Nostalgia: it just ain't what it used to be

It was a pleasure to discover that my youngest son was visiting the family of our daughter-out-law this weekend. That took him to Belfast. And that took me back to some old memories, with feelings a little like nostalgia.

I say “a little like” because the word “nostalgia” suggests more attractive memories than those that came to my mind.

The first time I travelled to Belfast, I stayed in the Europa Hotel, reputed to be the most bombed in Europe. Indeed, when I arrived, one side of the hotel had all its windows boarded up after a bomb attack. To get in, I had to walk through a corridor with a chicane leading to a security area where luggage could be searched. Ironically, the whole cumbersome structure was unmanned, which was convenient since it saved me time, but also unnerving because it didn’t inspire much confidence in the security measures.

My room overlooked the headquarters of the Ulster Unionist Party with its sign, “Keep Ulster British”. That struck me as ironic since I was a Brit and little about the place struck me British.

Normally, alone in a new city, I’d wander out to get the feel of the place and find someone pleasant for a meal. I felt so afraid of those eerily empty streets that I found it hard to take the plunge on my first evening in Belfast. In the end, in order not to give way to simple cowardice, I walked quickly around the block opposite the hotel, saw nowhere that attracted me for dinner, and went back to order room service instead.

Later I got to know the city rather better, and had many of the classic experiences: driving without knowing it within a few hundred of metres of a major attack (the Ulster Defence Association’s shooting of Catholic civilians in a betting shop, leaving five dead and nine injured), asking directions of a flak-jacketed, machine-gun-toting policeman and being surprised by the cordiality of the answer, walking with other civilians through the middle of an army patrol…

A scene from 1971:
how civilians and soldiers mixed in Northern Ireland

I also learned to appreciate many of the ironies of the Northern Irish existence. For instance, the Ulster Defence Association that carried out the betting shop murders, was officially “loyalist”. Loyalty, it seemed, did not require respect for the law or traditions of the country, Britain, to which these gentlemen saw themselves as loyal. But then, outside the Northern Ireland Assembly building there still stands a larger-than-life statue of Sir Edward Carson, the man who raised an illegal army to fight the British government’s moves towards a timid measure of home rule in Ireland. “Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right”, he proclaimed, and though a lawyer and a Member of Parliament, he mustered forces to support his claim. However, his treason was met not by imprisonment or the rope but by a statue to his memory.

Some years earlier, I had travelled to East Berlin. I landed in the West and took the Underground into the Eastern sector, seeing for the first time the dimly lit ghost stations of the East, closed to passengers and patrolled by armed policemen. When I emerged at Friedrichstrasse, the only station left open in East Berlin on that line, I also had to walk through a corridor with a chicane, but this one was far from unmanned, as I came around a corner nearly into the arms of a young policeman with a machine gun clutched to his chest.

Armed police in a Berlin ghost station

As in Belfast some years later, I was nervous about wandering out into the streets of East Berlin. I quickly realised, however, that East Berlin fulfilled a positively Thatcherite vision of urban peace (Maggie was firmly enthroned back then, made secure by Labour’s decision to equip itself with a leader no one was going to elect Prime Minister – oh, how we learn the lessons of experience): the streets were safe, with more police on view than anyone else. Only near the Brandenburg Gate did I feel nervous again: there was the wall, suddenly blocking off the great boulevard of Unter den Linden, with a small opening guarded by armed men, and the glare of the searchlights in the death strip beyond them.

Thinking back today to those two experiences, of Belfast in the Troubles and Berlin in the Cold War, made me realise that nostalgia will soon not be what it once was. The nastiness of those days had a quality of drama, inspiring many a novel or film: how often have you seen floodlights on barbed wire in spy films based in Berlin, or blacked-up British troops patrolling past IRA murals in films about Belfast?

Whereas today’s ghastliness has replaced drama by farce. People who don’t know what they’re wishing for have elected an unstable moron to the White House or voted to take Britain out of the European Union, without understanding the wound they’re inflicting on themselves.

On the other hand, the farce is a dangerous one. An unstable moron with his fingers on the nuclear button? Sheer slapstick, for sure – but hardly a laughing matter. 

I preferred the old nostalgia.

Countdown to War, Day 39. 5 August: Britain declares war and an era ends

One hundred years ago today, on Wednesday 5 August 1914, Martin and his tracklayer mates reading the Manchester Guardian, found confirmation that the axe had finally fallen the day before. Britain was at war.

“England declares war on Germany” screamed the headline.

“Presumably it’s us too,” grumbled the Scotsman.

Great Britain declared war on Germany at 11 o’clock last night.

The Cabinet yesterday delivered an ultimatum to Germany. Announcing the fact to the House of Commons, the Prime Minister said: “We have repeated the request made last week to the German Government that they should give us the same assurance in regard to Belgian neutrality that was given to us and Belgium by France last week. We have asked that it should be given before midnight.”

