Imperial Culture in Antipodean Cities, 1880-1939

J. Griffiths

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137385734
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, this book explores how far imperial culture penetrated antipodean city institutions. It argues that far from imperial saturation, the city 'Down Under' was remarkably untouched by the Empire.

1

From Imperial Federation to the Empty Pavilion: Empire Sentiment in British Empire Cities 1880–1914

This chapter begins with London’s imperial pageant, staged at a point approximately halfway through the period which is under scrutiny in this book. The narrative will then journey from the ‘heart’ of the Empire to what has been designated by some imperial historians as the far-flung ‘periphery’ and to earlier points in time in an attempt to gauge imperial sentiment before 1914.¹ The Festival of Empire was staged belatedly (due to the death of Edward VII in 1910) at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, south London in 1911. Due to the King’s passing, fate dictated that the Festival would mark the early stages of the reign of George V and, in his symbolic role within the imperial domain, it also implicitly heralded a new phase in the history of the British Empire. This was neither the first nor the last time that London had, or would, stage a gathering of the ‘family’ of Empire, having most recently hosted the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of 1897. Indeed, the celebrations had represented one important way in which the British monarchy was being ‘recast’ to increasingly link it with the fortunes of the Empire.² This recasting had begun in the 1870s, as Disraeli awarded Queen Victoria the title ‘Empress of India’.³

As an international exhibition, the Festival replicated familiar features of that phenomenon, as it had evolved since the Great Exhibition of 1851, with a series of pavilions demonstrating the raw materials available in each component of the Empire and providing an impression of the general environment of the British ‘Dominions’ and colonial possessions. Celebrating the ‘All-Red Tour’ of Empire, the Festival of Empire took visitors on a mile-and-a-half trip by electric railway through British territories, starting in Newfoundland and ending in South Africa via Canada, Jamaica, Malaya, India, Australia and New Zealand, each represented by a pavilion cloaked in the form of their respective parliamentary building. On this occasion, however, the Festival was also to be remembered for the inclusion of an historical pageant in four parts, orchestrated by ceremonial ‘impressario’ Frank Lascelles.⁴ The pageant was staged over three days and drew on the services of 15,000 volunteers. In its final form, the pageant’s culmination was marked by a parade denoted as the ‘Masque Imperial’, an allegory of the advantages of Empire devised by Francis Hartman Markoe, and with musical accompaniment by Frederic Corder demonstrating the unity of the Empire.⁵ As a souvenir programme published for the pageant noted, the finale was designed to show, ‘in dignified symbolical manner, the mother who welcomes her children’.⁶ It was staged within a classically inspired amphitheatre designed by Aston Webb, who played a key role as architect of Imperial London in the Edwardian era.⁷ Whilst pageants were staged primarily for their ‘ornamentalism’, often symbolically inverting class structures and giving an opportunity for role play, they also had a practical objective, functioning as a means of celebrating both civic and imperial citizenship in an era of increasing European tensions. What is sometimes overlooked, as far as the staging of the Festival is concerned, is that despite being cloaked in imperial garb, it was an event which had only been recast in such terms two years before. It was originally to be called the ‘Festival of London’ as, indeed, some souvenir publications continued to describe it even while it was in progress. The accompanying pageant, which eventually became known as the ‘Pageant of Empire’, had initially included only three phases and was similarly titled the ‘Pageant of London’, restaging pageants initially undertaken by London boroughs in 1909. Masked behind the celebratory discourse was the fact that the imperial dimension to the pageant had only been added at a comparatively late stage in the Festival’s organisation and that a more ‘localised’ city patriotism had been the original aim of the event.⁸

