Introduction

The Navy League and the Air League of the British Empire

The Navy League was the largest naval lobbying organisation in both the Edwardian and interwar years and, as such, formed an important part of the political and associational culture of early-twentieth-century Britain. From its inception, the league focused on securing and preserving British naval supremacy. The Air League correspondingly represented the most significant and influential organisation interested in the promotion of British aerial power. Among its central aims were the ‘maintenance of an Air Force capable of obtaining the mastery of the air wherever it may be called upon to operate’ and the ‘establishment of a thriving aircraft industry’.⁵

Given their respective aims, however, it is perhaps unsurprising that both organisations were labelled as militarists, jingoists, alarmists and scaremongers. The two leagues never publicly embraced their associations with militarism and each went to great lengths to reject such epithets. The Navy League deliberately positioned itself as ‘above party’ as well as being a ‘peace society in the truest sense of the word’, yet it undoubtedly had militaristic overtones.⁶ Such accusations were also levelled at the league’s leadership, with Noel-Baker criticising Lord Lloyd, Navy League president from 1930 to 1941, for supposedly believing ‘war to be inevitable and nationalist militarism to be a right and wise policy’.⁷ The Air League, which also claimed to be non-party and non-partisan, was similarly accused of being militaristic and of promoting ‘MURDER, HATRED and ill will’ through its propaganda.⁸ Others stated that they would not subscribe to the league because ‘Flying has a base and bloody history … waging its battles chiefly against old men, women, and children’ and wished that ‘all Flying Men and Flying Machines could be abolished by the League of Nations’.⁹ In response to such statements, the league stressed that it was ‘not militaristic but realistic in its outlook’.¹⁰ Stephen Marples, the Air League’s first secretary, argued that the league was not ‘an association of scaremongers’ and was not characterised by ‘sensationalism’; however this did little to fend off such accusations.¹¹ Indeed, the league and its leading figures admitted that it was ‘hard to live down these labels’ and frequently felt the need to insist that it was not ‘bellicose or aggressive’.¹² This was especially so after an episode in 1924 in which a ‘representative of a Labour and Socialist organ … burst into the office declaring that the Air League was heading straight for war’.¹³ Even in the late 1970s, Noel-Baker still considered the two leagues to be little more than ‘militarist saboteurs’.¹⁴ In light of such accusations – and given the aims, activities and propaganda of each league – the term ‘organised militarism’ is used in preference to ‘organised patriotism’ throughout this book, even if each league would have undoubtedly favoured the latter.¹⁵

Despite concerns surrounding their militaristic nature, each organisation was supported by key figures from the social, political and military elite. Both were underpinned by a broad and eclectic network of Conservative politicians, parliamentary backbenchers, leading figures in the Admiralty and Air Ministry, military theorists, armament manufacturers, ex-servicemen, members of the popular press and emerging fascist and pro-German organisations. Far from being marginalised for their links to the extreme right, both the Navy and Air Leagues were at times supported by prime ministers, the most senior members of the service departments and by members of the royal family. This support, combined with a resolute programme of popular education and political lobbying, meant that the two leagues were able to carry out their activities on a local, national and imperial scale.

The Navy League emerged in December 1894 following a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette on British sea power written by Spenser Wilkinson, the newspaper’s military correspondent.¹⁶ At the league’s first meeting in January 1895 – in part organised by Wilkinson and chaired by Henry Cust, Unionist MP and editor of the Pall Mall Gazette – the league’s aims, objectives and constitution were defined.¹⁷ At the meeting, the league’s purpose of securing ‘as the primary object of the national policy “the Command of the Sea”’ was established. Also determined was the league’s aim of disseminating ‘information showing the vital importance to the British Empire of the naval supremacy upon which depend its trade, empire & national existence’.¹⁸ The first page of the first issue of The Navy League Journal – the league’s official organ until replaced by The Navy in 1909 – expressed these objectives in even starker terms, warning that ‘by the Navy we stand or fall: if that is weak, there is unspeakable trial of war before us, war in which we must be worsted and trampled upon by our conquerors’.¹⁹

While the Navy League initially experienced financial difficulty and internal divisions, it boasted nearly 125,000 members in more than 150 branches by the outbreak of the First World War.²⁰ To promote its message, the league organised lectures, public gatherings and speaking tours; it lobbied politicians, produced pamphlets, leaflets and other forms of propaganda; and it published its own journal. It wrote widely in local and national newspapers and celebrated the nation’s naval heritage through the annual commemoration of Trafalgar Day. Ideologically, the league promoted a form of ‘navalism’ that went far beyond understanding the navy solely in strategic terms of national defence. The league’s conception of navalism was not simply concerned with large navies, high levels of naval armaments or an escalating maritime arms race, but was instead both a political and ideological movement, ‘based on a conception of naval power not simply as a legitimate arm of national defence but as the basis of national might and prestige’.²¹ The Navy League remained the most significant and influential navalist lobbying organisation following the First World War, although existing accounts are almost entirely confined to the pre-war period.²²

Founded in January 1909 as the ‘Aerial League of the British Empire’, the Air League focused on the political promotion of British aerial power.²³ Echoing the Navy League, the stated aim of the Air League upon its formation was ‘to disseminate knowledge and spread information showing the vital importance to the British Empire of aerial supremacy, upon which its commerce, communications, defence and its very existence must largely depend’.²⁴ The Air League was formed by Stephen Marples – an engineer and the league’s first secretary – and Colonel H.S. Massy, ex-Bengal Lancer and the league’s first president. Its early Executive Committee comprised numerous ex-servicemen and serving officers.²⁵ Unlike the Navy League, the Air League initially had no official organ with which to disseminate its own information and so relied on local and national newspapers alongside leading aviation journals to report upon its work. Much of the Air League’s early activities focused on lobbying the political and military elite, although it was keen to celebrate the individual feats of aviators and was also concerned with education and youth. Like the Navy League’s promotion of navalism, the Air League propounded a form of ‘airmindedness’ that was political, ideological and cultural in nature and that projected images of aerial might and prestige. While the Air League was reluctant to publish membership figures, it seemingly never exceeded 8,000 members (not including 4,500 junior subscribers or 20,000 Air Defence Cadet Corps (ADCC) members in the late 1930s).²⁶ As in the case of the Navy League, sustained scholarly interest in the Air League does not extend beyond the First World War.²⁷

