Kevin Dixon: A century of peace campaigning in Torbay

Since the 1730s there has been a British peace movement.

Some pacifists believe that all force is wrong, some oppose the taking of life, while others reject war completely.

Both residents and visitors to the Bay have been active in campaigns against conflict, with some willing to be imprisoned for their beliefs.

One notably outspoken champion for peace was the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. George wrote more than 60 plays and is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 and an Oscar, for ‘Pygmalion’ in 1938.

George was a regular visitor to Torquay’s Hydropathic Hotel, appreciating, “No housekeeping, plenty of bathing, taxicabs to get around in, shops galore, and every sort of urban amenity.”  In 1897 he used his knowledge of Torquay to base the play ‘You Never Can Tell’ in the resort.

Always political and concerned with current affairs, it was during his 1914 Torquay vacation that he wrote a series of letters to his fellow Fabians Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

One communication related the arrest of a German novelist friend who was working at a Hydro as a hotel porter, “Hedwig Sonntag, though registered, was handcuffed and deported to the innermost centre of Britain – to Exeter, in fact. And in the evening the Coastguard threatened to shoot me and Barker on our walk before going to bed, if we approached him (we were 50 yards off).”

While in Torquay he wrote newspaper articles under the title ‘Common Sense About the War‘. These essays appeared as a Special War Supplement to the New Statesman in November 1914 and were then reproduced in newspapers including the New York Times. George later gave a copy to a friend inscribed “written on the roof of the Hydro at Torquay”.

In his articles George recognised that winning was a practical necessity, but he refused to glorify a conflict which could have been avoided. He critiqued the bankruptcy of the capitalist system, saw war as the death throes of empire, and proposed total change to a system that created such carnage. Provocatively, he suggested that the troops of both armies should shoot their officers and go home.

Few public figures had dared to speak out in opposition to the war and the response was predictable and vitriolic. George suffered at the box-office, became loathed by many, while friends turned against him. It was even proposed that he should be tried for treason.

During the Great War some 16,000 men refused to take up arms for religious, moral, or political reasons. Over a thousand conscientious objectors were sent to Dartmoor prison which was rebranded as Princetown Work Centre. Although the locks were removed from the cells, and they were free to walk about the town, there was a requirement for 10 hours a day hard manual labour.

The Great War caused unprecedented suffering, with millions dead, disabled or displaced. Many individuals and organisations then began to advocate for disarmament, international cooperation, and collective security. Though the League of Nations, established in 1920, ultimately failed to prevent the outbreak of World War II, it did lay the groundwork for future international organisations, such as the United Nations.

Particularly active in the prevention of future wars were those veterans who had first-hand experience of conflict. To this end, the leaders of the British Legion embarked on several trips to Germany during 1935 to improve Anglo-German relations. The delegations were feted by Hitler, who flattered them with ‘spontaneous’ welcoming crowds. The Legion even visited Dachau concentration camp during one of these visits, followed by a family supper with Heinrich Himmler of the SS.

The Legion’s visits were organised by Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s ambassador to Britain. In April of 1937 von Ribbentrop visited Torquay along with the German battleship SMS Schlesien as part of a Nazi charm offensive.

Despite these efforts, by the summer of 1938 Germany had remilitarised the Rhineland, annexed Austria and was demanding the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. The British attempted to mediate and proposed a neutral force to oversee a plebiscite, with the Legion asked to provide 1,200 men for support.

In October 1938 the Torbay area contingent of the British Legion’s ‘Peace Army’ sent 11 volunteers including a Victoria Cross winner who lived in Falkland Road.

However, Hitler was never serious about negotiation, the plebiscite proposal foundered, and the British contingent was disbanded after only 10 days, three of them spent on a ship anchored off Southend.

Yet there was still hope. In September 1938 the Palm Court, now Abbey Sands, hosted 200 delegates at the annual conference of the Florists Telegraph Delivery Association.

Torquay’s Mayor greeted the conference, “I congratulate you on going steadily on with your conference, despite the war clouds hanging over us. If we hope for the best and work for the best, there will be greater possibilities in the meetings which are taking place at Munich during the next few days.”

“To prove that this could be achieved, flowers would be sent to Mr Chamberlain, Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini. This announcement was received with great applause from the audience.” We have no record of whether Herr Hitler acknowledged the gift.

The Cold War decades following the conclusion of the second global conflict saw an escalation in the numbers and destructive potential of nuclear weapons. In response to Britain’s H-bomb tests, in February 1958 the new Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament held a public meeting attended by five thousand people. CND then attracted considerable public sympathy and support from scientists, religious leaders, academics, journalists, writers, actors and musicians.

To progress the organisation’s aim of nuclear disarmament, protest marches took place at Easter in the 1950s and 1960s between the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire and London, over a distance of 52 miles. Some 60,000 people participated in the 1959 march and 150,000 in 1961 and 1962.

One of those attending the 1960 March was the secretary of the Torquay branch of CND, postman Tony Best from Shiphay. Tony was also the secretary of the local branch of the Union of Post Office Workers and had been active in the Labour Party but had resigned after Labour refused to call for nuclear disarmament.

Tony was impressed with the many foreigners on the march including a group of Japanese protesters. Tony explained his reasons for opposing nuclear weapons and his fears for his 8-year-old daughter, “I don’t want her to grow up in the shadow of the H-bomb, and the fall-out from more and more tests makes it increasingly dangerous. I feel it’s the only cause worth supporting because if you do not support it, there won’t be any other cause to support.”

On the other side of the argument was Torquay’s MP from 1955 to 1987, the Conservative Sir Frederic Bennett.

In his pamphlet ‘Reds under the Bed, or the Enemy at the Gate’, Sir Frederic condemned CND as a front funded with Soviet money and an “ideological fifth column”.

During the Cold War Sir Frederic had become increasingly hostile to communism and aligned himself with all of Moscow’s enemies, despite these states’ often poor human rights record or lack of commitment to democracy. This further led to his involvement in the anti-Communist European Freedom Campaign and the private army ‘Unison’.

The anti-war tradition remains in Torquay, Paignton and Brixham, as it does across the nation. But now pacifism is not just about stopping war. It is closely associated with climate change activism, social justice, feminism, anti-racism, and opposition to militarism and the arms trade.

Almost half (48%) of Britons say there are no circumstances where they would be willing to take up arms for Britain, while a third (35%) say there are. But then, as the peace campaigners of the 1930s found, circumstances change…