11 The Admiralty’s Revenge
We now entered a phase at Invergordon which did not exist in
any earlier mutiny and will probably never exist again. The men did nothing, in
the full meaning of the word. In fact on one of the big ships they pulled out
the piano from the recreation room on to the forecastle and ran impromptu concerts.
But apart from that there was nothing to do. We had done what we considered
needed to be done, and now it was up to the Admiralty and the government. With
the typing and circulation of the manifesto – copies were distributed round the
Fleet by motorboat – the strike was at its apex; but unlike most movements it
was not faced with a decline. Had we threatened an intensification of our
efforts if the cuts were not rescinded, there might have been a danger of
weakening. But in the circumstances a straightforward rejection could only mean
our continuing as we were, refusing to serve. We had bypassed our officers and
appealed directly to the Admiralty; our answer was to come from them, and soon.
We were losing nothing by the continuation of the strike whilst the Admiralty
was on the way to losing a navy.
As it happened, the end of the strike was delayed a whole
twenty-four hours by the Admiralty’s strange behaviour. Knowing that the
Admiralty had every modern means of communication and transport at their disposal,
we expected our manifesto to reach them within hours of it reaching Admiral
Tomkinson at Invergordon. It was our officers who had asked us what we wanted,
and we had responded immediately, so we could not be accused of presumption in
expecting a quick answer. Moreover, it was not only we who were waiting but the
whole country. The day dragged on and no answer was forthcoming. Evidently some
of the denizens of Whitehall were not prepared to sacrifice anything, as for
instance their tea-breaks to expediate matters.
While the Admiralty were engaging in pure adventures – not
least in blowing up Invergordon into a national revolution to frighten the King
– Admiral Tomkinson, the man on the spot, who did not depend on conflicting
reports from rival security services for his information, was successfully
playing the affair down and controlling hot-headed young officers. Already an
army of pressmen had converged on Invergordon from London and the central towns
of Scotland. Even in those days cameras were efficient and easily portable, yet
no photographs of Invergordon exist. This is to Admiral Tomkinson’s credit. As
soon as the newspapermen arrived he took them aboard the flagship and gave them
to understand that sensationalism was not required. So effective were his
powers of persuasion, (and they have to be good to get a newspaperman to ease
up on such a question) that nowhere are there pictures of sailors massed on the
forecastles of ships at Invergordon. And yet there were quite a number of local
boat owner prepared to take newsmen out in the Firth, and likewise there were
newsmen willing to fork out a tidy sum for the trip.
If Invergordon was the ideal place for springing the cuts on
an isolated Fleet, then it was doubly ideal for settling the dispute without
publicity. The canteen and fields around were government property where no
local civilians ever came. When Admiral Tomkinson reported the first rumblings
of dissatisfaction to the Board, they should have travelled to the scene of the
action, as their predecessors did to settle the Spithead mutiny of 1797. In
1797 travel was difficult. In 1931 it was not, and although air travel was not
yet widely used, with so much at stake the Admiralty could at least have taken
a plane to Scotland. All the measures eventually taken, the cancellation of the
exercises, the setting up of a commission, the investigation of the men’s
financial situation, the restoration of part of the cuts, could have been done
in the isolation of the Firth of Cromarty and no outsider any the wiser. Had
these measures been taken then and there, the Admiralty would have scored a
greater political victory than any Board in history. Of course, they would have
eaten humble pie over the cuts, but this they did in any event, and publicly.
Here it would have been magnificent humble pie, and afterwards the mere mention
of the words `Board of Admiralty` would have called for a gesture of reverence
from the lower deck.
Only when it was beginning to get dark at Invergordon on
Wednesday, 16 September 1931, did the captain of
Norfolk come forward
and read a new Admiralty Fleet Order to us:
The Board of
Admiralty is fully alive to the fact that amongst certain classes of ratings
special hardship will result from the reduction of pay ordered by HM
Government. It is therefore directed that ships of the Atlantic Fleet are to
proceed to their home ports forthwith to enable personal investigation by
C.-in-C.s and representatives of Admiralty with a view to necessary alleviation
being made. Any further refusals of individuals to carry out orders will be
dealt with under the Naval
Discipline Act. This signal is to be promulgated to
the Fleet forthwith.
