A forgotten First World War anniversary

War has always been one of the major causes of migration, with refugees fleeing countries torn apart by conflict. Most of these refugees hope to return to their country once peace is restored, although obviously (as, for example, our blog on the Polish Government in exile showed) this may turn out to be impossible. In this guest blog, Jill Rutter, a trustee of the Migration Museum Project, writes about one of the less well-known migration stories of the First World War.

Most of the events to mark the centenary of the First World War have focused on fallen combatants and battle sites. There has been little commentary about the civilian casualties of the Great War, among them many millions of refugees. But there is much we can learn from the settlement of more than 250,000 Belgian refugees in the UK. Their arrival was the largest refugee movement in British history and, perhaps surprisingly, this country was truly a sanctuary.

The Belgians started to flee in August 1914, after the German invasion, with most of this group of refugees arriving in the first months of the war. Later in the conflict another 175,000 Belgian soldiers took refuge in the UK, many of them convalescing from war injuries.

Refugees fleeing Antwerp, 1914. © Imperial War Museum

The newly arrived Belgians were billeted all over the UK, not only to urban areas, but also to small rural market towns. Agatha Christie is said to have based her character, Hercule Poirot, on a Belgian refugee she met in Torquay. The fullest account of the settlement of Belgian refugees is given in Belgian Refugee Relief in England During the Great War by Peter Calahan. In the last year a number of local museums have mounted exhibitions which include Belgian stories; Otley Museum’s Great War commemorations included a collection of Belgian refugee stories.

It was initially a charity – the War Refugees Committee – that assisted these refugees. But by autumn 1914, the charity was overwhelmed and the government took responsibility, with the Local Government Board acting as the lead department. The programme was led by senior civil servants and, at ministerial level, by Walter Long, whose political epitaph largely comprised the successful integration of the Belgians. This was a milestone: the first time that Government had taken policy responsibility for the settlement of refugees.

Yvonne van den Broeck, a Belgian child who came to the town with her parents, sister and two brothers. Image thanks to Otley Museum and Archive Trust.

The Local Government Board organised the dispersal of the Belgians to reception camps, where they stayed until more permanent housing was found. Most Belgian children were sent straight to local schools, where they were welcomed as a visible means of supporting the war effort. School inspections of the period noted:

Our inspectors say that all over the country these children are finding their way into the elementary schools in a very normal and easy manner … The Belgian children seem very happy at school, through sometimes they do not like leaving their compatriots.
(Cited in a report of Local Government Board, 1916).

Tensions between Belgian refugees and the host community were rare. The media portrayal of the refugees helped ensure a warm welcome: the Belgians were fleeing the advancing German army and were portrayed as plucky and brave heroes in the popular press. This absence of hostility was even more remarkable because this period of history was marked by growing anti-alienism.

The Local Government Board encouraged host communities to set up Belgian Refugee Committees to assist in the resettlement of the refugees. There were 2,500 committees of volunteers by 1916 and there has not been such broad public engagement with the reception migrant reception since then. These committees organised relief for the refugees, providing food, clothing and other assistance.

Pages from a booklet listing work done by the Chelsea War Refugees’ Fund, including the provision of housing, clothing and maintenance for the Belgian refugees. © QMUL Library

By 1916 the Belgians had started to return home – the 1921 Census recorded fewer than 10,000 Belgian nationals settled in the UK. Save a memorial in the Victoria Embankment, there is now little evidence of this remarkable migratory movement. But at a time when there are concerns about the integration of new migrants and the segregation of our towns and cities, there are lessons to be learned from the reception of the Belgian refugees. In particular, the Government requested that host communities should see it as their responsibility to welcome new arrivals. Perhaps this is a value that we should resurrect today and think about ways we can welcome new migrants.

The Belgian Refugee Memorial in London, located on the Embankment opposite Cleopatra’s Needle.

Jill Rutter is a trustee of the Migration Museum Project. Moving Up and Getting On, her new book on migrant integration, was published by Policy Press in July 2015. 

Notting Hill Carnival, 1968

The year 1968 was one of the first years that the Carnival took to the streets and became a large public event. Before that date, it had taken place in halls around Notting Hill. This photo was included in the exhibition Roots to Reckoning and Archive, 2005 Museum of London.

Humpty Dumpty words on migration

When Alice meets Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, illustrated here by John Tenniel, they have a famous exchange of views about the meaning of words.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

Humpty Dumpty appears to be leading the public discourse on migration right now.

