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The League of Nations, Public Ritual and
National Identity in Britain, c.1919–56by Helen McCarthy
On the morning of Saturday 8 November 1919, the streets linking the his-
toric Guildhall in the City of London to the Royal Courts of Justice two
miles to the west began to fill with crowds drawn by the promise of a
dazzling visual spectacle. The occasion was the Lord Mayor’s Show, an
ancient ritual first performed in the thirteenth century to mark the installa-tion of a new occupant in London’s highest municipal office. The fortunes of
the annual procession had waxed and waned over the centuries, but by the
time of the First World War its status as one of the most eagerly anticipated
dates in the civic calendar was once more assured.1 As on previous occa-
sions, spectators lining the route in 1919 marvelled at the brilliant display of
civic and military pageantry, the mayor’s familiar gilded coach and the
eye-catching banners of the London livery companies interspersed with
marching bands and columns upon columns of smartly uniformed troops.
This year, however, the Lord Mayor’s Show unveiled a novel feature.Filling a large slot between the pipers of the Scots Guards and the
Worshipful Company of Musicians could be seen a lavish pageant dedicated
to the League of Nations, the supranational body created only months
before by the Allies at the Paris Peace Conference. At the head of the pa-
geant strode the Herald of Peace, followed by a horse-drawn wagon fes-
tooned with foliage and conveying five exotically attired women
representing the continents of the world. Appearing next, as the Times cor-
respondent described, was ‘a long cavalcade of women on horseback, per-
sonating the Allied States and neutral countries, all in the national costumes,and attended by ‘‘maids of honour’’, young girls in white with flowing veils
and bearing roses’.2 Onlookers feasted their eyes upon France wearing her
liberty cap and tricolour robe, Italy in green, red and white with a wreath of
grapes on her head, Japan, whose hair was garlanded with yellow chrysan-
themums, and beyond her the United States, clad in stars and stripes. The
dominions and the four nations of the United Kingdom followed on, with
the helmeted figure of Britannia bringing up the rear. It was, the Times
reporter gushed, ‘really one of the most wonderful sights of the kind ever
seen in the streets of London’.3
The League of Nations was to make a repeat appearance at the Lord
Mayor’s Show exactly a decade later in the shape of an intricately decorated
horse-drawn car occupied by a giant birthday cake, marking the tenth
History Workshop Journal Issue 70 doi:10.1093/hwj/dbq018
ß The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of History Workshop Journal, all rights reserved.
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anniversary of the signing of the Covenant in Paris.4 By then, however, such
sights were far from unusual in the streets of interwar Britain, having
become a stock-in-trade of the lively popular movement which had grown
up around the League, and they would not disappear until well after the
Second World War. This distinctly internationalist tradition of public ritualhas been almost wholly ignored by historians, despite an abundance of lit-
erature on popular peace activism and a rich historiography exploring the
complex relationship between national identity and the construction of
so-called ‘invented traditions’.5 The latter have been famously defined by
Eric Hobsbawm as practices ‘normally governed by overtly or tacitly ac-
cepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate
certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically
implies continuity with the past’.6 Under this broad conceptual banner his-
torians of modern Britain have analysed everything from civic centenariesand acts of remembrance to imperial pageantry and military tattoos.7
Although frequently disagreeing over the ideological effects of such trad-
itions, these scholars tend to concur with sociologists that public ritual, in
whatever form it takes, performs important identity work.8 Rituals draw
attention to certain objects of thought and feeling through symbolic acts and
thus, to quote Paul Connerton, ‘have the capacity to give value and meaning
to the life of those who perform them’.9
It is in this framework that this article explores the phenomenon of inter-
nationalist public ritual after 1918. The argument is essentially twofold.
First, the article aims to fill a notable gap in the existing literature on inter-
war peace activism by demonstrating how British supporters of the League
of Nations made extensive use of public ritual to communicate key
liberal-internationalist ideas concerning global interdependence, interna-
tional government and world citizenship to a mass electorate. Second, and
more ambitiously, it argues that through public ritual these ideas became
part of the symbolic resources available to British people as they sought to
make sense of their relationship to the imperial nation-state and to the
broader geopolitical transformations set in train by the war. By revealing
how League-themed ritual became embedded within existing civic traditions
across the political spectrum, the analysis shows how the belief that Britain
belonged to – and owed certain duties towards – an imagined international
community became more central to popular representations of national
identity than at any time previously.
In short, League activists created a new field of symbolic display which
both reflected and reinforced a wider shift in public understandings of na-
tionhood in the postwar world. These effects were at their strongest between
1920 and 1936; thereafter domestic controversies over foreign policy led to
the loss of much of the tradition’s ‘civic’ character and League-themed ritualbecame increasingly implicated in the oppositional political theatre of the
left. As the final section of the article shows, the internationalist tradition
experienced something of a revival immediately after the Second World
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War, bolstered by the idealism surrounding the establishment of the United
Nations. Yet by the mid 1950s this tradition was once more displaying dis-
tinct signs of decay, a consequence of further shifts in the meaning of na-
tional identity brought about by the new global polarities of the Cold War.
* * *
The idea of international government naturally has a long intellectual pedi-
gree, but it makes sense to begin our story in the final days of the First
World War, when proposals for some kind of peace league in Britain had
reached an advanced stage. Emboldened by the endorsement of Woodrow
Wilson in his famous ‘Fourteen Points’ speech of January 1918, progressives
both inside and outside government stepped up their efforts to sell the
League to the British public.10 This campaign was co-ordinated after the
Armistice by the League of Nations Union (LNU), a non-partypressure-group which aimed, as stated in the first of its objects: ‘To secure
the whole-hearted acceptance by the British people of the ‘‘League of
Nations’’ as the Guardian of International Right, the organ of
International Co-operation, the final arbiter in International Differences,
and the supreme instrument for removing injustices which may threaten
the Peace of the World’.11 By pushing a moderate, centrist line and organiz-
ing on a broad, non-sectarian basis, the LNU became within a decade one of
Britain’s foremost voluntary associations, with a Royal Charter, a paid-up
membership of over 400,000 and thousands of organizational affiliates
comprising political parties, peace societies, religious institutions, youth
organizations, women’s associations and various other civic bodies.12
Furthermore, the LNU attracted some of the most distinguished political
and intellectual figures of the day: these included Tory aristocrat Robert
Cecil, Oxford classicist Gilbert Murray, the former Liberal Foreign
Secretary, Edward Grey, Liberal peer David Davies and Labour politician
Philip Noel Baker.
As this line-up suggests, the LNU accommodated a wide spectrum of
opinion; it included pacifists like Maude Royden and Clifford Allen –
who disavowed Article 16 of the Covenant concerning the use of military
sanctions – as well as champions of an international army under League
control, such as Davies. Its executive embraced those who viewed the
League as a useful but only secondary sphere of diplomatic influence,
such as the Tory elder statesman Austen Chamberlain, alongside others
who believed that British foreign policy should be conducted almost exclu-
sively through the collective system of the League, such as Cecil and
Murray. The LNU’s dominant ideology can, however, be described as es-
sentially liberal-internationalist in character, with the vast majority of its
membership committed to a set of core propositions which might be sum-marized as follows: first, a recognition of the conditions of global inter-
dependence wrought by the proliferation of social, cultural and economic
ties between states over the previous half-century; second, the desirability of
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international government as a substitute for the anarchic political relations
and unfettered nationalism prevailing before 1914; third, the need for or-
dinary Britons to promote friendly ties between nations, which, under the
influence of Wilsonian thought, were seen as the ‘natural’ unit of human
organization (at least for ‘civilized’ peoples); and fourth, the belief that theLeague was mutually compatible with, and indeed a guarantor of, Britain’s
status as a liberal imperial power.13 These ideas were frequently distilled in
LNU discourse into the notion of ‘enlightened patriotism’, a handy formula
which yoked man’s natural love of country to his wider loyalty to the inter-
national community. As the LNU’s General Secretary, Maxwell Garnett,
informed an audience of educators in 1926:
For the Englishman, for the Briton, for the citizen of the British
Commonwealth of nations, there can be no valid reason why the unionof nations and the building of larger loyalties out of present patriotisms
should not keep pace with the widening of individual human interests to
cover the whole shrinking world.14
Convinced that the war experience had stimulated a new-found interest in
foreign affairs amongst the public, the LNU pursued its aim of turning
Britons into ‘enlightened patriots’ through an array of propaganda tech-
niques. It issued pamphlets and educational tracts, hosted public meetings,
arranged deputations and wrote to the press; its greatest single success in
terms of publicizing the League took place in 1935, when the LNU per-
suaded almost twelve million Britons to vote in its famous ‘Peace Ballot’, an
unofficial referendum on the future of British foreign policy.15 These activ-
ities have received some attention from historians, but notably absent from
their accounts is any mention of the very extensive efforts made by the LNU
to frame its propaganda in a symbolic or ritual form: efforts which, as will
become clear, played a crucial role in embedding the League movement into
the civic mainstream.