Whether it was light or dark at that moment, one thing was
clear to us: we had won the day. The threat at the end was just normal form for
My Lords of the Admiralty, every one of
whose Articles of War ends with a promise of punishment. Without that
formality I doubt if they wrote a letter home to their loved ones: it was the
thickening ingredient of their blood. But why should we continue disobedience?
We had gained our point, a review of the cuts. The tacit promise in the order
that actions, up to the time of its promulgation, would not be punished was
later made explicit in the House of Commons. But still a vengeance-seeking
Board had to invoke the Naval Discipline Act to justify their claims of
agitators, secret societies and other conspiratorial groups, which were so
clandestine that the conspirators themselves did not know they existed. At the
moment of the reading of the order, however, I doubt if any man paid the
slightest attention to those threatening words. The strike was over.
Discipline had not even been bruised and had taken us
through to victory. It was still the main binding force of a powerful navy
which we were prouder than ever to be a part of . With pride too, the `few`,
the `handful` that the Board blamed for Invergordon could count their
achievement. They knocked Britain off the gold standard. They caused the cancelling
of excercises for some ships of the Fleet. They brought about the recall of
ships to home ports from the unfinished cruise, an event which had last
happened with the declaration of war in 1914.
That, up to the time of receiving the new Admiralty Fleet
Order, was the list of favourable results of the activities of the `few`.
Within a few seconds of Captain Prickett’s announcement the
forecastle on
Norfolk was empty. It needed no pleading, no threats or
trickery; the men’s aim had been achieved, the strike was off. A short time
later the
Norfolk was steaming down the Firth on her way to sea. As we
passed close to one of the big ships a crowd of men lined up on the forecastle
gave vent to an ear-splitting cheer and Captain Prickett on the bridge of
Norfolk
exclaimed, `My God! Have they started again?` It was not, however, a cheer
of defiance but a cheer of victory.
During the three days’ trip to home ports we were without
news. The only radio receiving set was in the wardroom, and the moment when the
commander of
Norfolk had invited a few of us to listen to it had passed,
never to return. For us the show was over and we were once again the `ready
boys, steady boys` of the British Navy. But the admiralty, fuming in defeat,
was plotting its revenge.
There is an old sea story showing how something perfectly
ordinary can be made to appear extraordinary. The story goes that a captain
warned his boozy mate that if he again appeared on the bridge inebriated, he,
the captain, would enter it in the log. Despite the warning the mate turned up
next day in a drunken state and he captain duly entered it: `Today the mate
came on the bridge drunk`. When, however, the captain came to relieve the mate,
he found this entry in the log: `Today the captain came on the bridge sober`.
A similar technique has been used to suggest that on its
return from Invergordon the Atlantic Fleet got a frosty welcome from the
British people. Writers on Invergordon have alleged that, in defiance of
tradition we were not cheered as we entered harbour. Of course we were not
cheered, and there was no such tradition. The three towns had seen the ships
moving in and out of harbour so often that they were not excited by the fact.
To have cheered every time they returned would have meant a permanent cheering
party. Whatever scheming and intriguing was taking place at the Admiralty, as
they prepared to break their promise that no one should be penalised for
Invergordon, we on the ships felt nothing out of the ordinary going on around
us. True, the local paper at Devonport had a banner headline to greet our
arrival: `Home In Disgrace, Sailors’ Wives Turn Husbands Away From The Door`,
but this was just a ridiculous example of yellow press journalism. If we had
agreed to allow further disruption of any kind, it would have been possible to
organise such a demonstration of sailors
and their wives at the editor
of that paper would have crept around the back streets of small European towns
for the remainder of his life. No one was more disturbed by the cuts tan sailors’
wives or, as they were officially designated on more than one occasion,
`sailors` women`.