Understanding militarism

Before examining the nature and extent of militarism in interwar Britain, some reflection on the methodological and theoretical issues surrounding the term is required. This is especially so as militarism is an elusive, vague and contested concept, with no fixed definition.²⁸ As Matthew Johnson observes, militarism is often misunderstood, used polemically as a term of abuse or simplistically conflated with concepts such as fascism or imperialism.²⁹ Michael Howard similarly warned that militarism ‘has become a term of such general illiterate abuse that the scholar must use it with care’.³⁰ While this book does not seek to offer any new definitional framework, an examination of the concept is essential if we are to understand the various forms of militarism that existed, and at times flourished, after 1918.

Militarism is traditionally understood as militancy – or aggressive foreign policy – on the part of the state, a preponderance of the military in the state and, finally, as a problem of civil–military relations. As Johnson notes, militarism as an institutional or ‘constitutional’ problem may refer to the ‘excessive or disproportionate political influence of a military caste within societies nominally under civilian leadership, or to the freedom of the armed forces to act independently of civilian political oversight and control’.³¹ Alfred Vagts, in his influential and wide-ranging history of militarism, conceived of certain aspects of militarism in such terms. For Vagts, militarism represented ‘a domination of the military man over the civilian, an undue preponderance of military demands, an emphasis on military considerations, spirit, ideals and scales of value, in the life of states’.³² From the late nineteenth century, militarism was also traditionally regarded as a Prussian or ‘foreign’ problem, with numerous scholars noting that militarism in Britain was ‘reduced to a minimum’ or less ‘absolute’ than in Germany.³³ The strength of existing political and parliamentary institutions, as well as social attitudes, ideas and values – consolidated by a peaceable national character – meant that where militarism existed in Britain, it supposedly did so in a muted form or as an aberration.³⁴

The political role of the military in society is a persistent theme within scholarly literature on militarism. Yet, defining militarism simply in institutional terms neglects many of its broader social, cultural and ideological aspects. Stig Förster’s definition of militarism seemingly occurs along similar lines. For Förster, ‘militarism means the purposeful appropriation of the armed forces for internal politics and/or foreign aggression, along with an over-emphasis on military policy compared to other areas of politics’.³⁵ However, as Förster stresses, a deeper appreciation of the socio-cultural elements of militarism is required. Employing a broad conception of militarism ‘allows for a broad spectrum of manifestations to be grasped. This is especially relevant to the fact that the phenomenon of militarism is in no sense confined to the military sphere.’³⁶ Others, such as Nicholas Stargardt, have similarly demonstrated that militarism is not merely about institutions and power, but also about ideas, culture and society.³⁷ Such distinctions, and necessarily broad definitions of militarism, are significant and particularly pertinent to the British case as this book illustrates. Given such terminological variations, however, it is difficult to offer any general definition of militarism or to even speak of militarism as a singular phenomenon. Moreover, militarism was appropriated in a number of ways by different states and societies and by different organisations and associational groups. As John Gillis argues, ‘judging one’s own society against this “other”, even if it is an ideal type, begs the question of whether militarism itself might mean different things in different societies’.³⁸

Complicating the picture further, scholars have distinguished between ‘official’ and ‘popular’ forms of militarism. As Laurence Cole outlines, ‘official’ militarism includes ‘foreign policy, the state’s policy towards its armed forces, army politics, preparation for war, and financial and practical support for a public “military culture”’. ‘Popular’ militarism, on the other hand, has two principal attributes. In institutional terms, Cole argues that popular militarism is independent of the state ‘even if it may cooperate with organs of the state, receive official backing from government, and include employees of state institutions among its proponents (albeit acting in a private capacity as citizens)’. The second feature of ‘popular’ militarism ‘implies the spontaneous and active participation of broad sections of the population – not just of the social elites and bourgeoisie – in activities which support the armed forces or help to cultivate a “military culture” in society at large’.³⁹ For Cole, the exploration of militarism in terms of its social and cultural manifestations has led to the increasing relevance of ‘military culture’ as a concept. As in the case of militarism, however, military culture is often framed in rather narrow terms. Isabel V. Hull, for instance, uses the term to assess ‘why an army acts as it does in war’.⁴⁰ Yet, such an approach neglects the important, and in many ways more interesting, interaction between civil and military spheres outside of conflict. As Vagts argued, ‘generally speaking, militarism flourishes more in peacetime than in war’.⁴¹ Accordingly, Cole employs a broader approach to military culture to incorporate the meaning and impact of military symbols, ideas and behaviours in society as a whole.⁴² In doing so, Cole is particularly interested in ‘patriotic activities in the public sphere that revolved around the military’ as well as military veterans’ associations.⁴³ This book is similarly interested in military culture and popular forms of militarism – as outlined by Cole – in interwar Britain.

Alongside militarism and military culture, militarisation is an equally contentious term with multiple meanings. For Cole, the militarisation of society can be understood as ‘the increased deployment of material and financial resources towards military activity, the greater involvement of social actors in military institutions, and the growing visibility and prominence of the military in cultural terms’.⁴⁴ Johnson expands this definition and outlines two distinct forms of militarisation. First:

where the subordination of society to military needs takes the form of an acceptance of military claims on economic or material resources, and where the energies of the state are channelled accordingly into military priorities such as armaments production rather than being exerted in other social or civilian directions, we might talk of the militarization of the state.