This tendency was present from the very outset. In 1919, for example,
the LNU instigated the first ‘League of Nations Day’, scheduled for
11 November, the date of the signing of the Armistice the year before,
with a ‘League of Nations Sunday’ to be observed in churches two days
earlier.16 As a handbook designated for use by teachers revealed, the LNU
hoped that schools would mark the occasion with special assemblies com-
prising hymns, readings and dramatic tableaux depicting the enthronement
of Peace through the creation of the League.17 The LNU attempted a more
elaborate observance of League of Nations Day two years later with a huge
rally in Hyde Park, this time taking place on 25 June, to commemorate
the signing of the Covenant at Versailles. Eight separate processions con-verged on the park where they encountered massed choirs blasting
out Parry’s ‘Jerusalem’, dancers clad in national costume, girls in white
frocks selling silver doves of peace, and a grand pageant performed by the
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Guild of Citizenship.18 The impulse to commemorate was shared by the
LNU’s Welsh National Council, which marked the League’s tenth birthday
in January 1930 by planting a cherry tree in Cardiff’s Cathays Park and
arranging for the War Memorial nearby to be floodlit in the evening, a
practice repeated in subsequent years.19
League-themed ritual was not, however, confined to symbolically signifi-
cant dates. Pageantry was immensely popular amongst local branches, de-
livering the escapist pleasures of theatrical role-play and opportunities
for the more creatively inclined to demonstrate their artistic flair. With
such titles as ‘The Crowning of Peace’, ‘Earth and Her Children’ and
‘The Desire of All Nations’, these pageants visualized the LNU’s message
through a series of dramatic, often allegorical tableaux linked by music,
movement and dialogue. They typically depicted the figure of Peace or
Mother Earth weeping over the follies of mankind, followed by a scenein which the League proceeds to banish war and pestilence from the
world and a grand finale where the assembled nations swear solemnly to
live together peacefully under a common law.20 Often involving schoolchil-
dren as well as adults, these pageants were performed as stand-alone dra-
matic pieces, sometimes featuring in the programmes of LNU fetes or
garden parties.
Their key constituent element – the tableau vivant (or living picture) –
appeared in many other guises. In Rushden, Northamptonshire, for ex-
ample, local LNU activists organized an elaborate League Pageant in
October 1921 consisting of a colourful parade of walking tableaux and
decorated vehicles which wound its way through the town before congregat-
ing at the local park for a mass rally. The tableaux included ‘The Fruits of
Peace’ (a group of children carrying baskets filled with fruit and flowers),
‘Battleships or Houses?’, which vividly conveyed the crippling costs of arma-
ments, and ‘The League’s Attack Upon Typhus in Poland’, a depiction of
the League’s relief work in Eastern Europe.21 In a similar ‘Pageant of Ideals’
in Castleford (West Yorkshire) in May 1925 dozens of tableaux depicted the
various members of the League in national costume; one in Hull two years
later adopted a similar format. In all three cases, these were quasi-official
events, staged in co-operation with municipal authorities and drawing a
cross-section of local societies into their orbit; the Castleford pageant fea-
tured tableaux from the Boy Scouts, Women’s Co-operative Guild, a selec-
tion of working-men’s clubs and representatives of the churches and local
political parties, while the Mayor’s Rolls-Royce led a motorcade conveying
distinguished guests from neighbouring towns.22
This civic flavour extended through the League-themed tableaux which
made regular appearances at other kinds of community events. The
Plymouth branch, for instance, contributed a tableau entitled ‘The Templeof Peace’ to the annual carnival parade in July 1926, whilst in Salisbury
the following year a gaily-decorated LNU car was prominent in a proces-
sion marking the seven-hundredth anniversary of the city’s royal charter.23
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Some of the largest crowds to witness internationalist pageantry congre-
gated in Preston in 1922, where a League car assumed pride of place in
the famous Preston Guild celebrations (a ceremony dating back some
eight hundred years), and at the rather less venerable and altogether
more brash Blackpool Carnival of 1924, where an estimated 150,000turned out to view a prize-winning LNU float. This featured an Angel
of Peace surrounded by the figures of Seedtime and Harvest plus
fifty-four schoolgirls dressed in the costumes of the League member-states.
Boy Scouts and schoolboys flanked the float bearing the corresponding
national flags.24 This partiality for dressing up and flag-waving was
indulged through other kinds of events, too, reflecting the privileged
status of nationality as the dominant state form in the post-
Versailles world. The LNU’s Festival of Youth, for example, held at
the Crystal Palace in 1927, culminated in a Great Massed Gathering,in which, according to the LNU journal Headway, contingents of school-
children and youth groups filed ‘with national flags and in picturesque cos-
tume up the centre of the Hall, and the applause almost drowned the fine
rendering of the different national anthems by the band of the Scots
Guards’.25
This brief overview indicates the range of League-themed ritual practices
after 1918, but what of their prevalence and geographical reach? Given the
localized nature of these events, it is impossible to quantify League-themed
ritual with any precision, but it seems clear from LNU records that suchactivities were popular amongst the thousands of local branches (especially
in the summer months) and remained so throughout the period. In 1920, for
example, prizes were offered by headquarters for ‘best League pageant’,
implying that the practice was already well-established.26 Branch records
from Mere (Wiltshire) reveal repeated activities of this kind: a children’s
pageant planned for autumn 1922; a special set of tableaux performed by
local men in November 1926; a carnival car in 1932 and again in 1934; a
further set of tableaux in 1938.27 Similar reports of pageants, prize-winning
tableaux and costume balls regularly appeared in Headway into the late1930s, with events taking place in large cities, market towns and sleepy
villages in all parts of Great Britain.28 There exists, finally, a distinguished
literary source for League pageantry: Virginia Woolf’s final novel, Between
the Acts, published in 1941 but set shortly before the outbreak of the War.
The story famously centres on a village pageant, a feature which has at-
tracted some attention from literary scholars, but the appearance of the
League in one of the final scenes has apparently escaped their notice.29
Depicted in the form of a ‘black man in fuzzy wig’ and his ‘coffee-coloured’
colleague ‘in silver turban’, the League is portrayed helping to rebuild thewall of civilization. That Woolf saw fit to feature the League in this manner
suggests its inclusion in historical pageants may have had some wider cul-
tural resonance.
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* * *
After this attempt to convey some sense of the range and scale of
League-themed ritual, the knottier problem of interpreting its meaning
must now be confronted, starting with the wider field of symbolic display
in which these practices operated. In certain respects, the LNU built on the
traditions of the nineteenth-century peace movement: the Peace Society, for
example, established a ‘Peace Day’ in 1896, although the organized spectacle
of the later League version was largely missing from this annual event.30
Prewar peace activists also sought, like League supporters, to dignify their
cause through association with the ceremonial aspects of civic life, for ex-
ample inviting municipal worthies to preside at public meetings wearing
their chains of office.31 On the whole, though, postwar internationalist
ritual owed remarkably little to the earlier peace movement, whose primary
modes of persuasion had been the pamphlet, petition, public meeting andannual congress.32 Even the latter incorporated only minimal elements of
orchestrated pomp; the Universal Peace Congress held in London in July
1890 included a reception at the Mansion House and dinner at the National
Liberal Federation, but flag-waving, pageantry and tableaux were notably
absent in press reports.33
Postwar internationalist ritual did, however, owe an important debt to
other aspects of late Victorian and Edwardian culture. As components of
public ritual, pageantry and tableaux had a remarkably long history, dating
back to medieval liturgical drama, the Renaissance masque and the eclecticrepresentational traditions of carnival. Elements of these survived right into
the twentieth century and were occasionally revived by LNU branches, in,
for example, the form of League-themed ‘mystery plays’.34 A more imme-
diate point of reference for activists, however, was likely to have been the
Edwardian genre of historical pageantry, a phenomenon popularized by
Louis Parker and Frank Lascelles; the latter oversaw the spectacular
London Pageant performed at the Festival of Empire in 1911.35 These pa-
geants dramatized the history of a locality through a series of episodic scenes
performed by a large cast of volunteers, often starting with the Romans oralternatively King Arthur, almost always including a reconstruction of
Elizabethan ‘Merrie England’, and usually ending around the time of the
Glorious Revolution. More than forty pageants of this kind were staged
before 1914, and dozens more thereafter.