By this time the investigating commission set up by the
Admiralty had arrived at Devonport and was now sitting in the barracks
interviewing seamen and collecting their complaints. This was merely a time-waster,
during which hundreds and thousands of lower deck men repeated practically the
same story. Had the commission discovered a handful of ratings whom the cut
would have hit specially hard, the Admiralty would not have made exceptional
rates for them. The lower deck had made its one demand, one big one: we do not
intend to serve for such pay. There was nothing more to establish, for if the
proposed cut had been reasonable and bearable, there would have been no mutiny
and no need for commissions. The Admiralty, however, had taken a 180 degree
switch, and from doing nothing whatever had now launched into action every kind
of investigator, commission and informer to contribute to the cauldron of
fables, half truths and direct lies which, when boiled, would make the
whitewash for the guilty parties. My Lords of the Board of Admiralty.
I had an early sign of things to come. On our passage south
I had written a letter to Captain Prickett about the consequences for the Navy
if the cuts, as originally proposed, were carried out. My letter was somewhat
on the lines of the manifesto, but more elaborate. I was invited, as were other
seamen, to talk to the captain in his cabin and explain my own position. Also
present at the interview was the paymaster commander who, I take it, was to
back up the captain with figures showing how wealthy I was.
I was a single man, I smoked but did not drink. According to
my papers I enjoyed a fairly good reputation amongst the officers. At that time
I was engaged to be married to a girl who was the only child of parents much
better placed financially than were the parents of the average sailor’s wife. I
had a promising career in the Navy and was fully intending to continue my
service to pension and rise as far as a man of proletarian origin could. It is
possible that the war might have helped me even further – or put me at the
bottom of the sea. In fact by my action at Invergordon I simply threw all this
away.
Right away Captain Prickett began talking about my
individual case, pointing out that I had no financial commitments to be
threatened by the cuts. From the Sunday evening when I made the first speech in
the canteen, I was concerned only with the lower deck and the impoverishment of
the best fighting service in the world and how best to stop it. But this was
beyond the captain’s comprehension. Someone brought up in a society where the
children are daily asked what they are going to be, daily warned that they
cannot hope for a good job without going to college, as if a diploma were a
pair of trousers, indispensable, finds it difficult to accept a
non-selfinterested action. For people who are launched into the rat-race when
they begin to walk and who learn the underhand tricks of infighting for position
and rewards, the idea of being a crusader, if only briefly and small-time, is
as alien as a Catholic priest propagating voodooism.
So Captain Prickett stuck to his line of argument, occasionally
appealing for confirmation of his points to the paymaster commander. Very soon I
saw that it would develop into the poor man begging the local philanthropist to
intervene on his behalf with the heartless landlord. Actually it was because of
Prickett’s behaviour at this meeting that I eventually refused to go before the
Admiralty commission who pursued the same lime in their `investigations`. That it
was a policy deliberately pursued I am convinced, because I caught Prickett
taking a surreptitious glance at my letter, which was hidden under other papers
on the table. When he saw that I had noticed the move he immediately covered it
up again. It was not a benefactor’s interest that Prickett had in me. He was, I
think, looking for `ringleaders`. (It is curious that a college student at the
head of a movement is a `leader`, but a worker similarly placed is inevitably a
`ring-leader`.)
The authorities knew quite well that it was the Admiralty
which had inspired the strike and kept it alive, but they persisted in looking
for something deep underground, a politically motivated person or, better
still, a group. To begin with all jobs were shifted around. I for instance had
had, before the strike, a so-called `quiet number`, which kept me away from
daily surveillance by my divisional officer. That I hated this job, a trained
seaman gunner who wanted to go to school again to advance my qualification was
of no consequence either to the people who gave me the job. I had been taught a
little about everything that shoots, from a 2.2 rifle to a fifteen-inch turret
gun. I had actually come out top of the class, but with a job such as I was doing,
I would soon forget which end of a gun did the shooting. In the meantime I could
polish the metal legs of the mess table till my officer smiled and said `Well
done`.