Midnight German time was 11:00 p.m. in Britain.

Another article made clear why the appeal for Belgian neutrality had been made. And why it had never stood the slightest chance of being heeded.

The Prime Minister of Belgium announced in the Belgian Chamber yesterday that Belgian territory had been violated by the German forces.

The British Foreign Office was informed by the Belgian Minister in London shortly before noon that the German forces had crossed to Belgian soil

German troops occupying Ostend

“So that’s it,” said Martin, “We’re in. Like it or not. For better or for worse.”

“For worse,” said the Cynic.

“And all over Belgium!” another voice piped up.

“Nothing to do with Belgium,” said the Cynic, “it’s Germany wanting a bigger role in the world. Much bigger. And France and Russia thinking she’d only get it at their expense.”

“And the Austrian Archduke?” asked Martin.

“A pretext for Austria-Hungary to take on Serbia. And that was’s the pretext for this one.”

“I still don’t see what on earth it has to do with us.”

“It didn’t have anything to do with us but it does now.”

There was a silence as the men reflected on what the future held in store. Not that they were likely to guess the full impact the war would have.


Firstly, it would end in two separate defeats. The first would be suffered by Russia: despite the huge numbers of men it could call on, “to die in heaps” as the Guardian had said, they were hopelessly outmatched by German discipline, training and arms. Russia’s defeat led to the seizure of power by the Communists and 70 years of tension with the Capitalist world.

The second defeat was suffered by Germany and Austria-Hungary.

For the Dual Monarchy, defeat spelled dissolution. Hungary was separated from Austria, but also lost two-thirds of its territory. Austria was reduced to its German-speaking heartland. The Balkan Slavs, including Bosnia where the Archduke and his wife were murdered, merged with Serbia. That was a triumph for the Serb nationalists. The King of Serbia even took the throne of the new country, though as a sop to other groups, it was eventually given a neutral name, Yugoslavia, the land of the Southern Slavs.

As for Germany, the Kaiser lost his throne and went into exile. The country felt itself betrayed not beaten, and crushed by the reparations the victors forced it to pay. The bitterness and resentment led to the Nazis taking power as a violent revanchist movement, intent on reversing the losses of the First World War by fighting a Second. Neither that war nor the Holocaust need have happened had the first war not been fought.

The Empires on the winning side lost out too. France and Britain were sucked dry by the cost of the war. Because they were victors, they clung on to their colonies for another generation, but the writing was on the wall.

Domestically, the war also brutally altered Britain’s destiny.

Asquith remained at the head of a Liberal government, the last Liberal Prime Minister, until May 1915 when he brought leading Conservatives into a coalition. A little over eighteen months later, he was unceremoniously dumped and replaced by David Lloyd George, who saw the war through to victory. The National government, as the Coalition was known, fought and won the 1918 election as a bloc under Lloyd George, with Asquith’s Liberals running against them; by 1922, the Tories had had their fill of the National Liberals and dropped them. Labour took over as the second largest party, forming its first government, as a minority, in 1924.

Liberals never again formed a government of their own.

Winston Churchill had started his career as a Conservative before holding a series of Ministerial posts in the Liberal Party; Arthur Balfour, Tory Prime Minister at the turn of the Century, just before the Liberals came to office, said “I thought Winston Churchill was a young man of promise, but it appears he is a young man of promises.” In 1925, Churchill returned to the Conservatives, a move on which he later commented “anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat.”

A young man of promise or a young man of promises?

Women’s suffrage was delayed for the period of the war. In 1918, however, after a war in which women had played a crucial role in keeping the industrial machine going, they at last won the right to vote at age 30 subject to a property qualification; practically all men were given the vote at 21, as Martin had hoped. 

The suffrage was made equal between the sexes ten years later. 

We saw Irish Home Rule being put on the back burner as war broke out. It would never become an option again: the traditional Nationalists were outflanked by more committed and radical movements demanding full independence. The divisions within the island, however, were never addressed, so when the British government was at last forced to let Ireland go, it retained six of the nine counties in Ulster, where Edward Carson had raised the cry of “No Surrender” to rally the Protestant Loyalist forces.

The war cost 37 million casualties, 17 million of them dead. Was Martin one of them?

British soldiers heading off

It’s hard to say. Out of five and a half million who fought, 700,000 were killed. That he fought I have no doubt. I suspect he wouldn’t have joined up voluntarily, given his views, but in 1916 conscription was introduced and as a healthy young man in a line of work that wouldn’t have exempted him, he would certainly have been called up.

However, I’ve found no trace of him in any prominent position in the post-war National Union of Railwaymen or Labour Party. Did he merely fail in his ambitions to go into union or national politics, or was he one of the 700,000 dead? Or perhaps one of the 750,000 who were permanently disabled? There’s no way of knowing.