Where Parker laid the accent on historical accuracy and narrative,
Lascelles emphasized allegory and visual spectacle, but the creative influ-
ences of both were evident in League pageantry after the War; indeed it was
Parker who devised the League pageant at the Lord Mayor’s Show. The
distinctly historical sensibility nurtured by the new pageantry was present inthe event staged by League supporters in Ripon in 1935, which depicted the
evolution of law and order from Biblical times to the present day.36 One
episode showed the triumph of royal power over seditious nobles through a
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thirteenth-century court scene which was based on research in the archives
of the city of Norwich, whilst another portrayed the beneficial effects of the
Factory Acts in England and drew a parallel with the labour conventions of
the modern International Labour Organization (ILO). In keeping with the
rules of the genre, the pageant incorporated orchestral music, tumbling,burlesque ballet and poetic verse.37 Other League pageants and tableaux
adopted a more allegorical approach, producing aesthetic effects which sug-
gest the influence of Pre-Raphaelite art and the broader medievalism of the
Victorian era. For example, the ‘Italy’ contingent in the Castleford pageant
featured a tableau of Dante’s meeting with Beatrice, whilst Joan of Arc
figured repeatedly in League pageantry as a symbol of France.38 Again,
this reflected the enduring aesthetic purchase of medieval subjects beyond
1914, and perhaps also the popular success of Shaw’s play, St Joan, which
received its premiere in London in 1924.39
Internationalist public ritual also exhibited features reminiscent of the
exuberant electoral culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Although some have argued that popular politics was ‘tamed’ in this period
through the growth of professional party machines and the introduction of
the secret ballot, it is clear that many electoral rites survived or were recon-
figured by the advent of mass democracy.40 The fiercely-fought battles be-
tween free traders and tariff reformers, as Frank Trentmann has recently
shown, produced an orgy of visual propaganda in the decades before 1914,
blending elements of pageantry, music-hall and fairground into a colourful
and explosive mix.41 As Jon Lawrence has shown, this bracing theatre of
electoral politics lost much of its rowdy character amidst new norms
of non-violence following in the wake of the 1918 Fourth Reform Act.42
Yet the performative practices of Edwardian popular politics were not aban-
doned but refashioned after 1918, with the centrist, non-party LNU
amongst those wider forces facilitating the shift towards more orderly pol-
itical uses of public space.43
In this the League movement could draw also upon the mobilizing stra-
tegies evident in the new brand of ‘invented’ political tradition which
emerged in the late nineteenth century but continued to develop well
beyond 1914. These ranged from the choreographed fleet reviews inspired
by Anglo-German naval rivalry, to the ‘Empire Day’ celebrations pioneered
by Reginald Brabazon from 1904.44 They included the founding of the Boy
Scouts as a mass, uniformed youth movement promoting muscular
Christianity, patriotic manliness and character-training for children of all
classes, and encompassed the maturation of an ostentatious cult of mon-
archy, exemplified by the jubilees of 1887 and 1897 and the imperial Durbars
of British India.45 And finally, in the English provinces, the era of the in-
vented tradition witnessed a revival of civic ritual under the influence of urban liberalism, producing the rich public culture which, as we have seen,
the LNU was only too eager to appropriate after 1919.46 Indeed, the strength
of these existing traditions of municipal display must partially explain why
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League supporters were so successful at staging large-scale civic events in
such towns as Preston, Derby and Hull – events which, it might be said,
rather problematize notions of ‘civic decline’ after the First World War.47
Many historians have regarded these ritual practices as vehicles employed
by elites to legitimize the existing social and political order. Yet ritual couldwork in counter-hegemonic directions, too, as the invented tradition of
‘May Day’, founded by the International Socialist Congress in 1890, and
the extensive repertoire of symbolic practices developed by British suffra-
gists testify.48 The celebration of centenaries could embrace patriotic and
conservative themes, such as the Navy League’s commemoration of the
battle of Trafalgar in 1905, but also inspire events of a more radical char-
acter, such as the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth in 1864, and that of
Cromwell in 1899.49 These centenaries continued into the interwar period
and occasionally dovetailed with the activities of the LNU. In 1933 forinstance, a number of branches joined the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines
Protection Society in marking one hundred years since the abolition of slav-
ery in the British Empire, using the occasion to raise awareness of the
League’s work to eliminate the practice in the contemporary world.50
* * *
Thus these older traditions of political and civic ritual did not disappear
with the achievement of extended suffrage in 1918 and full enfranchisement
in 1928, although they were certainly reconfigured under the impact of new
technologies of mass communication and acquired new meanings in the light
of fascist techniques of mass psychology in the 1930s (a point to which our
analysis will return). Yet whilst politicians, monarchs and municipal autho-
rities were forced to adapt their practices in line with the new pressures of
mass democracy, internationalist public ritual was able to continue drawing
on a rich array of established symbolic practices with roots in the pre-1914
period. But, as may by now be clear, the League movement did not simply
emulate these existing forms. Rather, League supporters sought to publicize
their message more widely by embedding it in mainstream communityevents. It is true that in certain contexts internationalists adopted an oppos-
itional stance: namely, towards official ritual forms which appeared to le-
gitimize militarism and aggressive nationalism. Peace activists, including
some sections of the LNU rank and file, lodged vociferous protests, for
instance, against the gung-ho jingoism of the military tattoos and air-shows
which enjoyed increasing popularity amongst the interwar public.51 Yet this
anti-militarism, which was strongest among pacifist bodies and sections of
the radical left, was successfully contained by LNU leaders, who were anx-
ious to project a moderate, respectable public image at all times.52
Far more commonly expressed was the view that the movement’s core
message concerning Britain’s international obligations ought to be inte-
grated into existing ritual forms. One important example of this act of
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synthesis as yet unexplored concerned the highly emotive rites of remem-
brance. The LNU held thousands of public meetings and religious services
on or around Armistice Day, the aim being to bolt on to the collective
memory of the war-dead a shared faith that such sacrifice would never
again be necessary now that the League was here to stay.53
As with Leaguepageants, these were often quasi-official events; in Derby in 1923, for ex-
ample, the two-minute silence was followed in the afternoon by an LNU
procession and service, ‘one of the biggest and most representative ever
seen in Derby’, according to the local press.54 Meanwhile an LNU
Armistice meeting in Tottenham in 1927 was actually called by the municipal
authorities and billed as ‘A Great Town’s Peace Demonstration’.55 In many
places the LNU participated in the official wreath-laying ceremonies along-
side civic officials and war veterans.56 The Welsh National Council regularly
laid wreaths at the National War Memorial in Cardiff and the North WalesWar Memorial in Bangor, and from 1922 participated in an annual ceremony
at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey, placing a
wreath on behalf of the Welsh people.57 In some boroughs sympathetic
local education authorities (LEAs) encouraged teachers to make special men-
tion of the League during Armistice Day observations; the Smethwick autho-
rities decreed in 1925 that the date should be observed as a ‘Peace Day’, an
innovation which was warmly endorsed in a circular issued by the
Association of Education Committees in 1932 and sent to all LEAs.58
The parallel and growing trend for schools to recognize Britain’s obliga-
tions to the League as part of Empire Day festivities reveals how the LNU’s
integrative project also targeted the popular culture of imperialism.