Almost immediately after the ship set sail for Devonport, however,
I was shifted to an ordinary upper deck job and it was then I discovered that I
was the object of surreptitious observation. Quite often our commander found an
excuse to make some remark or other to me, but he spent more time looking deep
into my eyes, no doubt searching for something he had not noticed in all the
year and a half we had served on the same ship. Our commander was one of the
most popular officers on the ship and we affectionately called him `Jigs`,
after a strip cartoon character of the time. From behind he looked exactly like
the real `Jigs`, even to the crease across the seat of his trousers. The nicknames
that men give to their officers is more informative than many people think. If an
officer is given a number of nicknames, and more and more are conjured up, it
is a sure sign that he is far from popular. If on the other hand he gets one
which sticks to him, one can be certain that he is respected. Commander Dunne
was always `Jigs`.
He gave me quite a number of crystal-gazing stares, which
did not worry me, while my own divisional officer kept clear of me. The unfortunate
man had no doubt received a reprimand for not being able to detect my latent
mutinous tendencies. When men were being sought to appear before the Admiralty
Commission, my divisional officer approached a seaman standing a few yards from
me, and asked him to ask me if I wanted to appear. Evidently the reprimand had
been no light one. Evidently, too, the search for an underground organisation
among the men was being paralleled by a campaign to find scapegoats among the
junior officers, whose daily contact with us had failed to discover potential
rebels.
If evidence were needed that no outside influence inspired
the mutiny at Invergordon, that evidence was supplied by the Communist Party of
Great Britain. When the news of the mutiny hit the world, many people and
organisations reacted to it in their various ways. One of these was the British
Communist Party, which had long harboured a desire for contacts in the Royal
Navy but had up till then failed to realise its desires. This absolutely
unexpected event offered, in their estimation, a splendid chance not only to
get contacts but to achieve even more. Immediately after the ships arrived in
home ports, the Communist Party sent two men to Portsmouth, obviously for the
purpose of inciting the Fleet to further rebellious activity. It was an action
which demonstrated the Communists’ complete ignorance of the lower deck, for
the two men chosen were as unsuitable a pair as it would be possible to find. One
was a miner and the other a woodworker, the sort of men described by sailors as
not knowing the fat end of a ship from the thin end.
Their adventure was doomed to failure before it started,
for, as anyone with even a butterfly-wing contact with leftist politics should
have known, the moment the rumblings of resentment were faintly audible, all
the organs of security were on the alert. Not so the CPGB. The miner and the woodworker
set off for Portsmouth so deep in the grip of their important mission that they
failed to hear the clanking of the handcuffs in the pockets of the policemen
following them, and having plunged into the adventure head first, they hit
bottom head first, as might have been expected.
Under the impression that Portsmouth was the place to go to,
although Devonport was the centre of the mutiny, and still retaining the
`drunken sailor` image in their heads, they began a political pub crawl. Even when
a co-operative sailor met them in the very first pub they called at, they were
not in the least suspicious. Why should they be? Had not the sailors mutinied? Were
they not ready to heave their officers overboard, as the sailors of the Russian
Fleet had done in 1917? All that was wanted now was firm political leadership,
and these two men, who had recently come from the International Lenin School in
Moscow, were here to offer it. So they made their offer. But, as it happened,
the sailor they were talking to, who listened to their political lecture and
drank their beer, was none other than Stephen Bousefield, the telegraphist
`interviewed` by the captain of
Warspite, under whose instructions he
was now working. The seditious leaflets were handed over and straight away
relayed to the intelligence service men, who, possessing all the evidence they needed,
brought these two Communists to Winchester Assizes. There the same Bousefield
appeared as the principal witness for the prosecution. The Communists were
tried, convicted and sentenced.
From this story we can establish that informers were signed
up from the first signs of trouble at Invergordon; that on the basis of their
unreliable information responsible officers of naval intelligence made wild
conjectures about events that had no place in the affair at all; and, most
convincingly, that the Communist Party had no connection with Invergordon. Their
belated attempts to make contact, at a time when the men considered victory
theirs and meant to serve once more in the loyal manner they had always served,
could lead only to the criminal courts.