Second:

where, on the other hand, we are dealing with military attempts to harness not merely the economic or industrial resources of a society but the civilian population itself – that is to say, where the state endeavours to ‘make a soldier out of each civilian’, where the nation is conceived as the ‘quiescent army’, and where the problem concerns nothing less than the transformation of civilian society – it is more helpful and accurate to talk of the militarization of society.⁴⁵

Crucially, Johnson notes that while in practice these two forms of militarisation often overlap, this is not always the case. Those interested in the promotion of the military through the militarisation of the state may view ‘the militarization of civilian society, and the creation of a mass army, as an effective means to this end’. Contrastingly, they might instead regard a small, professionalised army – or a powerful navy or air force – ‘in which mass direct popular participation is less feasible’ as the ‘basis of military power, in which case the militarization of civilian society might be unnecessary, or even counterproductive’.⁴⁶ Certainly, this resonates with the Navy and Air League’s promotion of modern, technological and liberal forms of militarism in the interwar period and with the broader development of Britain as a ‘warfare state’.⁴⁷

As David Edgerton outlines, liberal militarism represented Britain’s reliance on military science, technology and industry – rather than Prussian-style conscription – as the basis of its military strength.⁴⁸ In a sense, the two leagues were among the most vocal exponents of the liberal militarism which developed in Britain between the wars. Neither of the leagues were mere auxiliaries for the espousal of Admiralty or Air Ministry views; in fact, at times, each league acted as the most vociferous critic of the service departments. However, as Organised Militarism illustrates, links of personnel, funding and shared aims meant that an almost symbiotic relationship often existed between each league and officialdom. Edgerton’s work remains the principal exception to scholarly focus on pre-1914 militarism. However, while Edgerton has demonstrated that the British state remained martial and militaristic during this period, many have since still maintained that British society was inhospitable to militarism in all its forms. This book builds upon Edgerton’s work by providing an important contribution to our understanding of voluntary associations and interwar political culture, bringing attention to an often-overlooked aspect of British society and culture during this period – namely, popular, cultural and official manifestations of militarism.

A peaceable kingdom?

The history of organised militarism in early-twentieth-century Britain is incomplete.⁴⁹ As Matthew Hendley observes in relation to the fortunes of Edwardian patriotic and imperialist organisations, there has been little attempt to establish continuity between the pre-war and post-war periods. As Hendley suggests, much of the historiography on organised patriotism has taken its chronological lead from works such as Arthur Marwick’s The Deluge, which argues that ‘most of the existing social attitudes and social structures were swept away by the war’.⁵⁰ Contrastingly, Hendley asserts that the First World War was a ‘crucible for organized patriotism but it did not destroy it’.⁵¹ While patriotic and imperialist organisations such as the League of Empire and the Victoria League were able to endure the ‘crucible’ of war, militaristic organisations, according to Hendley, were unable to survive the conflict. Yet, Hendley only engages with one militaristic, single-purpose organisation that temporarily achieved its goal of conscription during the First World War – the National Service League.

This book highlights a number of notable and nuanced continuities between Edwardian and post-war manifestations of militarism, while also demonstrating what was distinct about the interwar period and how bodies such as the Navy and Air Leagues adapted and evolved after 1918. It argues that organised militarism did, in fact, survive the crucible of war and that the ‘historiographical consensus on continuity between the pre-war and interwar periods’ should be extended to include militaristic, as well as patriotic and imperialist, organisations.⁵²

The absence of scholarship on the post-war activities of the Navy and Air Leagues may, in part, be explained by the strength of liberal internationalist, pacifist and anti-war sentiment during this period, alongside an increasingly peaceable national character. This has led to the construction of a narrative which argues that the post-war evolution of associational bodies rested on an ability to embrace a non-partisan, non-sectarian and domestically orientated agenda, free from militaristic discourse.⁵³ The presence, and relative success, of groups such as the LNU, the Union of Democratic Control (UDC), the No More War Movement and the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) appears indicative of such a narrative. Yet, the LNU, the largest liberal internationalist body of the period, was not pacifist or opposed to rearmament as one might expect.⁵⁴ As Helen McCarthy notes, the union was firmly ‘pacificist’ in orientation, was willing to countenance military intervention to maintain the rule of international law and even accommodated ‘certain elements of the popular culture of militarism’.⁵⁵ Moreover, as Waqar Zaidi reveals, there was enthusiasm from liberal internationalists for aviation – and bombing in particular – despite fears surrounding the shadow of the bomber and a ‘knock-out’ blow from the air.⁵⁶

Notwithstanding the pacificist nature of groups such as the LNU, there was certainly a very palpable anti-war sentiment in the period. This was evidenced by the ‘King and Country’ debate at the Oxford Union in February 1933, the East Fulham by-election in October of the same year, alongside numerous anti-war publications, demonstrations and parades that had the purpose of awakening the British public to the ‘evils of war’.⁵⁷ More broadly, there were concerns about the psychological trauma of the First World War and fears that society had been brutalised by the conflict.⁵⁸

The Peace Ballot of 1934 to 1935 – an LNU initiative in which almost 12 million adults voted on questions relating to the League of Nations and collective security – seemingly represented the most obvious repudiation of militarism in interwar Britain. A significant majority voted in favour of continued league membership, disarmament, the abolition of the private manufacture of armaments alongside the use of economic and non-military sanctions in response to military aggression. A smaller majority voted in support of the collective use of military force to ensure international peace.⁵⁹ As close to 7 million people were willing to approve the use of force to preserve peace, the ballot has been interpreted in a number of ways. For Noel-Baker, it ‘proved beyond a doubt that the British people understood the policy of world disarmament and the collective security of the league’. Lord Robert Cecil, the LNU’s president, agreed, stating that Britons had shown ‘overwhelming approval’ of collective security.⁶⁰ Contrastingly, the LNU’s refusal to denounce the international use of force led Winston Churchill to note that the ballot ‘combined the contradictory propositions of reduction of armaments and forcible resistance to aggression’, while Lord Beaverbrook, proprietor of the Daily Express, described it as the ‘ballot of blood’.⁶¹ Historians have likewise offered several different readings. Martin Ceadel argues that it signalled the strength of public feeling behind collective security, only if understood as a ‘middle way between isolationism and militarism’.⁶² Edgerton similarly states that it is ‘often misleadingly treated as an endorsement of pacifism’, while the idea that the ballot showed that public opinion was pacifist has been dismissed by Donald Birn as ‘one of the great myths’ of the 1930s.⁶³

