1914-16: The North London Herald League held open air meetings against World War I, which were at times popular, and at times were broken up by jingoist crowds. At a 1914 meeting, in response to official appeals to the upper class to release servants to the army, a speaker asked a crowd:

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”Have you got a sweating employer or a rack-renting landlord you can spare? Let him join up to fight for humanity, for civilisation, for democracy, for the women and children, for all those causes in which he has always been so enthusiastic.”

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John Arnall, of the British Socialist Party, was imprisoned for three months in for seditious’ statements made in French, uttered at a meeting in the park. Later he was the unsuccessful Labour Party candidate for North Islington in the November 1918 general election.*

 

The North London Herald League held its first anti-war meeting on 5 August 1914, the day after the declaration of war, at Salisbury Corner, Harringay, and continued to hold regular meetings.# Although the NLHL had only around 50 members at the outbreak of war, it was able to grow quite rapidly within the first six months of hostilities.§ One of its leading participants, R.M. Fox, described the activity:



"This anti-war activity in the early days of the war was not without its dangers, for an atmosphere of terrorisation was created. But though we got violent opposition, we had enthusiastic support too. Our membership mounted; from under 50 we reached a total of five or six hundred. From all over London, from the East End, from south and west, came supporters who rallied to the anti-war standard which was raised openly in Finsbury Park."†

 

 

 

Sources: 

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*(First three paragraphs) http://www.alphabetthreat.co.uk/pasttense/pdf/newriver.pdf (date unknown) (Accessed 28 April 2013)

# Weller, K. (1985) 'Don’t be a Soldier: the Radical Anti-War Movement in North London 1914–1918' (London), p. 37.

† Fox, R.M., 'Smoky Crusade' (1937) (London), cited in Weller, K., op. cit., p. 38. 

§ Birchall, I (1998) ‘The Vice-like Hold of Nationalism? A comment on Megan Trudell’s Prelude to revolution’. International Socialism, Series 2, Number 78 (March)