Blinded by nightmares of revolution, dreamed up in their
need for vengeance, the Admiralty had set all the security services of Britain
on a massive search for hidden agitators, secret societies and all sorts of
non-existent seditious groups that could never have found a square inch of
fertile ground in the Royal Navy. Each security group engaged informers, agents
provocateurs and casual snoops who invented what they failed to find. Even the
man who ran the first meeting in the canteen on that Sunday evening, 13
September, was given at least three identities, and this despite the fact that
the men on
Norfolk knew who he was.
Whitehall demanded evidence of an underground plot and
people, from the rank of captain down to the `white rats` on the lower deck,
let their imaginations run amok to provide it, even to the extent of reporting
that meetings, secret and otherwise, had taken place among sailors before the
Atlantic Fleet arrived at Invergordon. It can only be concluded that the
different reports, including those made by responsible officers, were the
products of afterthoughts, once the incident had aroused suspicions of a plot. It
is said that fear has large eyes, and it is possible that surreptitious glances
between sailors engaged in some act against the regulations were remembered later
and blown up to be read as sinister signals. It sounds childish, but it is only
human: anyone can misinterpret the past in the light of the present, and I suppose
this is what some of the officers did.
However, reading the reports assiduously collected by naval
investigations overt and covert, by the dockyard police, public house
scroungers and secret service informers, it is plain that the material is
mostly half truths, distortion and just common or garden lies. Some of the
shipboard informers seem to have been indulging in a grand leg-pull. I do not
know who was responsible for organising the reports of preparations for further
disruptive activity after our return to home ports. To call them the `Crazy Gang`
would be to insult a popular comedy team, but clearly someone had grasped the
chance to collect a goodly sum of taxpayers’ money whilst the panic lasted. Somehow
I missed out on the shareout. Twice in those days I was in a pub and nobody
offered me a drink. In one a group of working men called me over to their table
and pointed to a chap in a soft hat standing at the other end of the bar. `Be
careful, Jack,` they said, `that man’s a coppers’ nark`.
There were no plans for further disruptive action. We had
gained our objective and saw no need to create some permanent illegal lower
deck grouping. But the plot-searchers went on and fantastic stories continued
to circulate about a planned enlargement of the strike. One incredible tale was
that known elements, and I take it I was among them, were `agitating` on the
lower deck for more serious, anti-government action.
The ridiculous fable of the `march on London`, or as it
might be called the `Mangel-wurzel Banyan Party`, made its reappearance, and
was solemnly carried to King George V. But the Admiralty was pulling nobody’s
leg. When Sir Austen Chamberlain, First Lord of the Admiralty, informed the
King on Monday, 22 September, that a dangerous situation still existed in the
Fleet, he was not just following normal procedure. He knew very well that King George
V had been a full naval captain, for when the Duke of Clarence was alive, his
chances of becoming a king had been slim, and he had gone the way of second
sons, into the Navy, where he was far from being a popular captain. For instance
he had a reputation for severity. Punishment for misdemeanours of a serious character
could only be administered by the admiral of a particular unit. The captain
conducted the trial of the man, then sent his recommendation to the admiral. This
procedure was better known to the lower deck as a warrant, and it was common
knowledge throughout the Navy that the late King George V, when captain of a
warship, had more of these warrants than any other captain in the Fleet.
By facing a man of the character of King George V, who bore
no love to the lower deck, with the bogey of revolution from within the Navy,
the Admiralty could not fail to produce the results it wanted. Given the public
assurance of no victimisation, the Admiralty could not charge anyone with what
happened at Invergordon; it therefore became necessary to invent something that
happened after it, if they were to have their revenge.
Whilst these things were taking place elsewhere, for us routine
went on in the same old way, except that our ship’s company did a stint on the
rifle range, where I walked away with a first-class marksman’s badge, amongst
my scores being five bulls from five rounds at five hundred yards: no mean feat.
Moreover, and more heartening than the winning of any badge, was the fact that,
at the very time when the powers that be were scheming, in their underhand way,
to work up evidence against me, the lower deck of
Norfolk unanimously elected
me as their representative on the Canteen Committee. I never took my place but
my election remained, a resounding reply to the band-of-agitators theory, and a
proof that the lower deck as a whole appreciated my efforts on its behalf.