And then there were Martin’s more parochial hopes. On 4 August 1914, Lancashire’s arch-rivals Yorkshire notched up a commanding lead in their latest match. They wrapped up the game on the 5th, the day Martin read about the declaration of war.

The season ended with Surrey winning the County Championship. Lancashire was eleventh out of sixteen, in the bottom half of the table and well behind Yorkshire, which came fourth.

“Like I said,” explained Martin, “It turned into a lousy year, 1914.”

Sir Edward Carson, the troublesome loyalist. And the Winslow Boy

Some readers of my “Countdown to War” series of blog posts have asked about that strange character, Sir Edward Carson.

As pressure mounted, in the years leading up to the First World War, for some kind of Home Rule in Ireland – i.e. a measure of autonomy within the United Kingdom – he took the leadership of the Protestant movement in Ulster that opposed any slackening of the ties with Britain. He was a lawyer and a Member of Parliament, but he raised and at least connived at the arming of a resistance group that came to be known as the Ulster Volunteer Force.

Sir Edward Carson opposing Home Rule
He launched the slogan "No Surrender"

Decades later, the UVF and its successors were major contributors to the troubles that plagued Northern Ireland between 1972 and 1997.

Even back then, it was a significant factor in the instability of the island and its steady drift towards civil war.

And yet Carson was never arrested. Indeed, the British government treated him as a spokesman for a certain strand of opinion, and someone with whom it was prepared to negotiate. It’s hard not to feel that if he was treated so leniently, despite fomenting armed insurrection against the State he was sworn to serve, it was because at heart the government couldn’t bring itself to condemn a movement that set out to keep at least a part of Ireland under its control.

Because he favoured the Union, he was a loyalist, and one can be indulgent towards any degree of disloyalty in a loyalist.

This adulation of a rebel and insurgent continues to this day. There is a greater than life-size statue of Carson on the drive up to Stormont Castle outside Belfast, the seat of the power-sharing government of Northern Ireland and its Assembly. One can’t help admiring the Republicans who turn up there each day and go past the statue, on their way to continue work for the peaceful development of the province.

What amazes me most about the man, however, is that there was another side to his character. The Terence Rattigan play The Winslow Boy tells the story of a young cadet expelled from Naval College for the theft of a five shilling postal order; a leading right-wing MP and lawyer takes up the case and his brilliant forensic skills become the biggest weapon in the defence of the child.

The lawyer, Sir Robert Morton, bases his legal action on a so-called “petition of right”. Technically, this is an appeal to the Sovereign to correct a wrong that has been done to a subject. The play several times makes powerful and poignant use of the words inscribed on such a petition, “let Right be done.” At one point, Morton declares, “it is easy to do justice, but it is very hard to do right”.

It came as a shock to me a few years ago – such a shock that I put up a blog post on the subject at the time – to discover that the historical figure on whom Morton is modelled, who fought the case of the real cadet on whom the Winslow boy is based, was none other than Sir Edward Carson.

I’ve always preferred my heroes when I can see that they have feet of clay. Carson’s interesting because he’s a villain in whom I can see a halo. And that’s marvellously intriguing.

Countdown to War, Day 20. 17 July 1914: a suffragette martyr, more trouble with Carson, the Royal Navy assembles, French airmen get lost

One hundred years ago today, on Friday 17 July 1914, Martin the railwayman would have discovered from his Manchester Guardian that the authorities had succeeded after all in keeping Emmeline Pankhurst from attending the votes for women meeting the day before. Two days ago the paper had quoted her fellow suffragette Mrs Mansel saying that “Mrs. Pankhurst was going to the meeting on Thursday evening, and nothing could stop her.”

There’d been an attempt to get her there; she’d emerged from the house surrounded by the “announced ‘bodyguard’ of clergymen and doctors” who would attempt to prevent her being re-arrested.

Emmeline Pankhurst
Didn't make it to the meeting

Following them came Mrs. Pankhurst on a stretcher, accompanied by some nurses. She was covered with a black evening cloak and looked very pale. A nurse endeavoured to enter the motor ambulance, but was prevented by the police.

In the meantime, Mrs. Pankhurst had been lifted into the motor ambulance, followed by another nurse. Chief Inspector McBrien and Inspector Parker sprang in immediately afterwards. While this was happening a uniformed policeman had got on the seat beside the driver, and before the crowd had fully realised it Mrs. Pankhurst was on her way to Holloway [women’s prison].

“The women still got £15,000 in contributions,” said the young man reading the article, “despite the arrest.”

“Despite?” said the Cynic, “Because. Nothing’s so effective for getting sympathy as martyrdom.”