The words we choose to talk about a subject are always a significant window to our position on that subject. In the past few weeks, as they report or comment on the thousands of people attempting to find a new life in Europe, newspapers and politicians have fallen back on rather predictable language. There is, of course, the use of words associated with water – from the relatively mild ‘flow’ to ‘streams’ of migrants threatening to ‘flood’ our European countries, ‘tidal waves’ of migrants’ (Daily Mail, 26 June), ‘tsunami of Christian migration’ (Breitbart, 3 September) and ‘inundated with migrants’ (CBS, 26 August) – all of which, in their insensitive references to drowning, express concerns about the host nations rather than the people in actual danger of drowning as a result of the insecure, overcrowded and unseaworthy boats in which they make the journey across the Mediterranean.

Then there are the references to animals and insects – not just Katie Hopkins’ ‘cockroaches’ but also the Prime Minister’s ‘swarm of people’ (30 July) – terms redolent of infestation and destruction. The extent to which this is a situation out of legal control is conveyed in the use of words associated with criminality, most notably ‘marauding’, applied by Philip Hammond (9 August). And, to give a full sense of the scale of the problem, what better source to invoke than the Good Book, as Nigel Farage did with his slightly tautological ‘exodus of biblical proportions’.

The use of these words contains a fairly obvious key to the user’s position on the matter and may, as many suggest, affect (and infect) the nature of the debate. Something similar happens to the words used to describe the people making these journeys, which have long shed the neutrality they may once have had in their dictionary definitions. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), for example, defines a migrant as ‘a person who moves temporarily or seasonally from place to place; a person who moves permanently to live in a new country, town, etc., esp. to look for work, or to take up a post, etc’; a refugee as ‘a person who has been forced to leave his or her home and seek refuge elsewhere, esp. in a foreign country, from war, religious persecution, political troubles, the effects of a natural disaster, etc.; a displaced person’; and an asylum seeker as ‘a person seeking refuge, esp. political asylum, in a nation other than his or her own’.

These neutral definitions are often, however, coloured by the words that are used with them – so that ‘asylum seeker’ now is most commonly associated with ‘bogus’ or ‘failed’, ‘migrant’ with ‘economic’ or ‘illegal’, etc. In Adopting Britain, the exhibition to which the Migration Museum Project contributed recently in the Southbank Centre, the Migration Observatory compiled an infographic that displayed the words most commonly used to talk about migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. It was a salutary reminder of the power of media exposure to change the way in which we use words and descriptions.

As an illustration of the way in which words absorb associations beyond their literal meaning, Professor Lentin recently questioned whether the use of the word ‘immigrant’ was appropriate when applied to Sir Edgar Speyer in a blog he wrote for us. Speyer was not, as Tony Lentin put it, one of the ‘tired, poor, huddled masses’ most commonly associated with the term although, technically, he was, of course, an immigrant.

But how do you rid words of the associations they have acquired? One response is to do as David Marsh, editor of the Guardian’s style guide, suggested in a humane and considered piece he wrote on this subject at the end of August:

Politically charged expressions such as ‘economic migrants’, ‘genuine refugees’ or ‘illegal asylum seekers’ should have no part in our coverage. This is a story about humanity. Reporting it should be humane as well as accurate. Sadly, most of what we hear and read about ‘migrants’ is neither.

Any modern-day Humpty Dumpty, of course, is free to disagree with this. But then we all know what happened to Humpty Dumpty, don’t we?

Sir Edgar Speyer: ‘A minor tragedy of the war’

For every exhibition that is put on, there is always another: the exhibition that could have been put on had there been world enough and time. When you’re trying to condense more than six hundred years of German–British history into 17 panels of information, there are bound to be omissions that haunt you. For Cathy Ross, the curator of our Germans in Britain exhibition, one such omission was the story of Sir Edgar Speyer. Speyer, born in the United States to German Jewish parents, was a British-naturalised merchant banker and philanthropist, who was unceremoniously drummed out of Britain in May 1915, almost exactly one hundred years ago. The only part of his story that is on show in the Germans in Britain exhibition is the quotation that tops the banner on the First World War – a quotation from Lord Charles Beresford, delivered at a women’s anti-German rally in the Mansion House: ‘The most dangerous enemies in our midst are the rich, independent, naturalised Germans in high social positions … still Germans at heart. [They are] not wanted here.’

It has long been accepted that Sir Edgar Speyer was the most obvious target for Beresford’s words. The guest blog that follows has been written by Tony Lentin, the author of a new book on Speyer. We should bear in mind that Sir Edgar Speyer was by no means the only German-born Briton to be treated in this way, though his profile was higher than most.

King of the Underground turned pariah

Without Sir Edgar Speyer, there would be no London Underground and no Proms, and there would have been no Captain Scott’s expeditions to the Antarctic.

Born in the United States to Jewish immigrant parents from Germany, Sir Edgar Speyer (1862–1932) was a celebrated figure in the financial, cultural and political life of England before 1914. A merchant banker, he headed the company which financed the construction of the deep-level ‘tubes’. He became known as ‘King of the Underground’, subsequently taking over London’s entire transport system.