Despite the ambiguous nature of the Peace Ballot, there was nevertheless a supposedly widespread public and intellectual disdain for military ritual, ceremony and theatre. As Jan Rüger argues, this is perhaps best encapsulated by Ford Madox Ford’s 1925 novel No More Parades – part of Ford’s Parade’s End tetralogy – which denounced the pomp and pageantry of pre-First-World-War military ceremony.⁶⁴ Caroline Playne advanced similar arguments in her 1928 account of the ‘pre-war mind’ in Britain. She observed that, while militarism existed in Britain, it was less natural in comparison to other European societies:

The Briton has little of the sense of the glory of fight and conquest, of the pure, simple military spirit … Neither does the Briton care for the order and method of Militarism, the fashion and show of Militarism, which appeal to the German. He has no need for conscious display of power, no conception of collective ordering of might.⁶⁵

Yet, military theatre was an important part of the popular civic ritual of interwar Britain. The Royal Air Force (RAF) Display at Hendon, Empire Air Day, the Army’s Aldershot Command Searchlight Tattoo, the Royal Tournament at Olympia, Navy Weeks and fleet reviews were attended by millions of spectators and allowed the services to promote their respective strengths. All were conscious, choreographed displays of power and military might, exhibited to domestic and foreign audiences alike.⁶⁶ So popular were such events that commentators wondered ‘what chance has the feeble propaganda of the “peace societies” against all these? Conditions are ripening for another great war, and the public mind is being prepared for it.’⁶⁷ As we shall see, many undoubtedly understood the underlying message of military theatre and were seemingly at ease with exhibitions of the ‘destructive power’ of both the battleship and the bomber.⁶⁸ As this book reveals, the Navy and Air Leagues played key roles in the promotion of naval and aerial power through popular forms of civic ritual and military pageantry. Through its annual commemoration of Trafalgar Day, the Navy League promoted themes of heritage, nostalgia and tradition, while the Air League showcased military might, technological innovation and modernity on Empire Air Day.

As further evidence of the existence of militarism prior to 1914, historians point to the popularity of uniformed youth organisations such as the Boys’ Brigade, the Church Lads’ Brigade, the Jewish Lads’ Brigade and Robert Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts.⁶⁹ However, reflecting existing studies of organised militarism, the First World War frequently marks either a point of rupture or termination for studies exploring the place of militarism within such groups. As Scott Johnston observes, the Boy Scout movement underwent a ‘change in values, from militaristic manifestations of duty and service towards pacifism and internationalism … Something significant had changed in the British public, who now directed their youth towards internationalist organizations rather than cadet programmes.’⁷⁰

The Navy and Air Leagues devoted considerable energy to the promotion of sea- and airmindedness among the nation’s youth – despite the seemingly inhospitable social, cultural and political environment of the period. The leagues attempted to disseminate their message in schools and universities, at major civic events and through their own uniformed youth movements – the Sea Cadet Corps (SCC) and the ADCC. The ethos of each corps – which largely revolved around service, discipline, patriotism and duty – linked citizenship, physical culture and a militarised masculinity among boys. Although the Navy and Air Leagues emphasised the defensive and passive elements of each corps from their inception, there is little doubt that each league hoped members would make a direct military contribution to the nation.

Despite the ideological flexibility of organisations such as the LNU, the multiplicity of meaning attached to the Peace Ballot, public desire for military spectacle and the popularity of militaristic youth organisations, militaristic leagues such as the Navy and Air Leagues have nevertheless received little scholarly attention in the post-war period. However, the leagues were linked to the two technological arms accorded the highest military and strategic priority by the state in the interwar years: the Royal Navy and the RAF. As Edgerton demonstrates, far from being a period of military decline, Britain was the ‘pioneer of modern, technologically focused warfare; its naval and air forces long led the world’.⁷¹ Britain was developing as a ‘warfare state’. In terms of defence expenditure and military preparedness, Britain was one of the most heavily militarised, modern states in Europe by the outbreak of the Second World War.⁷² Such technological, industrial and military capacity seems remarkable – even paradoxical – in the context of the long-established historical narrative that presents interwar Britain as a nation which had repudiated militarism, embraced disarmament and relied upon international diplomacy for the preservation of peace.

Tradition and technology

The Royal Navy was long seen as ‘Britain’s first’ and ‘only line of defence’, central to the preservation of islandhood and inexorably bound to notions of nation and national identity.⁷³ Although the navy remained fundamental to Britain’s development as a warfare state after the First World War, a series of post-war naval disarmament treaties, compounded by increasing fears surrounding the destructive potential of the aeroplane, seemingly made the ‘security previously granted by the combination of the Royal Navy and Britain’s island insularity appear irrelevant’.⁷⁴ Accordingly, scholars have described a ‘weakening’ and even ‘collapse of British navalism’ after 1918.⁷⁵ The subsequent development of ‘sea blindness’, according to this interpretation, was marked by a decline in public and political interest in the nation’s maritime and naval affairs to the extent that such issues were ‘effectively ignored’.⁷⁶

Yet, despite the supposedly ‘profound cultural dislocation’ of the First World War, the navy represented an important symbol of permanence, continuity and tradition.⁷⁷ As Christopher Bell states, the ‘sea and the navy’ continued to ‘play a central role in British national mythology. The British people were disposed to view themselves as a seafaring race, with a special affinity for the sea and an unmatched aptitude for maritime pursuits.’⁷⁸ For the Navy League, ‘Sea Sense’ formed an ‘intangible but vitally important asset of our race’, with an ‘ardent love of the sea’ representing the ‘most striking characteristic of our people’.⁷⁹ Such views were not confined to the Navy League, but were shared by politicians and decision-making elites across the political spectrum. For Ramsay MacDonald, Britain’s first Labour prime minister, the ‘way of Great Britain is on the sea … Our Navy is no mere superfluity to us. It is us.’ Winston Churchill expressed similar sentiments, stating that ‘Great Britain, since the most remote time, had always been supreme at sea. The life of the nation, its culture, its prosperity, had rested on that basis.’⁸⁰