Home Rule legislation for Ireland was entering its final stages in Parliament. Compromise between Protestant opponents of Home Rule and Catholic nationalists looked as remote as ever.

Communications have taken place to-day between the Prime Minister and Sir Edward Carson. What the result of these was cannot be known, but it may be assumed that no settlement is at present in sight, and that the chance of one is at the moment slender owing to the persistence of the uncompromising attitude taken by the Ulster leader in Belfast last week and since he returned to London.

He smiled a wrily.

“Carson’s a lawyer, but his movement is stockpiling arms. Illegally. Criminally. And the government’s crawling to him. Why don’t they arrest him? Why aren’t they interrogating him instead of negotiating with him?”

“Hold on,” said one of this workmates, “he’s a patriot. He wants to keep the United Kingdom united. A kingdom with Ireland in it.”

“What’s a crime for some,” said the Cynic, “is just a different way of doing the right thing in others. If you’re a loyalist, whatever you do’s loyal, illegal or not.”

Meanwhile, Parliament kept talking about legislation for Ireland. Well, he wished them luck. Legislation was at least preferable to war. And there was no war so bitter as civil war.

Talking of war, what was happening in Europe generally? There at least the alarming news items from yesterday’s paper seemed not to have been followed up by further worrying developments. Unless – what should he make of the massive assembly of the fleet now under way at Portsmouth? Sea and air fleet, in fact – he needed to get used to the fact that there were now airborne weapons too.

Nearly five hundred war vessels comprising the British Home Fleet will be assembled at Spithead during the week-end for the ‘test mobilisation’ and inspection by the King. The first contingent, including most of the bigger battleships and cruisers, steamed into the Solent yesterday and provided a fine spectacle.

It seemed that there had been a “splendid response” to the Admiralty’s call for reservists, “17,000 of whom have joined for eleven days.”

Reservists called up?

The “newly-created air service” would be on display. Overall, the exercise would involve the “most powerful fleet ever known” to have been deployed.

He couldn’t make up his mind whether this was just for show or preparation for something more sinister.

Another story was about “French Airmen Detained”. It sounded bad, but wasn’t. Or perhaps it wasn’t. He couldn’t tell whether there something sinister behind the apparently ridiculous.

A couple of French airmen mistook the Black Forest, in Germany, for the Vosges, in France, got lost and had to land on German soil. It all ended well (though God knows what sort of reception the two flyers came home to), as the Guardian reported:

The army headquarters at Carlsruhe have decided that the aviators shall be allowed to return after a protocol has been drawn up.

He didn’t know what to make of that. Either the French air service was so incompetent that they couldn’t work out where that highly sensitive frontier ran, or they were spying on Germany, which as well as being sinister enough in itself, meant they weren’t smart enough to get away with it, which showed worrying incompetence.

Either way, it wasn’t a story to inspire much confidence in our Entente Cordiale partners.

French Air Force
Needed to learn not to confuse mountain ranges

Countdown to War, Day 17. 14 July 1914: "No Surrender", Mrs Pankhurst struggles on, and gentility is maintained at Birkdale and Southport. Viciously

One hundred years ago today, on Tuesday 14 July 1914, Martin the young railwayman and his friends might have read some historic words in the Manchester Guardian. Spoken by Sir Edward Carson, the leader of Unionism in Ireland, they were deliverd to a meeting in Drumberg as part of the 12th of July Battle of the Boyne celebrations. Faced with all those cheering people calling on him for leadership, he had asked himself:

What is the one lesson I ought to learn from all that I have seen to-day? And I think I can sum it up in the two old words you every one wish to say to me, “No surrender.” (Great cheers).

“No surrender”. A call for implacable conflict and words he felt might well echo down the decades.

While the Protestants were cheering Carson, at Castlebellingham in County Louth, 4000 Irish Volunteers were parading in military formation, as a photograph published by the paper attested. And so the descent towards civil war continued...

Things weren’t getting sorted out in the Levant either. The paper published another extract from a letter by an “Englishman in the Aegean Islands”:

It is, I confess, difficult for me to see how, if, as it seems, the expulsion of the Christian inhabitants of the coasts opposite Lesbos and Chios, was, so to speak, a simple move in the game, a simple retort to Greece, it might not have been carried out openly and diplomatically without the horrors that attended it. 

“More horrors,” said Martin. 

“With religion to fuel them,” said the Cynic, “to make sure they really cut deep. The Irish don’t know what delights they’re preparing for themselves.”