Although this phenomenon has received little historical attention, by the
late 1920s no fewer than 164 LEAs in England and Wales were instructing
schools to make the League a regular feature of Empire Day as a result of
sustained lobbying by the LNU and of supranational initiatives emanating
from the League itself.59 That other symbol of Edwardian high imperialism,
the Scout Association, was also co-opted into League-themed ritual. Robert
Baden Powell’s movement underwent something of an internationalist turn
after 1918, establishing new branches outside the British Empire which
would meet periodically at International Jamborees.60 These gatherings,
which were often referred to in Scout discourse as representing a ‘junior’
League of Nations, laid great emphasis on the values of world brotherhood
and international goodwill and featured ‘pageants of the nations’ strikingly
similar in form and design to those of the LNU.61 At the Jamboree held at
Olympia in 1920, Robert Cecil stood beside Baden Powell for the march past
of the national contingents and later addressed the hall, remarking upon the
‘great connection between the Boy Scout movement and the League of
Nations. The principles of the two ideas were the same’, he observed:‘Candour, self-control, friendship and co-operation. These were the watch-
words of both the Scouts and the League’.62 Links with the Girl Guides were
also close, with LNU speakers granted special permission to address groups
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of Guides, and an ‘International Knowledge’ badge was introduced in 1927
for which girls were tested on League subjects.63 Although Scout and Guide
leaders never failed to promulgate to their charges the special bond of
empire, there was after 1918 an unmistakable tendency to link, in the
same manner as the LNU, the familial ties of Commonwealth to member-ship of a wider international community. Having himself become a
Vice-President of the LNU two years earlier, Baden Powell insisted that
the Empire Jamboree held in London in 1924 was but a warm-up for the
International Jamboree opening immediately afterwards in Denmark. The
former event, he argued, ‘big though it has been in its results and its possi-
bilities, was only a step in progression to the greater Rally, with its still more
far-reaching possibilities of the nations at Copenhagen’.64 In hosting both
gatherings in succession, the movement gained, the Chief Scout declared, ‘a
double step of magnitude in the expansion and strengthening of our Empirebrotherhood and of our fellowship with the oncoming generation of other
nations across the world’.65
The link between internationalist ritual and imperialist propaganda was
further strengthened through the presence of League pavilions at the Empire
Exhibitions of 1924 and 1938. Visitors to the LNU enclosure at Wembley
would have seen postage stamps from around the world, photographs of
famous Geneva personalities and colourful exhibits on the work of the
League.66 A more elaborate pavilion was constructed for the 1938 exhibition
in Glasgow, which incorporated a ‘garden of the good neighbour’ modelled
on the parkland established on the frontier between Canada and the USA.67
Its poignant centrepiece was a ‘Peace Cairn’ erected upon foundation stones
contributed by the Governor-General of Australia, the Aga Khan of India
and the King and Queen, who donated a piece of Balmoral granite whilst
visiting the pavilion in May.68
Given the monarch’s increasingly close identification as head of the im-
perial ‘family’ – facilitated by radio broadcasts and imperial set-pieces like
the 1935 Jubilee and 1937 Coronation – this choreographed royal appear-
ance further helped to bind the cause of the League visually and symbolic-
ally with empire.69 The LNU won a notable coup in 1930 by persuading the
Prince of Wales to address a grand banquet held in Guildhall in honour of
delegates attending the Imperial Conference. Speaking alongside Labour
Minister Jimmy Thomas, Austen Chamberlain and the Prime Minister of
Canada, the Prince paid tribute to the achievements of the LNU and
rehearsed the by then familiar line on the mutuality of Britain’s imperial
mission and her international obligations: ‘If one-fourth of the human race
can thus prove the practicability of a true League of united but independent
nations,’ he asked, ‘is it mere idealism to hope that the remaining
three-fourths will be able to tread the same path?’70
If the activities described thus far targeted the rituals of established au-
thority, LNU activists sought also to penetrate the more oppositional trad-
itions of the labour and trade union movement. To some extent,
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internationalism was second nature to labour activists, inherent in their
ideological commitment to proletarian solidarity across national borders
and visible in the universal symbolism of red flags and revolutionary
songs.71 Those on the radical left after 1918 tended to denounce the
League and its auxiliary, the ILO, as capitalist-imperialist enterprisesunder the control of the allied powers (although the paths of the radical
left and League movement, as we will see, would later converge through the
politics of anti-appeasement).72 Yet large sections of more moderate Labour
and trade-union opinion welcomed the collective system at Geneva as an
opportunity to replace militarism with co-operation and to improve condi-
tions for workers both in Britain and overseas.73 This translated into regular
participation in League-themed ritual; Labour activists in Heywood, for
example, contributed an impressive float to a LNU demonstration in 1924
which featured children dressed in white positioned amidst an arrestingdisplay of anti-war slogans and Biblical inscriptions.74 Furthermore, the
League movement became associated with a remarkable initiative by the
railway unions in January 1929, when the Chesterfield LNU branch
played host to a three-day visit by the ‘Railway Queen’. The ‘Queen’,
crowned a few months earlier at the annual Railwaymen’s Carnival in
Manchester and shortly to depart on an overseas tour to spread a message
of goodwill to trade unionists, was met by a welcoming committee at the
station before proceeding to a wreath-laying ceremony at the war memorial,
a public meeting at the Market Hall and an official tea with the Mayor.
75
* * *
The aim of League ritual thus was to synthesize and reframe existing sym-
bolic practices, not to fracture or displace them. This process of cultural
mainstreaming represented a means by which League supporters sought to
embed their movement in wider civil society and to reconfigure the narra-
tives of collective identity available to Britons, who were encouraged to see
themselves as members of an international community, as well as citizens of
an imperial nation-state. This reframing can be seen very clearly in oper-ation in the League pageant: where Britannia might, in the old Parkerian
version, be accompanied in the final scene by figures representing the do-
minions, in the League pageant the imperial grouping appeared flanked by
the other nations of the world, with patriotism put at last in its proper place.
The final chorus of Earth and Her Children expressed this point explicitly:
Oh, not enough, the Patriot’s deed;
We must not curse, we must not hate.
A life of active love to lead,That is the path of our New State.
We love the land that gave us birth,
We love her customs and her laws,
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But other nations have their worth;
Let us with them make common cause.
We love our hearth, our home, our kin,
Our great tradition and our name;
But other men a goal may win,
Diverse in form, in thought the same.76
Pageant processions communicated the same idea of nations possessing
distinct and historic personalities but united in their diversity. In Hull, the
grand pageant of 1927 was arranged in five sections, with England, Scotland
and Wales at the head, followed by the Dominions and then the other na-
tions of the world. Familiar figures such as Britannia and John Bull ap-
peared, but they did so as members of a wider international family which
included Italy, Norway, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland and many
others.77 Individual League tableaux necessarily had to compress these mes-
sages into a single, eye-catching float, but their presence in carnivals and
parades was intended to produce a similar effect, a performance of interna-
tional community juxtaposed with the alternative identities inscribed in the
marching bands, civic finery and novelty floats making up the rest of the
procession.
This, at least, was the intention, but there remains the problem of eval-
uating reception: how far did League ritual achieve its desired effect? Local
activists clearly believed that it did. Organizers in Hull expressed satisfactionwith the outcome of their efforts in 1927: ‘In brilliance of design, in charm-
ing effect, in the immense crowd of spectators, in the marvellous order and
precision of it all, it was indeed a glorious success’, they declared: ‘We are
assured that the cause of the League of Nations and of the Union has been
immensely strengthened in Hull’.78 Activists often secured generous cover-
age in the local press, which regularly printed photographs of League
tableaux accompanied by full, and usually very complimentary, reports.
According to the Blackpool Gazette, the LNU’s 1924 carnival car ‘touched
the responsive chord in the breasts of the scores of thousands of spectators.They caught the spirit of its message, and they cheered with heartfelt emo-
tion, for they realised that where there is bloodshed and ruin there can be no
joy’.79 The Rushden Echo heaped even greater praise upon the League pa-
geant of October 1921, whose method, the paper observed, had ‘solved one
of the most difficult of problems – how both to interest and to
educate . . . Thousands of people in Rushden learnt more about the League
of Nations – what it has already done for them materially and morally – in
15 minutes on Saturday afternoon than, possibly, they ever conceived of
before’.80
Not everyone concurred with this verdict on the educative power of
public ritual. The internationalist Alfred Zimmern, for example, was less
convinced by efforts to promote the League by, as he put it, ‘decking it
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out in romantic colours’ and expecting individuals to learn through empty
role-play and meaningless ceremony. ‘This fancy-dress internationalism’,
Zimmern argued, was no substitute for serious intellectual engagement of
the kind provided by his own Geneva School of International Studies.81 Yet
other educationists in the movement took a different view, believing suchactivities to constitute a powerful pedagogical tool particularly suited to the
young. For teachers running Junior LNU Branches in schools, Model
Assemblies, pageants and plays facilitated a kind of embodied learning
which served, as one infant schoolmistress put it, ‘to inculcate into the
minds of these little ones the principles for which the League stands, and
teach them to feel as they grow to boy and girlhood the unity of mankind’.82
There existed, more generally, a consensus within the movement in favour of
deploying a broad repertoire of techniques which combined print and speech
with visual and sensory forms of propaganda, recognizing the need to targetthe individual’s emotions as well as his or her rational faculties. ‘The un-
converted many’, as one member of the LNU’s fundraising committee
observed in 1929, ‘have shown that they are not to be influenced at present
either by the arguments of Logic or the consideration of the Rightness of
Things’. Rather, he argued, they would respond to ‘more or less ‘‘popular’’ ’
appeals, ‘entirely simple, picturesque, dramatic – addressed not so much to
the head as to the heart’.83
This argument gained momentum in the 1930s as internationalists eyed
with growing alarm the dramatic results achieved through techniques of
mass suggestion under fascist regimes. ‘However one may deplore the
aims and methods of the Nazis’, wrote a Headway correspondent recently
returned from Germany in 1933, ‘one cannot refrain from admiration for
their leaders as psychologists and organizers’.84 He went on to suggest that
League activists needed to emulate the skills deployed by the Third Reich to
rally the masses for nationalism if they were to stand even an outside chance
of mobilizing them for internationalism. ‘People are not moved by reason or
the calculation of their own interests,’ he argued:
but by the obscurer forces of instinct and emotion, operating largely
below the level of consciousness. Passion can only be overcome by a
stronger passion . . . When internationalism gives up relying on edifying
conferences of leaders and leisured people, and gets down to the masses,
it must not be too refined to use popular methods, too intellectual to
make contact with the basic impulses.85
This ‘fight fire with fire’ approach reflected the growing intellectual pur-
chase of the relatively young discipline of social psychology, pioneered
before 1914 in the work of William James, Gustav Le Bon and the NewLiberal thinker Graham Wallas.86 This notion that politics could involve
irrational, psychic processes of which individuals themselves might not be
fully aware was not only increasingly held by contemporaries, but formed
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the basis of a powerful and enduring sociological framework for interpreting
the meaning of ritual in modern societies. It was in 1915 that Emile
Durkheim published his classic reading of ritual as an instrument of social
integration, the means by which a society upheld and reaffirmed ‘the col-
lective sentiments and collective ideas which make its unity and its person-ality’.87 Like religion, he argued, ritual represented and dramatized social
realities, rendering the world intelligible through symbolic idiom: strategies
which, as more recent literature in the Durkheimian mould suggests, may be
deployed by those in authority to reinforce dominant and official models of
social structure, or by subordinate and oppositional groups to propagate
alternative myths which challenge the existing order.88
As previously mentioned, historians of modern Britain have found these
conceptual insights of great utility for calibrating the power of ‘invented
traditions’, particularly those pressed into the service of defining the collect-ivity of ‘nation’. The claim that the symbolic representations promulgated
by interwar internationalists had some influence in shaping popular under-
standings of national community – in ways which contemporaries might
themselves be unable to articulate – is therefore one which must be taken
seriously. Yet at the same time, it is equally plain that historians should be
ever sensitive to the multi-vocal nature of the ‘invented tradition’ and the
complexity of the semantic information it imparts, the meanings of which
were always susceptible to diverse, perhaps even contradictory, readings. In
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, representations of national
community habitually pointed in two directions – inwards and outwards –
finding its essence in the ‘Merrie England’ of maypoles, village greens and
stocky yeomanry, or, by contrast, appearing in the guise of the Mother
Country of a glorious global empire.89 After 1918, as the striking presence
of symbolic practices centred on the League suggests, this imagery pointed
outwards again, but this time beyond the bonds of empire to embrace an
even wider international community.
