Luckier veterans, mostly those who had been self-employed or in work as skilled craftsmen, found their jobs still waiting for them – though they were often expected to take a cut in wages. Many of the younger men had been apprentices before the war. This system, which stretched back to the Middle Ages, allowed youths to be taken on by a master craftsman who would teach them a trade in exchange for a guarantee that the apprentice would continue working for a set period after he had become skilled. A small wage would be paid while the apprentice learned his craft and the contract between him and his employer would be recorded in a document called an indenture, which would be cancelled at the end of the set term. Corporal John Oborne of the 4th Dorsetshires had been an apprentice joiner in Bath since the age of fourteen, and when the war started was put to work making boxes for shells and torpedoes while waiting to come of military age. After the war ended he stayed on in the army until the beginning of 1920 in order to save up the £50 he would need to buy a set of tools when he returned to his peacetime profession. His old firm was prepared to take him back to complete his apprenticeship, but the pay offered was less than what he would receive if he stayed in the army. He nevertheless completed his apprenticeship and remained with the firm until he retired in 1975, living on to the age of 104.
Harry Patch, on the other hand, refused to accept the terms offered by his old company, also in Bath. He had served three years of his apprenticeship as a plumber, from the age of fifteen, before being called up, and was expected to complete a further two years, at the same paltry wage of ten shillings a week, when he returned. ‘I was effectively being penalised for serving my country,’ he said. He was now twenty-one and about to be married and so refused the offer, doing odd jobs and private work instead. The problem for him now was that his old firm would not sign his indentures. He consulted his father’s solicitor, who offered the opinion that the war had rendered such contracts invalid. Even if Patch’s contract with his employer had not effectively been broken when Patch was called up, it was certainly broken by delayed demobilisation. Those who volunteered or had been conscripted had signed up only ‘for the duration’: by failing to release Patch from the army as soon as the war was over, the government had broken the contract once more. Patch nevertheless felt, as a matter of pride, that he was entitled to have his indentures signed. After a great deal of wrangling, and after he had accepted a job with another company, his employers eventually agreed. He remained in the plumbing trade for the rest of his working life.
Some veterans had gone to the war straight from school without ever being trained for any sort of job other than fighting, and had no experience of the workplace. Others had spent so long in the services that through lack of practice they had almost forgotten the skills they once had, or had missed out on the technical advances that had been made in their absence. Employers were reluctant to take such men on, and this bred even more resentment among the veterans towards those who had stayed behind and were preferred as employees. It was reckoned that around one million men returned from the war to find they had no job. The government provided those who had served in the ranks with unemployment benefit, but former officers were supposed to have sufficient private means to keep them going and were left to fend for themselves. While still in France awaiting demob, Guy Chapman’s battalion was visited by representatives of the commission for the employment of ex-servicemen. Chapman was told that at twenty-eight he was ‘far too old’ and that consequently nothing could be done for him. A fellow officer was told that ‘military distinction was a quite useless recommendation for civil life’. The writer Gilbert Frankau, who had joined up immediately at the outbreak of war and served as an officer at Loos, Ypres and on the Somme, spoke for many in his poem ‘Only an Officer’:
Only an officer! Only a chap
Who carried on till the final scrap,
Only a fellow who didn’t shirk –
Homeless, penniless, out of work,
Asking only a start in life,
A job that will keep himself and his wife,
‘And thank the Lord that we haven’t a kid.’
Thus men pay for the deeds men did!
Unemployment among all classes would remain a major problem in the immediate post-war period, and veterans sporting medals reduced to playing barrel-organs in the streets or peddling matches, shoelaces and other small items became a common and shaming sight. A poignant postcard of the period, on which a poem about the sacrifices made in France and the broken promises about employment back home was printed, came with the following message:
PLEASE READ THIS. Can you help this Ex-service Man by buying this Poetry. PRICE TWOPENCE. So please patronise an Ex-Soldier, Out of Work. NO PENSION. NO DOLE. I am a Genuine Discharged Soldier NOT AN IMPOSTER. I am compelled to sell these to keep myself, wife and children.
Sold entirely by unemployed Ex-service men.
Even those in employment were often dissatisfied with wages and working conditions. In Glasgow in January 1919 an agreement negotiated on behalf of engineers and shipbuilders between the trade unions and employers for a forty-seven-hour working week was rejected by the Clyde Workers’ Committee on the grounds that a forty-hour week was preferable because more people – in particular discharged servicemen – would be needed for jobs. Accustomed to the ‘red’ reputation of the Clyde, the employers and government did not take too much notice of the strike called by the CWC at the end of January. After four days, however, 40,000 men had laid down their tools and were joined not only by Glasgow’s electrical workers but by 36,000 Scottish miners. Ex-servicemen were used as pickets, naturally arousing public sympathy, and on 29 January some 60,000 people attended a demonstration in George Square, Glasgow, while a delegation was granted an audience with the Lord Provost. A vain attempt to disperse the crowd by mounted police led to a pitched battle not only in the square but in other parts of the city, and many were injured. Fearful that Scottish troops might side with the strikers, the government sent massed English troops to Glasgow, some of them in tanks. Peace was restored and on 10 February the strike was called off, its aim unrealised. Politicians nevertheless feared that without the war effort to hold the nation together, discontent and dissension would spread throughout society.
In the immediate aftermath of war, the interests and aims of workers often coincided with those of former servicemen. Indeed, the earliest associations of veterans had a strong political dimension, and the British Legion – associated latterly with garden fêtes and genteel volunteers selling poppies – grew out of surprisingly radical beginnings. The Legion itself did not come into existence until 1921, but a number of other veterans’ associations were founded while the war was still being fought. There had long been charitable organisations set up on behalf of British war veterans, ensuring that old soldiers did not simply fade away in penury. The professional soldiers who fought in the First World War, however, were outnumbered by civilians who, in the language of the times, had answered the nation’s call, either by volunteering or because they had been conscripted. In return, it seemed only right that they should be entitled to benefits provided by the state rather than having to rely upon handouts from charities. Veterans who had left the service began organising themselves into associations that would lobby for pensions and for disability and unemployment allowances.
The earliest grouping, formed in September 1916, was the National Association of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers, which had strong links to both the Labour and Trades Union movements. The similarly named National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers, formed in April 1917, was sponsored by a Liberal MP and held its inaugural meeting at the National Liberal Club. It was open only to those who had served in, or risen from, the ranks, presumably because the Federation felt, as the government did, that former commissioned officers could look after themselves. The Comrades of the Great War was proposed in August 1917 by Lieutenant Colonel Sir John Norton-Griffiths, a Conservative MP (supported by Lord Derby, the then Secretary of State for War), with the express intention of providing an organisation without what he considered the