Meanwhile, Mrs Pankhurst, released from prison for four days, was going to be returned to gaol before she could address a planned suffragette meeting. Mrs Mansel had told a meeting of the Women’s Social and Political Union:

Mrs. Pankhurst was too ill to be able to go to the meeting except on an ambulance with her nurses and doctors. And what did the Home Secretary propose to do? Did he propose to tear her away from her nurses and doctors? ... Mrs. Pankhurst was going to the meeting on Thursday evening, and nothing could stop her. She was going to be there, and they were going to see that she was there. (Cheers)

It was impressive just how far people were prepared to go to attain their goals. Whatever it cost, even their own or others’ lives or liberty. Would he go so far for any of those causes? Ireland? Did it matter whether it stayed or went? Turkey and Greece? He didn’t understand their conflict, but did anyone else? The vote? Well that was worth a sacrifice, he agreed. But would he go through what Mrs Pankhurst had?

Croquet: genteel. And vicious

In a world where so much seemed to be going wrong, there was at least one area in which a sense of proper order and decorum was being maintained.

The eighth annual croquet tournament promoted by the Birkdale and Southport Croquet Club began yesterday, and will continue for the rest of the week. In spite of the fact that there are several other meetings in various parts of the country in progress at the present time the entry was much more numerous than usual, and the standard of the competing players was much higher.

“See?” said the older tracklayer, “what are you complaining about? Things can’t be going all wrong in a world which still has that much gentility in it.”

“What are you talking about?” asked the Cynic. “Bloody vicious game. Good preparation for war, if you ask me.”

Countdown to War, Day 16. 13 July: votes for women, a force for peace?

One hundred years ago today, on Monday 13 July 1914, our Mancunian railwayman friend reading his Manchester Guardian, might have been impressed, and had his scepticism shaken, by the scale the movement for women’s rights was taking.

The International Women’s Suffrage Alliance conference had been meeting in London all week, and on the previous day had devoted some time to planning the next conference, in Berlin in 1915. The Berlin session would consider the relation of the vote to wages and prostitution, “with further consideration of wages to the social evil. Another question to be discussed at the conference relates to what women have done and what they can do in municipal government.”

That would make the Berlin conference particularly interesting for France, since “the women there are hoping very shortly to get the municipal vote.”

It might be time for Martin to overcome his reservations and accept that the momentum for women’s suffrage would ultimately prove irresistible. Besides, as it involved international meetings of this kind, it was a further guarantor of peace between nations. A conference in Berlin with support from Britain and France? That meant building bridges across some tense frontiers.

On balance, he was coming round to the idea that women should win the right to vote, and rather hoped that it might be extended to him, too.

Once again, things seemed to be heading for a resolution in one of the world’s trouble spots, Mexico. “Information has been received from Mexico City that General Huerta is about to resign in favour of Señor Carbajal, the newly appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs.” He had little understanding of the implications for ordinary Mexican citizens, but it sounded like a way to stop conflict and, surely, the twentieth century was not a time to settle differences by military means?

William III at the Battle of the Boyne
Pacifying Ireland in England's time-honoured style

That was a lesson still to be learned in Ireland, it seemed. The Ulster Hall in Belfast had seen a 3000-strong meeting of Orangemen to mark the twelfth of July. It was on that day that Protestant Irishmen celebrated the Battle of the Boyne, the moment in 1690 when William of Orange, William III of England, defeated James II, ensuring the Protestant Ascendancy on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Martin had met Irishmen in Liverpool who gave a far less attractive account of the battle and its consequences. As Catholics, they saw nothing to celebrate on 12 July. To the Orangemen, on the other hand, it was a high point in the calendar.

The Rev. Dr. Patterson, of May Street Presbyterian Church, who preached, based his discourse upon the text “And Moses said unto his people, ‘Remember this day.’” (Exodus xiii., 3). Israel, he said, was commanded to keep in remembrance her deliverance from the bondage of Egypt, and to-day hundreds of thousands throughout the English-speaking world were commemorating a great deliverance from the bondage of Rome – a bondage more terrible than that of Egypt.

Referring to the time of the Battle of the Boyne, he went on:

William led; in these days Edward leads, and he is in possession of the flag which went before William... God raised up Moses and Joshua to bring His people from Egypt to Canaan, and we do not question for a moment the fact that He raised up William III. in the seventeenth century to save Great Britain and Ireland from the hierarchy of Rome. Surely we have the same right to believe that Sir Edward Carson has been raised up in the twentieth century to save Ulster...

Well, if it was with the blessing of God that Sir Edward Carson was organising an illegal armed movement, then Ireland’s problems were far from over. It would, indeed, be trouble enough if his supporters merely believed that...

At least Lancashire had stuffed Derbyshire. By an innings and 25 runs. That at any rate was something over which Martin could feel unqualified pleasure.

Countdown to War, day 15. 12 July: the Archduke's assassination – another death; and Hansi's great escape

One hundred years ago today, on Sunday 12 July 1914, Martin the Mancunian railwayman might have picked up the Observer when his Minister had finished with it, and read a curious story about another celebrity death associated with that ugly business between Serbia and Austria-Hungary.

Belgrade, Saturday.