This is not to say that Europe or the extra-imperial world were absent in
representations of nationhood before the First World War. Britain’s rela-
tions with other nations were frequently rendered into symbolic or drama-
tized form through such international events as the Franco-British
Exhibition of 1908 or the Japan-British Exhibition of 1910.90 Going back
even further, one might trace continuities with the internationalist inflec-
tions of mid Victorian free-trade ideology; the Lord Mayor’s Show of 1850,
for example, featured human and animal incarnations of Europe, Asia,
Africa and America in honour of the Great Exhibition taking place the
following year, whose purpose was to remind spectators, as the Times cor-
respondent put it, of London’s global supremacy as ‘the great emporium
and mart of the whole world’.91
Yet these precedents, despite the apparentformal similarities with postwar League ritual, were not so much enactments
of international community as symbolic legitimizations of, in the first case,
Britain’s diplomatic ties in a period of Great Power rivalry, and, in the
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second, her once hegemonic economic status.92 The meaning of internation-
alist ritual after 1918 must be located in the new set of geopolitical realities
set in train by the Treaty of Versailles, when Britain faced a rising tide of
colonial nationalism, demands for greater autonomy in the white domin-
ions, the challenges of governing new territories in the Middle East, aEuropean continent fractured by the collapse of empires, the United
States retreating into isolationism and, finally, the loss of vital overseas
markets and (from 1929) economic depression.
Recent work by international historians has begun to reveal the various
ways in which Britain’s membership of the League shaped how these prob-
lems were conceptualized and tackled by policy elites. The result was that
complex but nevertheless very real modifications were made to the practice
of national sovereignty, evident, for example, in the realm of imperial gov-
ernance and the humanitarian and social-welfare sphere and in new ways of thinking about the co-ordination of economic activities across borders.93
These effects were always complex and in some cases actively resisted, es-
pecially on the diehard right where figures such as Leo Amery, Colonial
Secretary between 1924 and 1929, or Lord Lloyd, President of the Navy
League, fiercely opposed any measure with the merest hint of a diminution
of national sovereignty or the privileging of international obligations over
imperial interests.94 These individuals, however, were largely out of step
with more moderate centre-right opinion, which found room for the
League within a broadly liberal and reformist approach to empire and
tended to reproduce the LNU’s language of mutuality, albeit with somewhat
greater reserve and occasionally a rather heavy dose of scepticism: Austen
Chamberlain’s public and private statements on the League were exem-
plary in this regard.95 LNU activists sometimes accused Conservatives
of paying mere ‘lip-service’ to the League in their speeches; yet the very
fact that politicians on the right felt pressure to present their actions,
as Maurice Cowling perceptively put it, ‘in terms which the League of
Nations Union would approve’, signalled a wider shift in foreign policy
discourse which helps to explain, at least in part, why the values of ‘enlight-
ened patriotism’ were able to bed down in such a wide range of cultural
forms and institutional spaces during an era of predominantly Conservative
rule.96
The study of League-themed ritual thus represents a potential bridge
between the established literatures on interwar politics, diplomacy and the
cultural legacy of the Great War. It also reveals how Britain’s membership
of the League was not simply a preoccupation of policy elites or veteran
peace campaigners, but became a prominent theme in popular representa-
tions of the nation. We can never know for sure how far and in what ways
the messages of internationalist ritual were internalized by participants oronlookers; yet on the strength of the preceding analysis, with its extensive
efforts to describe, contextualize and interpret, it seems reasonable to sug-
gest that Britain’s membership of, and obligations towards, an imagined
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international community became more central to understandings of national
identity than at any time previously.
* * *
The story, however, cannot be left there. As suggested earlier, the phenom-enon of internationalist ritual enjoyed its heyday between the end of the
First World War and 1936, the year in which the League’s failure to apply
full sanctions against Italy following her illegal invasion of Abyssinia re-
sulted in a widespread loss of faith in collective security as a deterrent to
would-be aggressors.97 League pageantry, tableaux and commemoration
continued, but their character subtly shifted with the political fall-out of
the Abyssinian affair; many pacifists were prompted to defect to the
newly-founded Peace Pledge Union, while deep fractures emerged in the
rest of the movement between supporters and opponents of the NationalGovernment’s policy of appeasement.98 These new fault-lines were evident
in a fresh wave of internationalist ritual beginning in late 1936 which centred
upon the ‘Peace Weeks’ held in hundreds of cities and towns under the
auspices of the International Peace Campaign (IPC). Springing from the
initiative of various socialist and radical forces in continental Europe,
the IPC aimed to rally progressive opinion behind a four-point programme
based on the sanctity of treaty obligations, reduction and control of arma-
ments, collective security through the League, and the development of a
framework for peaceful change.99 To clear-eyed anti-appeasers on the
LNU Executive, such as Eleanor Rathbone, the twinning of disarmament
with collective sanctions was a contradictory and possibly dangerous
move.100 Yet many grass-roots activists, evidently untroubled by such ten-
sions, embraced the IPC as an opportunity to renew their propaganda ef-
forts, making full use once again of symbolic and ritual forms. In Bolton, for
example, in September 1936, permission was secured to erect a banner
across the facade of the town hall and floodlight the nearby war memorial,
whilst the mayor additionally agreed to host a civic reception followed by a
wreath-laying ceremony at the local cenotaph.101 Meanwhile Chingford’s
Peace Week in spring 1938 featured the ceremonial release of 400 balloons
bearing the IPC initials.102
One element notably absent from earlier phases of internationalist ritual
was a willingness on the part of many League activists to learn from their
counterparts on the continent. The French section of the IPC, which had
strong links to Leon Blum’s Popular Front government, was much admired
for its innovative practices. The Peace Pavilion at the Glasgow Exhibition
was modelled upon a similar enclosure designed by the French IPC for the
Paris Exhibition of 1937, which made bold use of cutting-edge technologies
including hidden microphones, moving images and dramatic lighting ef-fects.103 The French section was further lauded for its large-scale rallies
which entertained mass audiences with sporting competitions, musical ex-
travaganzas and spectacular light-shows; one such demonstration staged in
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Paris in August 1936 reportedly drew crowds of 400,000.104 The LNU’s
National Youth Executive (NYE) attempted to replicate this format on a
smaller scale in 1938 with a rally at the Empress Stadium in London, at
which a capacity crowd of 10,000 listened to music from the singer Paul
Robeson and addresses from Gabriel Carritt of the NYE, Ted Willis of theLabour League of Youth, Peter Blackman of the League of Coloured
Peoples and John Gollan of the Young Communist League.105
As this platform suggests, the LNU’s youth wing was, by this time, pos-
itioned firmly on the left of centre. The national leadership, by contrast,
continued to seek, and in many cases to win, broad-based, cross-party sup-
port for the movement’s activities. One striking initiative of this period was
the erection, following a gift from David Davies, of a ‘Temple of Peace’ in
Cardiff’s Cathays Park. Designed to house the offices of the LNU’s Welsh
National Council, the building was officially opened in November 1938 byseventy-two year-old Minnie James, who had lost three sons during the War,
with the support of a contingent of twenty-three similarly bereaved mothers
representing different nations. A religious ceremony followed after which
the assembled company proceeded to a civic luncheon at City Hall.106 The
event demonstrated that the LNU could still pull off consensus-building
rituals with a civic flavour, yet the mounting international crisis and
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s open disregard for the League
made such affairs increasingly rare in the later 1930s. In many towns
Peace Week activities were marred by political controversy, with organizing
committees dominated by pacifist, socialist and communist elements, which
prompted Conservatives and many non-party organizations to withdraw
their support.107 Amidst the polarized political climate of this period, inter-