As Deborah Ryan has noted of this particular pageant, it was a failed attempt to instil enthusiasm for the Empire amongst Londoners. She notes that recollections of the pageant, left in the form of a participant’s diary, do not point to identification with the event’s loftier aims.⁹ Moreover, a closer look at this festival demonstrates that it was not just Londoners who lacked imperial sentiment; even more pronounced were the Empire representatives. Rather than cementing the bonds of Empire or conveying the sense of a ‘happy family’, it instead proved to demonstrate that there existed a feud in the family of Empire. Whilst New Zealand, South Africa and Canada all appeared to be enthusiastic about participating in the Festival, in the months leading up to it, it became evident that one of the pavilions would remain empty. The pavilion in question had been allocated to Australia. In January 1911, the Agents-General of the various Australian states formerly notified Lascelles ‘that Australia would not be represented’, a stance which had been overseen by Andrew Fisher’s newly incumbent Labor ministry.¹⁰ It also refused to fund the construction of a coronation arch that would adorn the coronation route of George V, which was scheduled to take place in the summer of 1911.¹¹ The staging of the Festival during the summer months of 1911 has been adequately described elsewhere and it is not necessary to give a narrative of the proceedings here. An investigation of the debates that were conducted in the months preceding the Festival does, however, begin to cast light on the various stances that could be taken in relation to the celebration of the Empire by its component territories. Evidently, the opinions encompassed a wide range of viewpoints. Melbourne’s conservative and largely Empire-supporting morning daily The Argus, for example, noted with some regret that: ‘While the six states of Australia question the desirability of spending £10,000 to £12,000 upon a first class exhibit, the Government of Canada is spending £10,000 in making part of the Festival of Empire worthy of the Dominion. The promoters … feel that a hole and corner display will be better than the total exclusion of the Commonwealth from what has come to be an imperial undertaking.’¹² Indeed, as the staging of the Festival approached, the pavilion allocated to Australia remained empty until the Festival director, the Earl of Plymouth, took steps to fill it.

In the wake of the Festival, members of Australia’s Commonwealth Parliament reflected on the implications of the decision to leave the pavilion unfilled. One member, a Mr Poyton, did not know what right the company concerned had ‘to give an imitation of Australia such as that at the Festival of Empire’.¹³ The All-Red route railway, Poyton believed, was constructed so as to ‘wreak their vengeance upon this Government for refusing assistance’.¹⁴ Others who entered this debate believed that the impression of Australia given to the Festival visitors was one of ‘a land full of bushrangers and thirst-perishers’.¹⁵ A further faction felt that an opportunity had been lost and that, as one MP put it, ‘New Zealand took advantage of that magnificent opportunity for advertising [and as a consequence] was greatly talked about’.¹⁶ Others who attended the Festival noted that ‘Canada was always first mentioned by the people at Home, South Africa next, New Zealand third and Australia was nowhere’.¹⁷ ‘Our methods of advertising abroad are an absolute farce’, noted Poynton in the same parliamentary debate.¹⁸ What is interesting about this parliamentary debate is that as a ‘discourse’ held within the ‘public’ sphere, sentiment for the Empire was relatively muted. One speaker did feel that ‘a false impression was created that we in Australia were not too strong in the Empire sentiment’, but others saw the issue as one of simply national boosterism and a lost marketing opportunity. As the debate drew to a close, one contributor did suggest that: ‘Seeing that each part of the Empire wishes to rival its neighbour, we ought to enter into that friendly rivalry ourselves.’¹⁹

In what follows, I will attempt to show that such a stance was in fact no interlude in the otherwise enthusiastic support of the Empire, but rather was an example of a somewhat more instrumental approach to the concept of Empire and the imperial project, which was consistently demonstrated across the period 1880–1940. Whilst class discourse must be used with care in the context of both Australia and New Zealand, it can be argued that the formation of urban elites was a phenomenon of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The elite, who were most closely identified with the British middle classes, exercised power by recourse to the British link and, indeed, representations of Britishness promoted by branches of what were largely London-based imperial institutions. The energy of this merchant class had more in common with Britain’s provincial cities of the north. A new world city provided the opportunity to blend elements of regional British identity. This middle-class elite found itself increasingly at odds with popular working-class feeling, which rejected the frippery of the Empire and only accepted the imperial project when it offered scope for colonial development. As a more urbanised component of the Empire, this stance was most easily found in Australia, with the majority of states boasting a vigorous Labor movement. It can be argued, however, that the larger centres as they grew in New Zealand also followed a pattern of instrumentalism, here too adopting the imperial project only when tangible gains could be made by the emerging nation. Stephen Alonso has usefully depicted divisions in Australian society, pitching a middle-class elite who were metropolitan, British, loyal, responsible and cultured against a provincial, disloyal, irresponsible and raffish working class.²⁰ A survey of the contemporary press and the records of British Empire loyalty leagues demonstrate at best an instrumentalism and at worse indifference to many imperial initiatives. In some rather obvious instances, anti-imperialism was always visible. Thus, the Melbourne publication The Socialist asked of its Melbourne readers: ‘Who can have looked on the miserable display of loyalty in the streets of Melbourne on Coronation Day, without understanding that the days of subserviency to the dear old country were numbered? As for the throne itself there are nine-tenths of Australians who would have been irresistibly reminded of that old Jacobite song “An who have ye gotten for a King but a wee German laddie”. We may thank God that we are rid of that pitiful puking business.’²¹