Nevertheless, the advent of the aeroplane challenged notions of islandhood and insularity, meant that ‘connections between the sea, insularity and national greatness’ were no longer axiomatic and, for some, even heralded the end of Britain’s status as an island nation.⁸¹ The Air League was among those who advanced this narrative, declaring in 1926 that the ‘old bulwark of the sea has ceased to exist as a protective asset. England’s insular position has gone never to return.’⁸² This loss of insularity, the experience of air raids in Britain during the First World War and the ‘staggering progress of aviation’ after 1918 ‘only served to make the next war seem ever more apocalyptic’. Military theorists, politicians, journalists, novelists and anti-war activists issued stark warnings about the ruin of civilisation, the destruction of cities and the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians that would result from ‘hundreds of tonnes of high explosive, incendiary and even poison gas bombs’ being unloaded from ‘clouds of bombers’ which would ‘darken the skies over the great cities with little warning’.⁸³

There was, then, undoubtedly a ‘culture of anticipation’ in Britain surrounding the aeroplane.⁸⁴ However, it would be incorrect to simply ‘conclude that the English were afraid of the aeroplane and that they saw it as a hideous foreign invention’.⁸⁵ Instead, there was correspondingly a widespread hope that the aeroplane could be a peaceful and beneficial tool for ending wars, promoting trade and commerce, and as something that had the potential to bring nations closer together.⁸⁶ More broadly, while there was anxiety and insecurity regarding the destructive potential of the aeroplane, there was also excitement and enthusiasm for aviation which was cultivated through newspapers, magazines, novels and films.⁸⁷ Above all else, however, the most ‘effective way to bring airmindedness to the masses’ was, as Brett Holman notes, through ‘aerial theatre’ – the ‘use of aviation spectacle to project images of future warfare, national power and technological prowess’.⁸⁸ Air races, reviews and displays attracted hundreds of thousands of spectators annually and represented distinctly ‘modern form[s] of mass entertainment for an increasingly airminded generation’.⁸⁹

The Navy League was by no means anti-modern or anachronistic, frequently extolling the power and technological might of the Royal Navy. It also stressed that as the ‘oldest and best known organisation concerned with the needs of National defence’ it was ‘the first to recognise the absolutely vital needs of air supremacy’.⁹⁰ The Air League, meanwhile, was deeply conscious of the nation’s naval heritage and tradition, urging that it ‘must not be counted among those who say that navies are now obsolete’.⁹¹ Nonetheless, strategic, societal and cultural tensions between heritage and tradition on the one hand, and modernity and technological innovation on the other, were in many respects reflected in the aims, activities and propagandistic work of the Navy and Air Leagues. The Navy League underlined the navy’s long-standing centrality to islandhood and insularity, national security, trade and commerce and the maintenance of Britain’s empire. Conversely, as aviation was a relatively new and rapidly developing form of technology, the Air League had little tradition to draw upon and so emphasised innovation, progress, excitement and the transformative nature of flight, for the most part ‘celebrating present and potential technological progress much more than past achievements’.⁹² In spite of their different approaches, both leagues could be said to have held ‘conservative notion[s] of modernity predicated on a desire for continuity’, with the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force representing tools through which to preserve an international status quo in which Britain played a leading role.⁹³

Sources and structure

In examining the place of organised militarism in the interwar period, this book uses a diverse and largely unused range of sources. Alongside the minute books, annual reports and memoranda of the two leagues, Organised Militarism utilises the private papers, diaries, letters and memoirs of a range of key figures connected with each organisation. Unfortunately, the papers of many leading figures seemingly no longer exist. However, the correspondence and files of several presidents, chairmen and secretary generals remain, revealing much about the internal debates, organisation and development of both leagues.⁹⁴ In detailing the relationship between each league and the service departments, the study also makes use of Admiralty sources and Air Ministry records. Beyond the institutional level, this book also analyses a range of other material, visual and documentary ephemera. This includes parliamentary proceedings, official souvenir programmes, posters, pamphlets, leaflets, local and national newspapers, military journals, oral-testimony collections, newsreels, photographs and satirical cartoons. Situating the activities of the Navy and Air Leagues within the wider landscape of interwar associational culture and voluntarism is crucial for providing a sense of the scale and significance of the two organisations. Accordingly, this book examines the papers and publications of a range of other associations in relation to the activities of the two leagues, including naval and aviation societies, liberal internationalist, pacifist and anti-war groups, as well as fascist and pro-German organisations.

In examining the influence and activities of the two leagues, this book is organised thematically. It starts with an institutional overview of the leagues, providing an account of their aims, work and leadership, before detailing finances and funding sources. It explores the extensive links between both leagues and the service departments, alongside connections between each organisation and the far right. It looks at women’s league-related activism, as well as the philanthropic and charitable activities of both organisations. As Chapter 1 demonstrates, the Navy and Air Leagues operated at the intersection between ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics and, although they were not mass-membership organisations, they were extremely well connected, with allies in the social, political and military elite.⁹⁵

After tracing the structural contours of each league, the book then considers how the leagues negotiated questions emerging from the First World War surrounding disarmament, collective security, internationalism and anti-war sentiment. Chapter 2 reveals that, far from being immune to such issues, both the Navy and Air Leagues briefly supported policies in favour of arms limitation or collective security, resulting in a series of high-profile resignations. Such policies were short lived, and it was not long before each league was once again promoting naval and aerial power.

Chapter 3 examines the political promotion of naval and aerial rearmament and the extent to which both organisations contributed to the military preparedness of Britain prior to the Second World War. While the agitation for naval and aerial armaments was at the core of each league’s ethos, by the mid-to-late 1930s, neither league was an unrelenting detractor of the state and neither called for a programme of unrestricted armaments. Each league was certainly critical of the state and service departments when necessary, but the increasingly symbiotic relationship between the leagues and the Admiralty and Air Ministry meant that propaganda for greater armaments was of a measured and restrained nature. Finally, the chapter uncovers the numerous links that existed between both leagues and the private manufacturers of armaments, otherwise known as the ‘merchants of death’. These links attracted much criticism and did little to distance either league from accusations of militarism.