Almost three weeks had we been in home ports, with the
commission working every day, when the surprise signal came. We knew the Fleet
could not spend much more time in port, but the order to move was still
unexpected. All ships were to put to sea and rendezvous at Scapa Flow. Two hours
after this announcement and an hour before the ships were due to sail, the most
outstanding men in the mutiny were collected together. From
Norfolk Leading
Seaman Richard Carr, Able Seaman James Shields, Able Seaman O’Toole, Able
Seaman Frederick Copeman and myself were rounded up, along with one or two
regular discipline breakers, thrown in to give the group a colouring favourable
to the Admiralty. Here again the opportunity given by the official movement of
ships had been seized, for, while we were to go to the barracks, our comrades
in the affair were being despatched to sea, where for some three days on the
way to Scapa Flow they would be ignorant of our fates. It was the move of
people still scared by the Invergordon event. Although all available facts had
firmly been established the complete lack of outside influence on the movement;
although our behaviour after the strike was exemplary, they were still obsessed
with the idea that action against us, whatever it was to be, should be carried
out secretly, to avoid possible trouble. We were despatched to the barracks and
left there until the General Election of 28 October 1931, which would bring a
new Cabinet and new ministers, and therefore he who had made the promise of no
victimisation would not be the one who broke it. The lessons of Invergordon had
simply passed over their heads, not only of the politicians but also of those
who were supposed to be our leaders.
When we arrived in the barracks we were joined by ratings
from the many ships in the port, thirty-six men altogether, though Bond was not
among them: the originator of the mangel-wurzel march on London was left in the
Fleet to develop his talents. As was always the case when men entered the barracks
after a period at sea, we first went through the `clothing class`, where our
kit was inspected and we were `robbed` of a few pounds from our meagre savings.
After a week of that we were attached to the `Introductory Course`. This was a
well-known course intended mainly for supplementary ratings, cooks, supply
assistants and such people who, whilst at sea, had forgotten how to turn right
or left and which end a rifle fired from. The moment the course started, under
the command of two specially-instructed petty officers, we knew we were in for
a bad time. Till dinner break we ran around the barrack square, our rifles held
high above our heads.
This action was the decision of Commodore Laurence of the Royal
Naval Barracks. By virtue of our being so unexpectedly removed from our ships,
we had been recognised as the leaders of a mutiny in the most powerful fleet in
the world, yet Commodore Laurence DSO was here attempting to subdue us with
petty sadism on the level of Dickens’s Squeers. If his aim was to make us
refuse this disguised punishment and thereby leave ourselves open to a very
serious charge, he failed. At the end of the first day I suggested that every
man should individually write a complaint of unlawful treatment to the admiral
of the port.
On the third day we were marched into the drill shed, all
other groups and classes were sent out, all the doors but one closed. Then through
the one open door appeared Commodore Laurence and probably every officer in the
barracks. They lined up in an arrow head, the commodore making the point. He was
a big man with a powerful frame. He stood there with his legs astraddle,
clasping his gloves behind his back as if they were a hunting crop. In fact
that is just what he looked like, an overseer of the last century confronting
his colonial slaves.
`I hear,` he began, `that you have written a complaint
against me.` (In fact we had not mentioned any name in our letters of protest.)
`I have information that you are continuing your disruptive work and I, as
commodore of this barracks, will take what steps I consider necessary in order
to prevent your doing so`. He tried a little provocation, challenging anybody
who had anything to say to step out, strangely adding `I am not afraid of you`.
Why a commodore DSO should be afraid of a group of ratings
is difficult to imagine, but in those words we could measure the extent of his
lack of understanding of the lower deck. We did not accept his offer to speak. Maybe
it was genuine, but we could no longer trust him after such behaviour. With the
words `Carry on` to the petty officers, he turned round and walked out,
followed by his suite. Whether he was afraid of us or not, the sadistic drill
ceased forthwith, and one by one we were invited to the division office to
discuss our request with the lieutenant of the division.