M. de Hartwig, the Russian Minister, called on the Austro-Hungarian Legation at nine o’clock last evening and was received by the Austro-Hungarian Minister in his study. [...] During the conversation, which was of a friendly nature, the Russian Minister suddenly placed his hand over his heart. His head dropped and he fell to the floor. Although restoratives were applied and medical assistance was prompt, M. Hartwig succumbed to heart failure.

Quoting the Serbian journal Politika, the Observer revealed that this sad event was not entirely unrelated to the murder of the Austrian Archduke two weeks earlier:

...certain rumours are current to the effect that Baron Giesl [the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador] was informed while in Vienna that the Russian Legation did not hoist its flag half-mast high for the Archduke Ferdinand’s death. M. de Hartwig, who heard these rumours, dismissed the matter with Baron Giesl. During the conversation M. de Hartwig became excited and collapsed.

Despite this hint at tension between Austria-Hungary and Russia, it seemed that the heartwarming unanimity of reaction to the assassination across Europe, as reported in the Manchester Guardian the day before, was still being maintained. Russia, France and Britain, the first two allies, the second two linked by the Entente Cordiale, saw things very much as Austria-Hungary did:

The “Neues Wiener Tagblatt” leans from a well-informed source that the report that the Powers of the Triple Entente, through their Ministers in Belgrade, would make friendly representations to the Servian Government, calling its attention to the necessity of taking suitable steps against anarchist elements, is correct. The newspaper adds that this step is imminent.

By speaking with one voice in this way, Europe should be able to bring Serbia into line and contain, perhaps even cool, the bad blood between Belgrade and Vienna.

If only a solution were as simple in Ulster.

There is a feeling of crisis in the air throughout the province. The grim sincerity of the Ulstermen was never shown more clearly than at the remarkable parade of armed and well-trained men which was held yesterday at Larne and inspected by Sir Edward Carson.

He shook his head in disbelief. A similar parade by armed men demanding independence for Ireland might have been met by force. Clearly, not all rebellions were equal: if your aim was to maintain British power, your action, however illegal it might be, could be winked at.

The unfortunate caricaturist condemned to prison by the German authorities for promoting French interests in his native Alsace would not, it seems, be serving his sentence after all.

Hansi: "A big Boche soldier and two little Alsatians from Saverne."
Did the German authorities feel he was getting at them in Alsace?

Herr “Hansi” Waltz, the Alsatian artist who was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for publishing two books which the Courts considered insulting to the authorities, was permitted to postpone the beginning of his sentence until next Tuesday in order that he might first visit his father. He is now suspected of having taken to flight.

He turned up later in Belfort, just across the border into France proper.

Meanwhile, Eton had beaten Harrow in their yearly cricket match. It seems it had been a “splendid game”. He stared at the story, his mouth open. How was this national news? And what was he supposed to feel? Two schools for the sons of the inconceivably rich – why on Earth would he care which one beat the other?

He shook his head. His Labour Party had its work cut out if it was ever to shake the grip of privilege on British society. Just the sheer fascination with the doings of its children revealed the scale of the task.

Countdown to War, day 14. 11 July: why spend on the army when we're at peace? And there's that business about the Austrian Archduke again...

One hundred years ago today, on Saturday 11 July 1914, our young Mancunian railwayman might well have felt his worries of the day before justified by that morning’s edition of the Manchester Guardian. It seemed that Parliament too was concerned about the burden of constantly spending huge amounts on armaments.

Not many in Parliament, though. “From ten to twenty members sat through to-day’s debate on foreign affairs...” he read. “As the general talk went on the attendance became smaller and smaller, for on such occasions it is the habit of members only to wait to read their own speeches. Little pretence is made of debating any particular question.”

“MPs, they’ve got their legal practices to look after.” said the Cynic, “Their banks. Their families. Can’t expect them to spend all their time in Parliament. Specially if it’s to listen to other people.” 

At least the select band who showed up did consider the question that had been bothering Martin: why spend heavily on weapons at a time when war was such a distant prospect? Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, attempted an answer.

Why armaments should be so steadily increasing, despite the present conditions of mutual amity among the Powers, the Minister could not explain. “But it should be observed,” he added, “that the most notable increase in recent years has not been in naval but in military expenditure, and for that part of the increase this country is not responsible.” Speaking with a sarcasm which Mr. Dillon afterwards deprecated as out of place, Sir Edward ... contrasted the suggestions pressed on the Government for a disarmament crusade with the demands with which they were confronted at the same time for a greater display of activity in their foreign relations, particularly in Persia and the Middle East, and even in respect to the internal government of Russia.

The British Army:
why spend so much on it when there's no prospect of war?

