ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the formation of the main ex-service groups in the United Kingdom during and immediately after the First World War, tracing their journey from intense rivalry to eventual unification as the British Legion in 1921. It presents original material about the activities of trades councils, and of one campaigning Member of Parliament, James Myles Hogge, over the opening two years of the war. They worked to support service families and veterans, and campaigned for better allowances and pensions, at a time when British government support was minimal and poorly organised. These actions laid the foundations for the two main radical groups, the National Association of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers and the National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers. It details their development from autumn 1916 onwards, when these two were joined by the Comrades of the Great War and the Officers’ Association. Public demonstrations by discharged veterans in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, alarmed the Government and attracted the attention of the intelligence services. Dissent after the end of the war sometimes turned violent but, as this chapter shows, while other more extreme veterans’ groups came and went, the main organisations were radical but not revolutionary, in time jettisoning their political links in order to unite as the British Legion.