Building upon the book’s previous focus on political, institutional and official expressions of militarism, Chapter 4 looks at how both leagues attempted to maintain links between the Royal Navy, the RAF and notions of nation, empire and national and imperial identity. For the Navy and Air Leagues, sea and air power were central to the preservation of nation, particularly in relation to ideas of insularity and islandhood. Both leagues similarly championed the Royal Navy and the RAF as tools for cultivating imperial unity and as a means through which to forge and maintain links with the predominantly white, self-governing dominions. Conversely, each league also pointed to the ways in which the Royal Navy and the RAF could be used to reinforce control over the ‘non-white portions of the empire’ – primarily through gunboat diplomacy and aerial bombardment.⁹⁶

Chapter 5 examines the educational efforts of both leagues and the creation of their own respective militaristic youth organisations: the SCC and ADCC. Although the youth of Britain had supposedly rejected war, popular and cultural forms of navalism and airmindedness particular appealed to British youth, while many willingly embraced ideas of patriotism, duty and service. Chapters 6 and 7 explore – through Trafalgar Day and Empire Air Day – cultural and symbolic representations of the navy and air force in the popular civic ritual of interwar Britain. Positioning itself within recent socio-cultural interest in the navy and aviation, the book argues that despite hostility towards the pomp and pageantry of pre-First World War military ceremony, events such as Trafalgar Day and Empire Air Day – and naval commemoration and aerial theatre more broadly – enjoyed significant resonance.⁹⁷ As Chapters 6 and 7 demonstrate, military theatre was a politically and culturally acceptable way of promoting rearmament, popular militarism and, particularly in the case of Empire Air Day, the military capabilities of the British state to domestic and global audiences.

The conclusion reflects on the work of the Navy and Air Leagues throughout the interwar years. It assesses their legacy and the extent to which each organisation achieved their respective goals of ensuring British naval and aerial supremacy. It emphasises that while neither organisation was able to attain large membership numbers, this by no means heralded the end of organised militarism. The book concludes by considering the place of organised militarism at the outbreak of the Second World War and how the Navy and Air Leagues contributed to the national war effort throughout the conflict.

Organised Militarism offers the most complete account of the Navy League and the Air League of the British Empire to date and shines new light upon the broader political and associational culture of the interwar period. The book argues that an examination of the Navy and Air Leagues provides crucial insights into key issues of the period including militarism and modernity, nation and empire, technology and tradition, youth and education, war and peace. It demonstrates that martial and militaristic sentiment remained an important part of mainstream British political culture, despite the ravages of war. Although there were calls for ‘no more parades’ in the interwar period, and while Britain had supposedly become a ‘peaceable kingdom’, militarism existed in institutional, ideological, cultural and popular forms. While patriotic and imperialist leagues remained ‘active forces’ in Britain following the First World War, the same is true of militaristic organisations as the following account of the Navy League and the Air League of the British Empire reveals.⁹⁸

Notes

1. Philip Noel-Baker, The Private Manufacture of Armaments: Volume I (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1936), 290–91.

2. Noel-Baker, Private Manufacture of Armaments, 293. Although Noel-Baker was concerned that such sentiments were ‘marginally libellous’ and left him ‘open to attack’, he felt his account was ‘true’ and ‘very important’. Churchill Archives Centre (CAC), Cambridge, the Papers of Baron Noel-Baker (Noel-Baker Papers), GBR/0014/NBKR 7/14/2, Correspondence, Letter from Philip Noel-Baker to Lord Robert Cecil, 23 July 1936.

3. Anne Summers, ‘Militarism in Britain Before the Great War’, History Workshop Journal, 2 (1976): 121; Matthew C. Hendley, Organized Patriotism and the Crucible of War: Popular Imperialism in Britain, 1914–1932 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012), 64; Bernhard Rieger, Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany, 1890–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 268.

4. Jon Lawrence, ‘Forging a Peaceable Kingdom: War, Violence, and Fear of Brutalization in Post-First World War Britain’, The Journal of Modern History, 75 (2003): 588.

5. Air League Bulletin, December 1923, 8.

6. National Maritime Museum (NMM), Greenwich, London, Arnold White Papers (White Papers), WHI/142, Arnold White, The Navy League and the Public, 1914, 10.

7. CAC, Noel-Baker Papers, GBR/0014/NBKR 7/16/2, Letter from Noel-Baker to Lord David Davies, 2 December 1936.

8. Air Review, May 1936, 11. Emphasis in original.

9. Air League Bulletin, November 1921, 165.

10. Air Review, October 1934, 14.

11. Flight, 10 April 1909, 204.

12. Royal Air Force Museum (RAF Museum), London, Lord Brabazon of Tara Papers (Brabazon Papers), AC 71/3, Box 75, 22; Letter from J.A. Chamier to J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon, 3 January 1935, 1; Air League Bulletin, February 1924, 11. I am grateful to Sophy Antrobus for bringing the Moore-Brabazon collection to my attention.

13. Air League Bulletin, February 1924, 11.

14. Philip Noel-Baker, The First World Disarmament Conference 1932–1933 and Why It Failed (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979), 60–61.

15. ‘Organised patriotism’ is used by Matthew Hendley to describe patriotic and imperialist organisations such as the National Service League, the League of the Empire and Victoria League. Hendley, Organized Patriotism. For a recent discussion of Edwardian patriotic leagues and the Conservative Right, see Chapter 1 of N.C. Fleming, Britannia’s Zealots, Volume I: Tradition, Empire and the Forging of the Conservative Right (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).

16. Frans Coetzee, For Party or Country: Nationalism and the Dilemmas of Popular Conservatism in Edwardian Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 16.