It was his personal generosity in the 12 years before the war that alone saved the Proms from bankruptcy and extinction and guaranteed their accessibility to a popular audience. He was a patron of many early 20th-century composers, including Elgar, Richard Strauss, Debussy and Percy Grainger. A munificent donor to the King Edward VII hospital and many other medical and charitable causes, he co-founded the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and he raised funds for Scott’s expeditions to the Antarctic. He was a supporter of the Liberal Party, the friend of Winston Churchill and the then prime minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, and a regular guest at Downing Street – he was made a baronet in 1906 and a member of the Privy Council three years later.

Among the last letters written by Captain Scott was this letter to Sir Edgar Speyer, the honorary treasurer of the fundraising committee behind Scott’s trip. The letter, sold at auction in 2012 for £163,000, ends: ‘Goodbye to you and your dear kind wife’.

On the outbreak of war, however, as a result of his German parentage and connections this remarkable man became a pariah. He was hounded out of Britain in May 1915 by unscrupulous politicians and an irresponsible press. In 1921 (by which time Speyer was in the United States) he returned to face a judicial tribunal, under the newly enacted Aliens Act, and was found guilty of disloyalty and disaffection and of communicating and trading with Germany in wartime. In his foreword to my book,  Banker, Traitor, Scapegoat, Spy? The Troublesome Case of Sir Edgar Speyer, the distinguished jurist Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, QC, comments that the procedure ‘reflected no credit on a legal system that had always prided itself on protecting the individual against the might of the state’.

Following the tribunal’s finding, however, Speyer was stripped of his British citizenship and membership of the Privy Council.

When he died in 1932, the Morning Post described his downfall as ‘a minor tragedy of the war’. My book is the first detailed account of this unsavoury episode in British–German relations. It re-examines Speyer’s case from documents newly released, presents the evidence and invites the reader to decide whether he was an innocent victim, a scapegoat, or a traitor to his adopted country.

Sir Edgar and Lady Leonora Speyer, photographed in the early 1920s, around the time of his appearance before the tribunal under the Aliens Act

I have campaigned for Speyer’s generous acts of philanthropy to be recognised today. I am not alone in seeking recognition for his critical support for so many British causes. In October 2014, a plaque was unveiled in Speyer’s honour at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. Earlier this year, BBC 3 radio presenter Dr Kate Kennedy told listeners that she felt Speyer should be honoured with a statue for saving the Proms from collapse.

In November 2014, almost a hundred years after Lord Beresford’s inflammatory statement, Lord Black of Brentwood said in the House of Lords: ‘A century on, when we can look back with calm perspective on some of the events that happened in the heat of the moment, it would be right to ensure that the record is set straight and that the contribution to music, science and the arts of this man, who was so unfairly treated, is properly recognised with a fitting memorial.’

Postscript: On Saturday 12 September this year, the Last Night of the BBC Proms, the BBC will reflect Edgar Speyer’s contribution to the Proms in the presentation on BBC Radio and Television and in the printed programme. The BBC, which took over the financing and running of the Proms in 1927, has said that Edgar Speyer exemplified ‘a spirit of patronage and public service’ that it is proud to be continuing.

Tony Lentin has posted this further postscript on 15 September: 

An e-mail to me from the BBC on 14 August said: ‘We will use this opportunity to reflect Edgar Speyer’s contribution to the Proms in the presentation on BBC Radio and Television and in the printed programme. Speyer’s is a very interesting story in the history of the Proms and we are pleased to be able mark his connection through this particular piece of repertoire.’

I have not seen the printed programme, but the BBC2 presentation consisted of the bare mention of ‘the philanthropist Sir Edgar Speyer’  in connection with Till Eulenspiegel.  That was all. Rapid coverage of Proms history featured Newman,  Henry Wood and the BBC. Nothing on ‘The Man Who Saved the Proms’.

My verdict, on pages 175–6 of my book, stands:

When the Promenaders join in ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ or Parry’s ‘Jerusalem’ on the last night of the Proms, they pay homage to the garlanded bust of Sir Henry Wood, but not to his indispensable  patron. They will not know that Parry wrote to express to Edgar his shame at the outcry against him, that Elgar wrote to him of ‘the indebtedness of the English people to you “a great uplifting force” in the nation’s musical life.’

There will be a proper commemoration of Speyer’s contribution at two concerts this autumn: Hay Music on 10 October, and Chelsea Concerts on 9 November.

Professor Antony Lentin is a senior member of Wolfson College, Cambridge, a barrister and formerly a Professor of History and law tutor at the Open University. 

Lentin, Antony (2013) Banker, Traitor, Scapegoat, Spy? The Troublesome Case of Sir Edgar Speyer. London: Haus Publishing.

Tony Lentin http://www.edgarspeyer.co.uk/index.php