Law, Popular Culture and World War One

In my recent post on Thankful Villages I mentioned the relationship between the law, World War One and popular culture. In fact  the entry of the United Kingdom to World War One on 4 August 1914 presaged a number of legal responses. In particular, four days after the War began the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 received its Royal Assent. The original Act  was very short and was amended a number of times during the War, including twice before 1914 was out. Indeed, the first amendment came barely two weeks after its commencement with the Defence of the Realm Act (No 2) 1914  and a series of other legislative provisions followed in its wake.

The powers conferred were wide ranging, the poster below, to be displayed at train stations across the land, illustrates the breadth of coverage here. 

Source: National Archive

Powers afforded to the Government included taking possession of land, requiring the removal of persons and property from specified areas and various controlling measures, including increased stop and search powers that all seem consistent with a state being at war. Some more seemingly bizarre powers included the need for a permit to keep homing pigeons and the outlawing of whistling, although these two had their specific rationales as to how they aided the war effort.

In terms of the intersection of the law with popular culture, a marked effect can be seen during the War. I will post again about some of these specific issues, but they include concerns around alcohol and censorship, but we also see the impact on areas such as sport, spiritualism and even intellectual property too.  As I say I’ll blog about these in due course, perhaps with some guest blogs from members of the Law School who have an interest in these areas. We also hope to develop this in a number of ways via the activities of the Centre of Law Society and Popular Culture and details will appear of these here in due course.

Finally I mentioned previously about the role of the University of Westminster in terms of  World War One. In 1914 we were known as the Regent Street Polytechnic, and our involvement was multi faceted, playing important roles both on and off the battlefield. On the Western Front members of the Poly were fighting for King and Country as members of the Polytechnic’s own Territorial Force regiment. At home the Poly played a vital role in recruiting, training, accommodating and rehabilitating soldiers, and fundraising in an endeavour to help the war effort and the aftermath. More details can be found via the online exhibition The Polytechnic and World War One, written by staff in our excellent Archives, and  well worth a read. For my next post I will look at the legal regulation of alcohol in World War One, any any other suggestions are most welcome. 

Reasons to be thankful - Part 1

Rodney Stoke, a Thankful Village, painted by Darren Hayman

I recently became aware of the phrase  'thankful villages', and was surprised the concept had previously passed me by. Its a really evocative concept and phrase, apparently coined by the journalist Arthur Mee, to denote villages in England and Wales from which all members of the armed forces returned during World War One. I became aware of them via some work Darren Hayman is currently undertaking. I love lots of Darren's work, and recently commissioned him to paint our dog Tilly who sadly passed away during 2014. and was really pleased with the result;

Darren has been visiting thankful villages and painting these too, and given the interest in World War One for members of our Centre, I did a bit of digging about these thankful, or blessed villages. Mee apparently originally identified 32 such villages in his book Enchanted Land, but some excellent detective work by Thorpe, Morris and Morgan on the Hellfire Corner website suggested in 2014 that there were in fact 54 such settlements. It appears in fact that many villages were not keen to draw attention to themselves in this way and kept a low profile, certainly some of the memorials are very low key. A piece by Christopher Middleton in the Telegraph notes the tension between celebrating survival and lamenting death, noting a very simple memorial in St Mary's Churchyard at Middleton on the Hill in Herefordshire - a lantern with an inscription including the following observation 'At evening, it shall be light'. You can see some of Darren's pictures of these Thankful Villages  if you follow him on twitter, and maybe try #ThankfulVillages as a search. As the various events and initiatives marking the Great War develop, certainly it seems these villages will become more high profile, notwithstanding the unease and ambivalence that sometimes exists about 'celebrating' them. We hope to run an event soon looking at the impact of World  War One on law and popular culture, and will post details here if we do. As a sort of precursor, we are showing the film Paths of Glory in February 2015 as part of our Film Matters series, and our Archivists have produced an excellent online exhibition of the Polytechnic and World War One (before becoming the University of Westminster, we were previously known as the Regent Street Polytechnic and Polytechnic of Central London amongst other guises).  Hopefully we will have more developments to report on soon, but in the meantime here is a short BBC video, and have a look at some of the links above.