17. N.C. Fleming, ‘The Imperial Maritime League: British Navalism, Conflict, and the Radical Right, c.1907–1920’, War in History, 23 (2016): 301.

18. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/1, Navy League Minute Book 1894–1895 (NL Minute Book), Meeting held on 10 January 1895, 2–3.

19. The Navy League Journal, July 1895, 1.

20. Matthew Johnson, Militarism and the British Left, 1902–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 69.

21. Dirk Bönker, Militarism in a Global Age: Naval Ambitions in Germany and the United States Before World War I (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 1; Johnson, Militarism, 69. For a discussion of different forms of pre-war navalism, see Bradley Cesario, New Crusade: The Royal Navy and British Navalism, 1884–1914 (Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021), viii–x.

22. The principal exception is Duncan Redford, ‘Collective Security and Internal Dissent: The Navy League’s Attempts to Develop a New Policy towards British Naval Power Between 1919 and the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty’, History, 96 (2011): 48–67, although this only examines the Navy League up until 1922.

23. The ‘Aerial League of the British Empire’ became the ‘Air League of the British Empire’ following a resolution passed on 26 March 1920. The Air League (AL), London, Air League Minute Book (AL Minute Book), Extraordinary General Meeting, 26 March 1920, 1. For consistency, the Air League will be used throughout, even when referring to the Aerial League.

24. The National Archives (TNA), Kew, T 1/11059, Aerial League of the British Empire, Copy of Memorandum and Articles of Association, 1909, 1.

25. AL, AL Minute Book, Meeting of the Executive Committee (MEC), 3 May 1909, 2; 4; National Aerospace Library, Royal Aeronautical Society (NAL), Farnborough, ENV16C, Aerial League of the British Empire, ENV16A, Council and Executive Committee, 2.

26. AL, AL Minute Book, MEC, 7 April 1936, 2; The Times, 6 December 1939, 6.

27. Uri Bialer, ‘Elite Opinion and Defence Policy: Air Power Advocacy and British Rearmament during the 1930s’, British Journal of International Studies, 6 (1980): 32–51 provides an exception.

28. Even in his extensive study, Volker R. Berghahn noted that there was no scholarly consensus or ‘agreed theory’ of militarism. Volker R. Berghahn, Militarism: The History of an International Debate 1861–1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984 ed.), 123.

29. Johnson, Militarism, 4.

30. Michael Howard, War in European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 109.

31. Johnson, Militarism, 5.

32. Although Vagts also outlined the ideological elements of militarism such as ‘the qualities of caste and cult, authority and belief’: Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism: Civilian and Military (London: Meridian Books, 1959 ed.), 13–14.

33. Johnson, Militarism, 10–11; 13.

34. Lawrence, ‘Peaceable Kingdom’.

35. Cited in Laurence Cole, Military Culture and Popular Patriotism in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 12.

36. Cole, Military Culture, 13.

37. Nicholas Stargardt, The German Idea of Militarism: Radical and Socialist Critics, 1866–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 5.

38. John R. Gillis, ed., The Militarization of the Western World (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 2.

39. Cole, Military Culture, 13.

40. Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 93.

41. Vagts, A History of Militarism, 15.

42. Cole, Military Culture, 16.

43. Cole, Military Culture, 17.

44. Cole, Military Culture, 13.

45. Johnson, Militarism, 6. Emphasis in original.

46. Johnson, Militarism, 6–7.

47. David Edgerton, Warfare State: Britain, 1920–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 54.

48. David Edgerton, ‘Liberal Militarism and the British State’, New Left Review, 185 (1991): 138–69.

49. As Matthew Hendley notes with regards to organised patriotism and imperialism. Hendley, Organized Patriotism, 3.

50. Hendley, Organized Patriotism, 3–4; Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London: The Bodley Head, 1965).

51. Hendley, Organized Patriotism, 4.

52. Hendley, Organized Patriotism, 4.

53. Helen McCarthy, ‘Parties, Voluntary Associations, and Democratic Politics in Interwar Britain’, The Historical Journal, 50 (2007): 892; Hendley, Organized Patriotism, 6.

54. Helen McCarthy, The British People and the League of Nations: Democracy, Citizenship and Internationalism, c.1918–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 3; Edgerton, Warfare State, 54.

55. McCarthy, The British People, 3; 137. First coined by A.J.P. Taylor. See A.J.P. Taylor, The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792–1939 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1957), 51. Martin Ceadel distinguishes between ‘pacifism’, the ‘belief that all war is always wrong and should never be resorted to’, and ‘pacificism’, the ‘assumption that war, though sometimes necessary, is always an irrational and inhumane way to solve disputes, and that its prevention should always be an over-riding political priority’. Martin Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain 1914–1945: The Defining of a Faith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 3. Emphasis in original.

56. See Chapters 2 and 3 of Waqar H. Zaidi, Technological Internationalism and World Order: Aviation, Atomic Energy, and the Search for International Peace, 1920–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).

57. For the Oxford Union debate, see Martin Ceadel, ‘The “King and Country” Debate, 1933: Student Politics, Pacifism and the Dictators’, The Historical Journal, 22 (1979): 397–422. For the East Fulham by-election, see Martin Ceadel, ‘Interpreting East Fulham’, in By-Elections in British Politics, ed. Chris Cook and John Ramsden (London: Macmillan, 1973), 94–111. David C. Lukowitz, ‘British Pacifists and Appeasement: The Peace Pledge Union’, Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (1974): 115.

58. Susan Kingsley Kent, Aftershocks: Politics and Trauma in Britain, 1918–1931 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Lawrence, ‘Peaceable Kingdom’.

59. Helen McCarthy, ‘Democratizing British Foreign Policy: Rethinking the Peace Ballot, 1934–1935’, Journal of British Studies, 49 (2010): 358.

60. Noel-Baker, The First World Disarmament Conference, 141; J.A. Thompson, ‘The Peace Ballot and the Public’, Albion, 13 (1981): 381.

61. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Volume One: The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell & Co. Ltd, 1950 ed.), 152; Stephen Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1984), 538.