Andrew Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative Party and the Opposition pointed to another great trouble spot of the time, much closer to home:

Here is the House of Commons lecturing the Foreign Secretary on the duty of keeping the peace throughout the world, although we all know that it is his duty and that of others to keep the peace within our own borders.

“That means Ireland,” said the Cynic, “they think of Ireland as within our borders. They can’t cope with the idea that it might be a different country.”

“It isn’t,” replied another railwayman, “Just an unruly part of this one.”

Certainly, it was proving as difficult as ever to keep the peace in Ireland. The paper talked of a meeting of the “Provisional Government” of Ulster. The best that could be said of it was that it had turned out to be a damp squib. It seemed that the:

... portentous announcement of the day before that “something serious” would be done at the meeting of the Ulster “Provisional Government” in Belfast yesterday was falsified by the result. The meeting was held, and Sir Edward Carson presided over it, but, according to the official report, nothing was done at all but to pass a declaration reaffirming the familiar attitude of the Ulster Unionists towards Home Rule.

Martin was thankful the outcome had been such an anti-climax, but where else, he wondered, could a rebel organisation operate under the leadership of a prominent lawyer and member of Parliament, and the government take no action? 

Another story was turning into a recurring theme: “General Huerta’s tottering Government in Mexico has suffered another heavy blow...” Rebels had just captured the country’s second city. No sign of things settling there, then.

Back in the news after all:
the Archducal couple head for the car in which they will be murdered

An apparently closed chapter had also re-opened:

Europe has not heard the last of the Sarajevo outrage. Articles in the Vienna press are preparing the way for official Austro-Hungarian representations to Servia. Any attempt to make the Belgrade Government responsible for the Greater Servia agitation, to which the Archduke Francis Ferdinand fell a victim, is certain to anger further the Serbs, already violently excited. Signs are multiplying that the assassination has seriously increased the many grave dangers to the peace of Eastern Europe.

The “Neue Freie Presse” observes that the pan-Servian murder had aroused the conscience of Europe, not only of its peoples, but also of its Governments. The journal refers to the moral isolation of the pan-Servian movement, and points out that the whole German people stands by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It believes that Austria-Hungary’s ally Italy also shares the feeling of the German Empire...

England, proceeds the article, will most certainly use her great influence in order to bring Servia to her senses and secure the European outlawing of pan-Servdom. Great Britain is never found wanting when she hears the voice of justice. France and Russia can scarcely wish to separate themselves from England in these views.

He tended to sympathise with underdogs, and Serbia certainly seemed an underdog, but that assassination had been a shameful crime. And it was true that Britain was as sorry as anyone about what had happened – why, the same issue of the paper told him that even in Salford, right here on his doorstep in Manchester, there’d been a Requiem mass for the murdered Archduke and his wife the previous day. But – “Grave dangers to peace”? He didn’t like that kind of talk. Surely there was no need for things to come to that?

In more cheerful news, Lancashire had secured a famous victory over Leicestershire. No major scalp, since Leicestershire was one of the minnows of 1914’s Championship. But then, Lancashire too might be one of the smaller fish that year. He’d take what satisfaction he could from any victory.

Countdown to War, Day 9. 6 July: rumblings still in Austria-Hungary, outright rebellion in Ireland

One hundred years ago today, on Monday 6 July 1914, Martin, our young Mancunian, might have gone through his Manchester Guardian in search of some good news – and found rather more of the other kind.

Surrey had made a magnificent start in their county match against his beloved Lancashire, posting a commanding score of 371 for only five wickets lost at the end of the first day’s play. “Their success, even from the Lancashire point of view, had its compensations,” proclaimed the journalist sententiously, “It provided an exhibition of good batting by players who are always worth watching...”

Martin snorted in disbelief. Whoever wrote those words knew nothing about supporting a team. Good play by the other side? How’s that a good thing? We want them to crumble into ignominy, not provide us with a display of inspiring – and winning – play.

The coffins of the Archduke and his wife at the train in Sarajevo
In Vienna, it emerged the couple wasn't equal in death
any more than in life

In other news, the assassinated Austrian Archducal couple had been buried at last. And what a bunch that imperial family was: the friends of the Duchess had been incensed at the funeral by the “emphasis laid upon her inequality of birth with the Archduke, as manifested in the funeral arrangements.” 

She’d been a mere countess, who had dared to marry into the imperial family, and for that they treated her with disrespect? Even though it was only because she’d thrown her lot in with Franz Ferdinand’s that she’d been murdered with him? What a crew. Worse than the Surrey cricket team.

And the dust still hadn’t settled. Another article pointed out that “unconfirmed reports say that many Servians have been expelled from Bosnia.” Still plenty of bitterness there, then.

Sir Edward Carson
Proving his loyalty by arming a rebellion 
Not sure I'd want to meet him on a dark night
Especially if he had a bunch of armed Ulstermen with him

That ghastly man Sir Edward Carson had been speaking out on Ireland again, at some public meeting.

