Tomb of the Unknown Warrior (or should that be Worker?)
November 2020
When the Unknown Warrior was first interred in Westminster Abbey on Armistice day in 1920, there was a massive display of public sentiment for this act. Huge queues to see the tomb developed and traffic was restricted in Westminster. People were deeply moved and touched (as they still are) by the homage paid by the royal family to an unknown subject.
The idea for such a burial came to the Reverend David Railton while he was a chaplain at the Front in World War 1. In 1916, in a back garden at Armentières, Railton noticed a grave with a rough cross. The words "An Unknown British Soldier" were pencilled on the cross. In August 1920 he wrote of this to the Dean of Westminster, Herbert Ryle, who supported the idea of a memorial. The body was chosen from unknown British servicemen exhumed from four battle areas, the Aisne, the Somme, Arras and Ypres.
The tomb itself has the following words written on it.
Beneath this stone rests the body
Of a British warrior
Unknown by name or rank
Brought from France to lie among
The most illustrious of the land
And buried here on Armistice Day
11 Nov: 1920, in the presence of
His Majesty King George V
His Ministers of State
The Chiefs of his forces
And a vast concourse of the nation
Thus are commemorated the many
Multitudes who during the Great
War of 1914 – 1918 gave the most that
Man can give life itself
For God
For King and country
For loved ones home and empire
For the sacred cause of justice and
The freedom of the world
They buried him among the kings because he
Had done good toward God and toward
His house
However, not everyone was impressed with the desire to honour an unknown soldier who had been killed during that terrible war while little was being done to help the survivors of that conflict. Some people saw through the drama and like Toto drew back the curtain to reveal that the wonderful Wizard of Oz was just a frail old man working a machine. One of those men was Francis Meynell. He was a poet and printer, had been a conscientious objector during the war and had been on hunger strike in jail.
Meynell was born in London, the son of journalist and publisher Wilfrid Meynell and poet Alice Meynell, a suffragist and prominent Roman Catholic convert. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Meynell had been brought in by George Lansbury (see https://www.madsmeds.org/george-lansbury ) to be business manager of the Daily Herald in 1913. When military conscription was introduced in World War 1, Meynell refused as a conscientious objector to serve or do alternative service and was imprisoned in Hounslow Barracks. After a 12-day hunger strike he was hospitalized and released from military service. He managed Pelican Street Press from 1916 to 1923. In 1923 he opened Nonesuch Press, which won a reputation for its fine book editions, and which used modern mechanical technology to achieve results comparable to the quality printing of hand presses. A socialist, Meynell travelled to Stockholm in 1920 to meet with representatives of the Russian government who were willing to bankroll the Daily Herald. He supported the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. He died in 1975.
In November 1920, The Daily Herald published a letter from Francis Meynell.
To the editor of The Daily Herald,
The Unknown Warrior
Sir,
The following are a few points which it is safe to say will find no space in today’s newspaper blasphemy about the Unknown Warrior.
Who is the Unknown Warrior? Almost certainly a trade unionist now honoured by the most anti-labour government of recent times. Very probably a conscript compelled by capitalism to slay and be slain. Quite possibly an Irishman, spared at least the possibly of murder by the Black and Tans. Conceivably a boy of 18, or the only son of a widow, sent to the front in defiance of pledges fervent to the strike the breast point. Or another chance, some poor fellow, nerve wracked or shell-shocked executed for cowardice.
Who have organised the pageant? Politicians, press and pulpit, the people who helped to make the war, who prolonged the war, who grew rich out of the war, the man who won the war. These men have by a supreme piece of impudence issued special tickets to themselves to view the obsequies of their victim. While the great pageant is thus used for the emotional doping of the people, other and named victims, 100s of 1000s of them, plead in vain for even what they had before the war. They are workless. They beg in the streets.
I understand that all the big restaurants are providing, as the second part of the day’s entertainment, elaborate dinners with special increased prices.
Your etc
Francis Meynell
Solidarity
Brian Madican
November 2020