nationalist ritual thus assumed a less integrative and more oppositional
character, and many League supporters, particularly those of the younger
generation, found themselves drawn to the colourful agit-prop of the left,
attracted by the prospect of a more full-blooded internationalism than the
one on offer at the LNU.108
These dynamics shifted once more with the outbreak of war in September
1939. With the League effectively in cold storage and the LNU’s member-
ship scattered or occupied with war work, it might be assumed that the
pageants, tableaux and League Days of old disappeared entirely. But
whilst branch activity was certainly much diminished, the tradition of inter-
nationalist public ritual not only survived but regained something of its
former centrist character by regrouping around wartime proposals for a
new international authority, which became known as the ‘United Nations’
from 1943. The LNU’s educational wing inaugurated the first ‘United
Nations Day’ in British schools the following year, whilst in 1947 the UN
Assembly itself decreed that 24 October, the date on which its Charter cameinto force, would henceforth be observed worldwide as United Nations
Day.109 As with the League version, this became an important focus for
internationalist public ritual, and the LNU, now renamed the United
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Nations Association (UNA), again took the lead. Thus the tableaux and
flag-waving returned; in the latter case the insignia of the various nations
was joined by the UN’s own dedicated flag, which was ceremonially hoisted
over more than four-hundred civic buildings in Britain in October 1949.110
Pageantry also made a come-back, with a UN-themed pageant episodetaking pride of place at a National Savings Rally at Earls Court in 1949,
during which the film actor Manning Whiley read out the Preamble to the
UN Charter.111 The recitation of the Preamble, in fact, became a regular
item in public meetings organized by the UNA, often combined with a flag
parade, community singing and an act of remembrance conducted by a
member of the clergy.112 This repertoire of symbolic practices was added
to in 1947 when, in a somewhat strange twist, the UNA took on responsi-
bility for the prewar tradition of crowning the Railway Queen and organiz-
ing her overseas goodwill tour. Meanwhile in Runcorn, Cheshire, thecoronation of a new ‘UNA Queen’ was established as the centrepiece of
an annual UN Festival.113
This latter event ran into the 1950s and shared many similarities with
earlier League-themed events: colourful tableaux, whole-community partici-
pation, municipal support, invocations of monarchy and Commonwealth
(in 1953 the Festival adopted a Coronation theme).114 But in 1955 the
Festival was massively downscaled and it was wholly abandoned the follow-
ing year; the UNA Queen was crowned at a series of much smaller events
until, in 1960, she disappeared completely from the pages of Runcorn
Guardian.115 UN-themed ritual declined more generally from the mid
1950s, a phenomenon for which the parallel downturn in civic ritual –
linked to the erosion of municipal collectivism in the face of increasing
state centralization and the changing social and economic make-up of pro-
vincial towns – must surely bear some responsibility.116 Yet, arguably, the
more fundamental factor in this decline was, as before, the altered geopol-
itical terrain: the bipolar realities of Cold War politics; the spectre of nuclear
war; Britain’s loss of great-power status following Suez and, perhaps most
importantly, the onward march of decolonization. These developments
made it very difficult for the UNA, whose membership was a mere fraction
of its prewar strength, to hold together as before those multiple images of
Britain as historic English nation, great imperial power and responsible
member of the international community. The movement was not aided in
this task by the fact that the General Assembly of the UN became an arena
in which Britain’s imperial record suffered a barrage of criticism.117 In short,
the model of international community which liberal internationalists had
dramatized so effectively through ritual between the wars rested on the as-
sumption of Britain’s premier status as a global power. This was a reason-
able enough assumption during the heyday of the League, where Britain wasthe leading power at the table. After 1945, however, the reality of declining
prestige led to an unravelling of the logic behind the LNU’s centrist ideology
and its integrative project. Nowhere was this signalled more poignantly than
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in the gradual fading away of the rich tradition of internationalist public
ritual in Britain.
Helen McCarthy is Lecturer in History at Queen Mary, University of
London. She gained her PhD from the Institute of Historical Research(University of London) in 2008 and held a Research Fellowship at
St John’s College, Cambridge, before taking up her post at Queen Mary.
Her research interests include popular internationalism, associational vol-
untarism, and the gendering of public life in twentieth-century Britain.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
For invaluable comments on earlier versions of this article the author thanks the editors of
History Workshop Journal , Paul Readman, Peter Mandler and participants at the ModernCultural History Seminar, University of Cambridge.
1 Robert Withington, English Pageantry: an Historical Outline, Cambridge MA, 1920,vol. 2, chap. 6.
2 The Times, 10 Nov. 1919, p. 9.3 The Times, 10 Nov. 1919, p. 9.4 The Times, 11 Nov. 1929, p. 9.5 For peace activism, see Martin Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists: the British Peace
Movement and International Relations, 1854–1945, Oxford, 2000; Keith Robbins, TheAbolition of War: the ‘Peace Movement’ in Britain, 1914–1919, Cardiff, 1976; Paul Laity, TheBritish Peace Movement 1870–1914, Oxford, 2001.
6 Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in The Invention of Tradition, ed.
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (1983), Cambridge, 2007, p. 1.7 See for example David Cannadine, ‘The Transformation of Civic Ritual in Modern
Britain: the Colchester Oyster Feast’, Past and Present 94, 1982; Adrian Gregory, The Silence of Memory: Armistice Day 1919–1946, Oxford, 1994; J. A. Mangan, ‘ ‘‘The Grit of ourForefathers’’: Invented Traditions, Propaganda and Imperialism’, in Propaganda and Empire:the Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960, ed. John MacKenzie, Manchester, 1984;David Enrico Omissi, ‘The Hendon Air Pageant, 1920–1937’, in Popular Imperialism and theMilitary 1850–1950, ed. John MacKenzie, Manchester, 1992.
8 David A. Snow and Doug McAdam, ‘Identity Work Processes in the Context of SocialMovements: Clarifying the Identity/Movement Nexus’, in Self, Identity, and Social Movements,ed. Sheldon Stryker, Timothy J. Owens, and Robert W. White, London, 2000.
9 Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember, Cambridge, 1989, p. 45.10 George W. Egerton, Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations: Strategy,
Politics, and International Organization, 1914–1919, Chapel Hill, 1978.11 Donald Birn, The League of Nations Union 1918–1945, Oxford, 1981.12 In 1931, the LNU had 406,868 paid-up subscribers, 3,036 local branches and 3,529
organizational affiliates: Annual Report for 1931, London, 1932.13 For appraisals of interwar liberal internationalism, see Thinkers of the Twenty Years’
Crisis: Interwar Idealism Reassessed , ed. David Long and Peter Wilson, Oxford, 1995; JeanneMorefield, Covenants without Swords: Idealist Liberalism and the Spirit of Empire, Princeton,2005. For the influence of psychological discourses on understandings of nationhood, seeGlenda Sluga, The Nation, Psychology, and International Politics, 1870–1919, Basingstoke,2006.
14 LNU, Patriotism, London, revised edn, 1934.15 Birn, League of Nations Union; Helen McCarthy, ‘The League of Nations Union and
Democratic Politics in Britain, c.1919–1939’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of London,2008; for the Peace Ballot, see Helen McCarthy, ‘Democratising Foreign Policy: Rethinking thePeace Ballot, 1934–5’, Journal of British Studies 49: 2, April 2010; Martin Ceadel, ‘The firstBritish Referendum: the Peace Ballot, 1934–5’, English Historical Review 95: 377, 1980.
16 The Times, 22 Oct. 1919, p. 14.
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17 LNU, ‘The League of Nations Day in the Schools, Nov. 11, 1919’, 1919.18 ‘News of the Union’, Headway, June 1921, p. 86.19 Headway, Feb. 1930, p. ii; Feb. 1931, p. iv; and Feb. 1936, p. 38.20 See for example Fanny Johnson, Earth and her Children: a Pageant Play, Cambridge,
1928, and Lillian Martindale, The Dawn of Peace: a Pageant Play, Heswall, 1921.21 Rusden Echo, 7 Oct. 1921, p. 7.22 Pontefract and Castleford Express, 22 May 1925, p. 2.23 Western Independent, 25 July 1926, p. 2. Salisbury Times, 1 July 1927, p. 8.24 Preston Guardian, 2 Sept. 1922, p. 8; 9 Sept. 1922, p. 9; Alan Crosby, The History of
Preston Guild: 800 years of England’s Greatest Carnival , Preston, 1991; Blackpool Gazette,19 June 1924, pp. 4, 12.
25 Headway, July 1927, p. 136.26 Headway, Nov-Dec. 1920, pp. 61–4.27 See records of the Mere LNU branch, minutes for 18 March 1922, 20 Jan. 1927; 6 Oct.