62. Martin Ceadel, ‘The First British Referendum: The Peace Ballot, 1934–5’, The English Historical Review, 95 (1980): 838.

63. Edgerton, Warfare State, 54; Donald S. Birn, The League of Nations Union 1918–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 143.

64. Jan Rüger, The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 260–61.

65. Caroline E. Playne, The Pre-War Mind in Britain: An Historical Review (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1928), 125.

66. A point made in relation to naval theatre by Jan Rüger, but which can be traced through military theatre and pageantry more broadly. Rüger, The Great Naval Game.

67. J.M. Kenworthy, Will Civilisation Crash? (London: Ernest Benn Ltd, 1927), 196.

68. Rowan Thompson, ‘No More Parades? Navy Weeks, Naval Theatre and Navalism, 1927–38’, Historical Research, 96 (2023): 241–2; Brett Holman, ‘The Militarisation of Aerial Theatre: Air Displays and Airmindedness in Britain and Australia Between the World Wars’, Contemporary British History, 33 (2019): 500.

69. See John O. Springhall, ‘The Boy Scouts, Class and Militarism in Relation to Youth Movements 1908–1930’, International Review of Social History, 16 (1971): 125–58; John Springhall, ‘Baden-Powell and the Scout Movement Before 1920: Citizen Training or Soldiers of the Future?’, The English Historical Review, 102 (1987): 934–42; John Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society: British Youth Movements, 1883–1940 (London: Croom Helm, 1977); Michael Rosenthal, The Character Factory: Baden-Powell and the Origins of the Boy Scout Movement (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986); Richard A. Voeltz, ‘ “… A Good Jew and a Good Englishman”: The Jewish Lads’ Brigade, 1894–1922’, Journal of Contemporary History, 23 (1988): 119–27; and Summers, ‘Militarism in Britain’. Martin Dedman, Allen Warren and Sam Pryke have contrastingly argued that the militarism of groups such as the Boy Scouts has been exaggerated: Martin Dedman, ‘Baden-Powell, Militarism, and the “Invisible Contributors” to the Boy Scout Scheme, 1904–1920’, Twentieth Century British History, 4 (1993): 201–23; Allen Warren, ‘Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the Scout Movement and Citizen Training in Great Britain, 1900–1920’, The English Historical Review, 101 (1986): 376–98; Sam Pryke, ‘The Popularity of Nationalism in the Early British Boy Scout Movement’, Social History, 23 (1998): 309–24.

70. Scott Johnston, ‘Courting Public Favour: The Boy Scout Movement and the Accident of Internationalism, 1907–29’, Historical Research, 88 (2015): 508.

71. Edgerton, Warfare State, 1.

72. Edgerton, Warfare State, 58.

73. 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.

74. Redford, The Royal Navy, 70–71.

75. Richard Harding, Modern Naval History: Debates and Prospects (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 128; Redford, ‘Collective Security’, 48.

76. Duncan Redford, ‘Introduction’, in Maritime History, ed. Redford, 6. For a challenge to this narrative in relation to historical pageantry, see Rowan Thompson, ‘Naval Pageantry, Heritage, and Commemoration in Interwar Britain’, The Historical Journal, 68 (2025): 376–96.

77. Eleanor K. O’Keeffe, ‘The Great War and “Military Memory”: War and Remembrance in the Civic Public Sphere, 1919–1939’, Journalism Studies, 17 (2016): 443.

78. Christopher M. Bell, The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy Between the Wars (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 180.

79. The Navy, June 1931, 155.

80. Bell, The Royal Navy, xv.

81. Paul Readman, ‘ “The Cliffs Are Not Cliffs”: The Cliffs of Dover and National Identities in Britain, c.1750–c.1950’, History, 49 (2014): 242; 249. For a discussion of this in relation to naval theatre, see Thompson, ‘No More Parades’, 227.

82. Air League Bulletin, February 1926, 7.

83. Brett Holman, ‘Spectre and Spectacle: Mock Air Raids as Aerial Theatre in Interwar Britain’, in Aviation in the Literature and Culture of Interwar Britain Aviation, ed. Michael McCluskey and Luke Seaber (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 228.

84. Roxanne Panchasi, Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France Between the Wars (Ithaca, NY; London: Cornell University Press, 2009).

85. David Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane: Militarism, Modernity and Machines (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2013 ed.), 70.

86. Holman, ‘The Militarisation of Aerial Theatre’, 483–4.

87. A feature of British experiences of modernity in this period as shown in Rieger, Technology.

88. Holman, ‘The Militarisation of Aerial Theatre’, 483.

89. Holman, ‘Spectre and Spectacle’, 229.

90. CAC, The Papers of Lord Lloyd of Dolobran (Lloyd Papers), GBR/0014/GLLD 22/16, Lecture to the Glasgow Branch of the Navy League, 1 April 1936, 1.

91. Air Review, September 1936, 13.

92. As in the case of aerial theatre, Brett Holman, ‘The Meaning of Hendon: The Royal Air Force Display, Aerial Theatre and the Technological Sublime, 1920–37’, Historical Research, 93 (2020): 139.

93. Rieger, Technology, 274.

94. This is not the case in all instances. For example, the papers of Lord Mottistone – Air League president in the early 1920s and chairman for much of the 1930s – and Lord Montagu – one of the league’s founders and president 1917–20 – contain little on their respective tenures. Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Papers of John Edward Bernard Seely, Lord Mottistone (Mottistone Papers); Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (LHCMA), London, Douglas-Scott-Montagu, Brig. Gen. John Walter Edward, 2nd Baron (GB0099 KCLMA Douglas-Scott-Montagu).

95. Much like pre-war patriotic organisations. Coetzee, For Party or Country, 6.

96. A feature of naval theatre in this period John C. Mitcham, ‘The 1924 Empire Cruise and the Imagining of an Imperial Community’, Britain and the World, 12 (2019): 69.

97. Recent examples include Quintin Colville and James Davey, eds, A New Naval History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019) and McCluskey and Seaber, eds, Aviation.

98. Hendley, Organized Patriotism, 228.