If a Labor government in Australia was choosing to reject aspects of Britishness, surely a rather different stance was being adopted across the Tasman? Here there was no Labour administration to strain the bonds of Empire. Initially it may seem that there was. In the same column in The Times that announced the Australian government’s decision not to fund anything more than a cadet representation at the coronation ceremony, the departure of Joseph Ward, who headed a Liberal ministry in New Zealand, was described in terms of the utmost loyalty to the Empire.²² Ward was heading to London to also attend the Imperial Conference of 1911 – the latest in a series of meetings which had been staged at regular intervals since the Golden Jubilee of 1887 – and, at this meeting, would argue for a version of imperial federation to tighten the bonds of Empire. As James Belich has noted, ‘you could not get more Anglophile than Joseph Ward’.²³ However, other evidence begins to point to a withering of interest in the Empire as one moved down the ‘pyramid’ of governance. When invitations were sent to members of New Zealand’s House of Representatives, only one member expressed an interest in attending.²⁴ Indeed, even an imperially enthusiastic journal like The Round Table doubted whether any popular enthusiasm existed in New Zealand when it published the anonymous comment that New Zealanders’ ‘feel that we are far from the heart of the old Empire and we believe that its destinies are guided by other hands than ours. The minds of the people are sunk in the apathy which accompanies prosperity … The strain of Parliamentary life … seem[s] to leave our politicians little time for Imperial thought. A General Election … marks the most intense concentration upon purely local issues’.²⁵ Popular opinion for the imperial project at this stage seemed confused, if not indifferent. Why should city populations be enthusiastic? When a contingent of the South African Soldiers’ Association waited on the Lord Mayor of Melbourne in May 1911 to request that a second memorial to the 228 soldiers of Victoria who had been killed in the Second Boer War be constructed, they were met with the response that ‘it had been 12 years since the contingent went away. It was his [the Lord Mayor’s] opinion that if they went to the public to collect money for the movement it would be an absolute failure’.²⁶ At the same time, even the conservative and usually imperially minded daily The Argus pondered in its leading editorial that in order: ‘To live for the Empire … one must have a definite conception of what the Empire means to oneself and it is the absence, or vagueness, of the conception that is mainly responsible for the cant which makes many just a little tired of hearing or reading anything about the imperial idea.’²⁷ Was the ‘empty pavilion’ of 1911 an aberration? Had the Empire ever meant much to those who lived within it? In order to explore this issue, it is necessary to look at the historical evolution of the British world from the 1880s in order to examine what conceptions of Britishness were ever acceptable to those living half a world away and in what ways enthusiasm for the Empire was generated.

Britishness and Empire sentiment: imperial federation 1880–1914

As the Introduction to this book established, by the 1880s the notion of closer links between the components of the British Empire was embraced by politicians located both at Westminster and across the wider British Empire. The Imperial Federation Movement and the British mona...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Editorial Introduction
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 From Imperial Federation to the Empty Pavilion: Empire Sentiment in British Empire Cities 1880–1914
• 2 Imperial Identity in Antipodean Cities During the First World War and its Aftermath 1914–30
• 3 Empire City or Global City? North American Culture in the Antipodean City c. 1880–1939
• 4 Integration or Separation? Attitudes to Empire in the Antipodean Press c. 1880s–1930s
• 5 Uniform Diversity? Youth Organisations in the Antipodes c. 1880–1939
• 6 Ceremonial Days, Imperial Culture, Schools and Exhibitions c. 1900–35
• 7 The Branch Life of Empire: Imperial Loyalty Leagues in Antipodean Cities c. 1900–39
• Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index