1931; 9 Oct. 1934; 16 Nov. 1938: Wiltshire Record Office, Chippenham, 2776/37.28 See numerous references in Headway between 1920 and 1937 listed under ‘Branch
News’.29 Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts, London, 1941, p. 163; Ayako Yoshino, ‘Between the
Acts and Louis Napoleon Parker – the Creator of the Modern English Pageant’, Critical Survey15: 2, 2003, pp. 49–61. Joshua Esty, ‘Amnesia in the Fields: Late Modernism, Late Imperialismand the English Pageant-play’, ELH [English Literary History] 269, 2002.
30 See reports in Herald of Peace, no. 607, 1 March 1900, pp. 32–3; no. 679, 1 March 1906,p. 186; no. 737, 1 Sept. 1911, p. 209.
31 See for example the emphasis given by W. T. Stead to municipal participation in his‘Peace Crusade’ in the report of a Hastings public meeting published in War Against War, no. 9,10 March 1899, p. 132.
32 See for example the activities of the Peace Society as reported in its periodical,Herald of Peace (selected years: 1900, 1906, 1908, 1912), and those of the ‘InternationalPolity’ movement reported in War and Peace: a Norman Angell Monthly (selected years:1913, 1914, 1916).
33 See reports in Daily News, 14 and 18 July 1890; Pall Mall Gazette, 18 July 1890; LloydsWeekly Newspaper, 20 July 1890; The Times, 17 July 1890, p. 4.
34 See undated flyer, A ‘‘League of Nations’’ Mystery Pageant Play, presented by theCawthra LNU branch (Bradford): Bradford Archives, Bradford, DB34/23/17. See also pro-gramme of exhibition held at St Albans in November 1922, which included a pageant andmystery plays: Headway, Sept. 1922, p. 179.
35 Withington, English Pageantry, chap. 8; Deborah Ryan, ‘The Man Who Staged theEmpire: Remembering Frank Lascelles in Sibford Gower, 1875–2000’, in Material Memories,ed. Marius Kwint, Christopher Breward and Jeremy Aynsley, Oxford, 1999; Ryan,‘ ‘‘Pageantitis’’: Frank Lascelles’ 1907 Oxford Historical Pageant, Visual Spectacle andPopular Memory’, Visual Culture in Britain ed. Ryan, 2007; and ‘Staging the ImperialCity: the Pageant of London, 1911’, in Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity, ed.Felix Driver and David Gilbert, Manchester, 1999.
36 For pageantry as a product of popular historical consciousness, see Paul Readman,‘The Place of the Past in English Culture, c.1890–1914’, Past and Present 186, 2005; and PeterMerrington, ‘Staging History, Inventing Heritage: the ‘‘New Pageantry’’ and British ImperialIdentity, 1905–35’, in Archaeologies of the British: Explorations of Identity in Great Britain and its Colonies 1600-1945, ed. Susan Lawrence, London, 2003.
37 J. M. Gibson, ‘The Value of Pageants’, Headway, Aug. 1935, p.149.38 Pontefract and Castleford Express, 22 May 1925, p. 2. In 1925 Joan of Arc figured in a
League Pageant at Warrington and in the Hull Pageant: Warrington Guardian, 3 Oct. 1925,pp. 7, 16; Daily Mail (Hull), 20 June 1927, p. 9.
39 Stefan Goebel, The Great War and Medieval Memory: War, Remembrance and Medievalism in Britain and Germany, 1914–1940, Cambridge, 2007.
40 For ‘taming’ thesis, see James Vernon, Politics and the People: a Study in English
Political Culture, c.1815–1867 , Cambridge, 1993. For a more nuanced view, see JonLawrence, Electing Our Masters: the Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair,Oxford, 2009.
41 Frank Trentmann, Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption and Civil Society inModern Britain, Oxford, 2008, p. 129.
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42 Jon Lawrence, ‘The Transformation of British Public Politics after the First WorldWar’, Past and Present 190, 2006.
43 McCarthy, ‘The League of Nations Union’.44 Jan Ru ¨ ger, The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire,
Cambridge, 2007; Jim English, ‘Empire Day in Britain, 1904–1958’, Historical Journal , 49: 1,2006; Mangan, ‘The Grit of our Forefathers’.
45 Allen Warren, ‘Citizens of the Empire: Baden-Powell, Scouts and Guides, and anImperial Ideal’, in Imperialism and Popular Culture, ed. MacKenzie; David Cannadine, ‘TheContext, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: the British Monarchy and the ‘‘Invention of Tradition’’ c.1820–1977’, in Invention of Tradition, ed. Hobsbawm and Ranger.
46 Cannadine, ‘Transformation of Civic Ritual’; Vernon, Politics and the People; andSimon Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class: Ritual and Authority and theEnglish Industrial City, Manchester, 2000.
47 For classic ‘decline’ thesis, see William D. Rubinstein, ‘Wealth, Elites and the ClassStructure of Modern Britain’, Past and Present 76, 1977. For critique, see Richard Trainor,‘Neither Metropolitan nor Provincial: the Interwar Middle-class’, in The Making of the BritishMiddle Class? Studies of Regional and Cultural Diversity since the Eighteenth Century, ed. AlanKidd and David Nicholls, Stroud, 1998.
48 E. J. Hobsbawm, ‘Birth of a Holiday: the First of May’, in On the Move: Essays inLabour and Transport History presented to Philip Bagwell , ed. Chris Wrigley and JohnShepherd, London, 1991; and ‘Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914’, in Inventionof Tradition, ed. Hobsbawm and Ranger; Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of theSuffrage Campaign, 1907–1914, London, 1987.
49 Roland Quinault, ‘The Cult of the Centenary, 1784–1914’, Historical Research 71: 176,1998; Antony Taylor, ‘Shakespeare and Radicalism: the Uses and Abuses of Shakespeare inNineteenth-Century Popular Politics’, Historical Journal 45: 2, 2002.
50 The Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society staged a special performanceof its centenary pageant for delegates attending the LNU Council in December 1932:Headway, Dec. 1932, p. iv. For branch activities, see Headway, July 1933, p. 146; Nov. 1933,p. 226.
51 Omissi, ‘Hendon Air Pageant, 1920-1937’; Alec Wilson, ‘Hendon: 1929’, Headway,Aug. 1929, pp. 146-7, and letters in response, Sept. 1929, p. 180.
52 See McCarthy, ‘The League of Nations Union’, chap. 4.53 This phenomenon is briefly discussed in Alex King, Memorials of the Great War in
Britain: the Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance, Oxford, 1998, pp. 202, 204, andK. S. Inglis, ‘The Homecoming: the War Memorial Movement in Cambridge, England’,
Journal of Contemporary History 27, 1992.54 Derby Daily Express, 10 Nov. 1923, p. 1. It was repeated in subsequent years; see
Headway, Dec. 1926, p. 237.55 Headway, Dec. 1927, p. iii.56 A deputation from the LNU was amongst those laying wreaths upon the Cenotaph on
11 November 1919 (The Times, 11 Nov. 1919, p. 14); and in 1929 the LNU organized an
Armistice Day service in St Paul’s Cathedral at which the Archbishop of Canterbury preached:The Times, 23 Oct. 1929, p. 16; Headway, Dec. 1929, p. ii.
57 The Times, 9 Nov. 1922, p. 9; Headway, Nov. 1927, p. iv. The LNU’s David Davies wasregularly invited to unveil war memorials in Wales. See Angela Gaffney, Aftermath:Remembering the Great War in Wales, Cardiff, 1998.
58 ‘The League in the Schools’, Headway, March 1922, p. 48; Headway, Nov. 1925, p. 219.See also the suggested outline of peace-themed activities for Armistice Day in schools inTeacher’s World , 30 Oct. 1935, p. 231. Circular dated 6 Nov. 1925: London MetropolitanArchives, records of London County Council, LCC/EO/GEN/1/96.
59 Education and the League of Nations: Report of the Joint Committee of Enquiry into theTeaching of the Aims and Achievements of the League of Nations, London, 1929, p. 15.
60 This internationalist turn is briefly noted in Warren, ‘Citizens of the Empire’, and is
given rather more attention by Tammy Proctor, On My Honour: Guides and Scouts in InterwarBritain, Philadelphia, 2002.
61 See for example The Scouter, June, 1929, p. 206 and Aug. 1937, p. 303. For interna-tional jamborees, see Boy Scouts International Bureau, The Jamboree Story: the Full Story of the Eight World Jamborees of the Boy Scout Movement, 1920–1955, London, 1957.
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62 The Times, 3 Aug. 1920, p. 11; Boy Scouts Association (Great Britain), The JamboreeBook, 1920 London, 1920, p. 102; Claude Fisher, The World Jamboree: the Quest of the GoldenArrow, London, 1929.
63 Minutes of the Educational Committee, 10 Jan. 1923: British Library of Political andEconomic Sciences (BLPES), London, Records of the League of Nations Union, LNU/5/23,f.83; Headway, May 1927, p. iii.