I never knew the name of my interviewer but I knew what his
instructions were as soon as ever he spoke. He pointed to my complaint and
asked `who wrote this for you?` Of course a dull, half-literate able seaman
could not write such a letter, there must be some `outside influence`, and here
was a clue to this mysterious somebody lurking in the offing and urging sailors
of His Britannic Majesty to seditious action. When I answered `I did`, perhaps I
said it with such calm conviction that he really believed it. Anyway he
switched to another tack and began talking about politics. All this, he assured
me, was `high politics`, which neither he nor I knew anything about. He just
blinked when I quietly said `it’s a pity, sir`.
Undoubtedly he knew I was to be discharged, but that I was
being held until the end of the secret service investigation; for had it
produced the desired results I would have been court martialled.
The fact that I was due to be discharged came to me by
another source which the authorities had not taken into account. I was ordered
to have a routine revaccination and because, with my first vaccination on entering
the Navy, I had suffered very much, almost losing my arm after six weeks in
hospital, I simply refused to have it. The surgeon-captain of the barracks
interviewed me and said he would have to consult someone about my case and
would I come back next day? I did so and he just looked at me and said `it
doesn’t matter, you may go`. Then I knew I was to `go out`.
Nothing, of course, came of our requests, except that
Commodore Laurence backed down and we joined up with all the other ratings in
the barracks and waited. That we were due to `go outside` was not only known to
us but, in a certain way, desired. It was a very risky enterprise, given the
large number of skilled workers unemployed, but there was one consideration
which made discharge imperative from our point of view. If any of us had
remained in the service, the future would have
been very bleak indeed. Should I, for instance, have been drafted, after
two or three years, to a ship where some totally unsympathetic officer of the
old school type was commander or captain, the inevitable result would have been
a serious charge brought against me, and my consignment to the naval jail.
No one had the slightest desire to make a sojourn, however short,
in the establishment just across the Tamar that bore a noble name, White City,
and a terrible reputation: the place where ex-masters-at-arms with a penchant
for brutality did their worst to men whose crime was sometimes no more heinous
than a breach of pettifogging discipline. Carting a heap of bricks back and
forth in the yard without a break whilst the warden yelled abuse, was just one
of the reputed delights of the White City. The really choice item was the daily
loader drill in gasmasks, with the warders goading their prisoners to break
every record they had thought up. No prison reform society ever visited that
hell on earth and the inmates did not make complaints about the texture of
their pyjamas, as convicts, according to the press, do today. Evidently nowadays
the more dreadful the crime, the more certain the complaints. I am sure that
the next grievance will be lack of escape facilities provided through the good
officers of the Society For The Care And Comfort Of Bloody Murderers, Gangsters
and Dope Pushers.
Then, on 3 November, I was working in a barrack room, pushing
a cloth over metal bag-racks for the lack of something better to do, when I saw
Leading Seaman Richard Carr in the act of packing his bag under the supervision
of a regulating petty officer. Without waiting for my inquiry he said `I am
going out` and before I could gather further information, I head a voice
calling my name. another regulating petty officer took me straight to the
commander’s office. Behind the desk where he usually dealt with defaulters stood
the commander of the barracks, holding an impressive looking document in his
hands. Without any ceremony he began to read the Admiralty letter ordering my discharge
to shore, and, as if by an afterthought, kindly informed me that I was entitled
to unemployment benefit. In the next hour or two twenty-four of the thirty-six
men removed from the ships were rushed round from office to office, finally to
be passed through the main gates to the world at large.
By six o’clock I had signed all the documents, drawn my
final pay (including thirteen shillings towards the purchase of a civilian suit),
and received my naval papers. They read rather strangely: `Third of November
1931, Conduct: Very Good. Ability: Superior`. That was the last of my
six-monthly recommendations, the highest possible for a lower deck man. Immediately
underneath was: `Third of November 1931: Discharged to Shore, Services No
Longer Required`. I still wonder which of these two entries, made at the same
place on the same date, really reflects my character.
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