I go on, he said, as I began and I am going on to a finish. (Cheers.) I believe in a United Kingdom – in one King, one Parliament, one flag, – and to defend that policy I am prepared to go any length and to make any sacrifices. (Cheers.) Loyalty to the Union is my crime, and if I am indicted I am prepared to plead guilty. (Cheers.) 

“That’s right,” said the resident Cynic in Martin’s crew. “His crime is too much loyalty. Not raising and arming an illegal force of religious extremists.”

Apparently Carson “had grown weary of talking and was longing for something more.”

Something more. Easy to guess what that meant, since he was behind the people running guns to the Ulster Protestants. Martin smiled: it was, indeed, curious to call it loyalty when you were arming an insurrection.

Martin gave up on the subject. He preferred the piece about the joys of having breakfast in bed. It seemed that “breakfast is always punctual because there are always two gongs to let one know when it is necessary to begin to hurry.”

Gongs? There was no gong in his place. Sometimes no breakfast.

“The hostess who leaves the matter to her guests instead of seeking to improve their character”, presumably by forcing them out of bed sooner than they’d like, “will find that of all the luxuries she provides none will be more generally appreciated.”

He smiled wryly. In his house there were never guests and precious few luxuries. And certainly no hostess. Which rather accounted for his wryness.

Countdown to War. Day 2, 29 June: fatal incident in Sarajevo

One hundred years ago today, on Monday 29 June 1914, the Manchester Guardian carried news that shocked Europe.

The day before, a bloody event had shaken Sarajevo.

Sarajevo? Martin wasn’t even sure where it was. A better-informed colleague explained that it was the capital of Bosnia which, with neighbouring Herzegovina, had been reduced to a province of Austria-Hungary, following the Congress of Berlin 36 years earlier. That was the congress that carved up Africa among the European powers, but it also carved up bits of Europe, and Austria-Hungary had taken Bosnia-Herzegovina.

On Sunday, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie, had been visiting Sarajevo where he intended to take part in army manoeuvres.

Franz Ferdinand and his family, including Sophie, his wife, who was killed with him
She had been born a mere Countess, so the children were cut out of
the succession to the imperial throne: a countess's blood was far too lowly

Not everyone was pleased about Austria’s takeover of the provinces. Serbia, next door and independent, felt that the large Serbian population of Bosnia would rather like to be part of a Greater Serbia, and a lot of that population agreed. One of them was a student, Gavrilo Princip. He decided to take dramatic action, and targeted Francis Ferdinand and his wife.

“Assassination of the Austrian Royal Heir and his wife,” screamed the Guardian. “Shot by student in Bosnian capital. Two attempts during a procession.”

Two attempts? In the morning, a bomb had been thrown at the Archduke’s car, but no one was hurt. In the afternoon however:

The Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria, nephew of the aged Emperor and heir to the throne, was assassinated in the streets of Sarayevo, the Bosnian capital, yesterday afternoon. His wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, was killed by the same assassin.

The paper pointed out that “the assassin ... is a student named Gavrilo Prinzip. He is 19 years of age... He studied for some time in Belgrade.”

Belgrade. The capital of Serbia proper. Clearly a centre for grooming impressionable young men, turning them into extremists ready to take violent action for their cause.

On being interrogated, Prinzip declared that he had intended for a long time to kill some eminent personage from nationalist motives. He was waiting to-day for the Archduke to pass by, and made his attempt at a point where the motor-car had to slacken speed when turning into the Francis Joseph Strasse.

Martin was appalled. He might not think much of Emperor Franz Joseph, but he couldn't help feeling sorry for a man who had suffered so much misery in his life. His brother Maximilian, another article explained, had been made Emperor of Mexico, only to be shot when he was overthrown. Then, as the Manchester Guardian delicately put it, “in 1889 the Crown Prince Rudolf and a lady of the Court to whom he is known to have been attached, died by violence in a mountain shooting lodge. His death is still a mystery. Officially he is said to have committed suicide...”

Also in 1889, a cousin of the Emperor who married an actress set off with her to South America and was never heard of again. And in 1898, Franz-Joseph’s own wife, the Empress Elizabeth, was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist.

This catalogue of disasters deserved at least a wry shake of Martin’s head. Poor bastard. He’d had to put up with a lot. Nasty business.

It wasn’t, naturally, the only nasty business reported in the paper that day. Sir Edward Carson, the rather loudmouthed leader of the Ulster Protestants, had been making more noise in the Emerald Isle. But there was nothing new about that.

At least there was one heartwarming piece, The Art of the Umpire, about the difficulty of managing a cricket match. It was gratifying to know that a South African cricketer felt that “the umpires in England are a credit to English cricket.”

Something at least was right with the world.