’s minute book.

141. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 3 March 1938, 2.

142. The Times, 25 July 1938, 9; TNA, AVIA 2/1332, Formation of Civil Air Guard, 1938–39.

143. The Times, 25 January 1939, 18.

144. Air Review, October 1938, 7.

145. Air Review, December 1938, 7–9.

146. Air Review, February 1939, 7–9.

147. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/27, NL Minute Book, MEC, 14 October 1936, 3.

148. The Navy, June 1937, 189.

149. Brian Bond, ed., Chief of Staff: The Diaries of Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall, Volume One: 1933–1940 (London: Leo Cooper Ltd, 1973), 49–50.

150. The Navy, November 1936, 309.

151. The Scotsman, 3 March 1937, 19.

152. London Metropolitan University, Trades Union Congress Library Collections, Labour Research Department Pamphlet Collection, V1, Navy League Pamphlets, Navy League, ‘The British Fleet and the Merchant Navy’, 1936; ‘The Merchant Navy in Time of War’, 1937; CAC, Lloyd Papers, GLLD, 17/50, Statement made by Lord Lloyd before Secret Deputation to the Prime Minister on Defence, 27 July 1936.

153. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/28, NL Minute Book, MEC, 3 March 1938, 1–2.

154. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/28, NL Minute Book, MEC, 3 March 1938, 2.

155. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/28, NL Minute Book, MEC, 7 April 1938, 3; CAC, Lloyd Papers, GLLD, 22/16, Lloyd Lecture, 1 April 1936, 5.

156. Hansard, HL, 5th series, vol. 101, col. 143 (23 June 1936).

157. Hansard, HL, 5th series, vol. 102, col. 416 (30 July 1936).

158. Hansard, HC, 5th series, vol. 334, col. 348 (6 April 1938).

159. Hansard, HL, 5th series, vol. 104, col. 575 (9 March 1937).

160. Supplement to The Navy, August 1938, 1.

161. Supplement to The Navy, August 1938, 2.

162. Supplement to The Navy, August 1938, 7.

163. RA, EVIIIPWH/PS/MAIN/1254, The Navy League, Letter sent on behalf of the Prince of Wales to the Navy League, 23 October 1934, 1; The Navy, November 1938, 336; June 1937, 192; Liverpool Daily Post, 7 March 1939, 9.

164. The Navy, November 1936, 310.

165. The Navy, July 1939, 237.

166. NMM, MSY/6/2/7, NLAR 1939, 3.

167. NMM, MSY/6/2/7, NLAR 1939, 3.

168. Liverpool Daily Post, 7 March 1939, 9.

169. Edgerton, Warfare State, 58.

170. Edgerton, Warfare State, 58.

171. Edgerton, Warfare State, 32; 43.

172. Richard J. Overy, The Air War 1939–1945 (London: Europa Publications Ltd, 1980), 150.