64 The Scouter, Sept. 1924, p. 310.65 The Scouter, Dec. 1924, p. 413.66 See Headway for April 1924, p. 72; May 1924, p. 95; June 1924, p. 108; and July 1924,
pp. 132–3.67 J. S. Buist, ‘Peace on Exhibition’, Headway, June 1938, p. 112; Empire Exhibition:
Official Guide, no place of publication, 1938, p. 214.68 The Times, 26 May 1938, p. 12.69 Cannadine, ‘Context, Performance and Meaning’; Philip Williamson, ‘The Monarchy
and Public Values 1900–1953’, in The Monarchy and the British Nation, 1780 to the Present, ed.Andrzej Olechnowicz, Cambridge, 2007.
70 The Times, 31 Oct. 1930, p. 16.71 Stephen Howe, ‘Labour and International Affairs’, in Labour’s First Century, ed.
Duncan Tanner, Pat Thane, and Nick Tiratsoo, Cambridge, 2000.72 For Marxist-inspired anti-war agitation, see Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists, and ‘The
First Communist ‘‘Peace Society’’: the British Anti-War Movement, 1932–1935’, TwentiethCentury British History 1: 1, 1990.
73 For the influence of liberal internationalism on the left, see Paul Bridgen, The LabourParty and the Politics of War and Peace, 1900-1924, Woodbridge, 2009.
74 See photograph in Heywood Advertiser, 29 Aug. 1924, p. 8.75 Derbyshire Times, 5 Jan. 1929, p. 12.76 Johnson, Earth and her Children.77 Daily Mail (Hull), 20 June 1927, p. 9.78 Daily Mail (Hull), 20 June 1927, p. 3.79 Blackpool Gazette, 19 June 1924, p. 2.
80 Rushden Echo, 7 Oct. 1921, p. 7. See also Ripon Gazette, 25 July 1935, p. 5, and 1 Aug.,p. 4.
81 Alfred Zimmern, ‘Education in International Relations: a Critical Survey’, in League of Nations Educational Survey 3: 1, 1932.
82 Amy Robinson, ‘The League and the Infants’ School’, in Teacher’s World , 5 Feb. 1926,p. 952. See also the classroom activities pioneered by Kathleen Gibberd in her girls’ school inPolitics on the Blackboard: an Autobiographical Essay, London, 1954.
83 Memo by Reverend G. Dickin filed in Appeals Sub-Committee Minutes, 29 Nov. 1929,BLPES, LNU/4/3, f.10. See also Edward Shillito, ‘Thinking is not Enough’, in Headway,March 1930, pp. 44-5.
84 Vivian Ogilvie, ‘Nazi Tactics and Mass Psychology’, Headway, Aug. 1933, p. 153.85 Vivian Ogilvie, ‘The Breakdown of Internationalism’, Headway, Dec. 1933, p. 233.86 D. L. LeMahieu, A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communication and the Cultivated
Mind in Britain Between the Wars, Oxford, 1988.87 Cited in Steven Lukes, ‘Political Ritual and Social Integration’, Sociology 9, 1975,
p. 292.88 Steven Lukes, ‘Political Ritual and Social Integration’, Sociology 9, 1975, p. 291.89 For two contrasting readings of national identity in Edwardian pageantry see
Readman, ‘The Place of the Past’, and Ryan, ‘Staging the Imperial City’. For the widerliterature on ‘Englishness’ versus ‘Britishness’, see Krishnan Kumar, The Making of EnglishNational Identity, Cambridge, 2003; Peter Mandler, ‘Against Englishness: English Culture andthe Limits to Rural Nostalgia’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 7, 1997;Wendy Webster, Englishness and Empire, 1939–1965, Oxford, 2005; Jed Esty, A ShrinkingIsland: Modernism and National Culture in England , Princeton, 2004.
90 Martyn Cornick, ‘Putting the Seal on the Entente: the Franco-British
Exhibition, London, May-October 1908’, in Franco-British Studies 35, 2004. For British-Japan Exhibition see MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire, chap. 4.
91 The Times, 11 Nov. 1850, p. 6.92 The Lord Mayor’s Show featured floats depicting the Anglo-Japanese alliance in 1902
and the Entente Cordiale in 1905. See Withington, English Pageantry, chap. 6.
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93 Susan Pedersen, ‘The Meaning of the Mandates System: an Argument’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 32: 4, Oct.-Dec. 2006; Daniel Gorman, ‘Empire, Internationalism, and theCampaign against the Traffic in Women and Children in the 1920s’, Twentieth CenturyBritish History 19, 2008; Trentmann, Free Trade Nation and ‘After the Nation-State:Citizenship, Empire and Global Coordination in the New Internationalism, 1914–1930’, inBeyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, c.1880–1950, ed. Kevin Grant,Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann, Basingstoke, 2007.
94 William Roger Louis, In the Name of God, Go! Leo Amery and the British Empire in theAge of Churchill , London, 1992. For the LNU’s tense relationship with the Navy League, seereport of Grand Council meeting, The Times, 14 May 1931, p. 10 and the LNU’s response inHeadway, June 1931, p. 103.
95 Richard Grayson, Austen Chamberlain and the Commitment to Europe: British ForeignPolicy, 1924-29, London, 1997.
96 Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hitler: British Politics and British Policy, 1933–40,London, 1975, p. 7.
97 Daniel Waley, British Public Opinion and the Abyssinian War, London, 1975.98 Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists, chap. 10.99 Cecil shared the joint presidency of the IPC with the French radical, Pierre Cot, and
the LNU housed the British Section at its headquarters in Grosvenor Crescent. See Birn,League of Nations Union, chaps 10-11.
100 Eleanor Rathbone, War Can Be Averted , London, 1938.101 ‘Memorandum concerning the organisation and results of Bolton Peace Week
Sep 21st-27th 1936’, by P. M. Harker: Churchill Archives Centre (CAC), Cambridge, Noel-Baker Papers, NBKR/5/55/2. For photograph of the floodlit town hall, see Bolton EveningNews, 22 Sept. 1936.
102 IPC Newsletter, no. 4, 18 May 1938, p. 3.103 ‘IPC’s Peace Pavilion at Paris International Exhibition’, IPC Monthly Bulletin, 10
April 1937, pp. 6–7. See also ‘Why a Peace Pavilion?’, IPC Monthly Bulletin, 10 June 1937,pp. 16–17’, and ‘What you will see on your visit to the Peace Pavilion’, IPC Monthly Bulletin,19 July 1937, pp. 6–7.
104 Circular from IPC secretariat dated 27 July 1937: CAC, NBKR/5/51/3. See W. ArnoldFoster, ‘France’s Great Demonstration’, IPC Monthly Bulletin, 10 Aug. 1937, p. 6, and‘Making Peace Demonstrations Public Holidays’, pp. 16–17. For the political theatre of theFrench Popular Front, see Jessica Waudlaugh, In the Pursuit of the People: Political Culture inFrance, 1934–9, Basingstoke, 2009.
105 IPC Newsletter, no. 6, 15 June 1938.106 Western Mail , 24 Nov. 1938, pp. 7, 9.107 See McCarthy, ‘The League of Nations Union’, chap. 7.108 For examples of leftist political ritual in the later 1930s, see Mick Wallis, ‘Pageantry
and the Popular Front: Ideological Production in the ‘‘Thirties’’ ’, New Theatre Quarterly 10:38, 1994.
109 ‘Days of Promise and Opportunity’, Headway, July 1944, pp. 1–2; ‘United NationsDay 1948’, United Nations News, Sept.-Oct. 1948, pp. 13–4.
110 ‘Report on United Nations Day: UN Flags Fly from Cornwall to Scotland’,United Nations News, Jan.-Feb. 1950, pp. 16–17.
111 As previous note.112 See for example ‘Programme for a Demonstration in support of the United Nations in
Birmingham Town Hall on 28th May, 1946’, ‘Programme for a Great Public Demonstrationheld on 10th April 1946, at 7.15pm at the Civic Hall Wolverhampton’, and ‘Programme for aMeeting of Citizens, in the municipal hall, Keighley, on June 26th 1946’: West YorkshireArchive Service, Wakefield, papers of Ralph Sweeting, C596, Box 4.
113 United Nations News, Aug. 1947, p. 14; Runcorn Guardian, 12 Sept. 1947, p. 3.114 See Runcorn Guardian, 12 June 1953, p. 7.115 The last reference the author has been able to find was on 20 Feb. 1958, p. 8, where it
was reported that the UNA Queen was crowned at a ‘Children’s Ball’ attended by about 350.
116 Cannadine, ‘Transformation of Civic Ritual’; Urban Governance: Britain and Beyond since 1750, ed. R. J. Morris and Richard Trainor, Aldershot, 2000.
117 Geoffrey Goodwin, Britain and the United Nations, London, 1957; Adam Roberts,‘Britain and the Creation of the United Nations’, in Still More Adventures with Britannia:Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain, ed. William Roger Louis, London, 2003.
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