Freepedia
is a series of free encyclopaedias. We currently specialize in history
but we intend to branch out into other areas. This section is about
the Defense of the Realm Act.
On
8th August 1914, the House of Commons passed
the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) without debate. The legislation
gave the government executive powers to suppress published criticism,
imprison without trial and to commandeer economic resources for the
war effort.
During the war publishing information that was calculated to be indirectly
or directly of use to the enemy became an offence and accordingly punishable
in a court of law. This included any description of war and any news
that was likely to cause any conflict between the public and military
authorities.
In August 1914 the British government established the War
Office Press Bureau under F. E. Smith.
The idea was this organisation would censor news and telegraphic reports
from the British Army and then issue it
to the press. Lord Kitchener decided
to appoint Colonel Ernest Swinton to become
the British Army's official journalist on the Western
Front. Swinton's reports were first censored at G.H.Q. in France
and then personally vetted by Kitchener before being released to the
press. Letters written by members of the
armed forces to their friends and families were also read and censored
by the military authorities.
After complaints from the USA the British government decided to look
again at how the war was reported. After a Cabinet meeting on the subject
in January, 1915, the government decided to change its policy and to
allow selected journalists to report the war. Five men were chosen:
Philip Gibbs (Daily
Chronicle and the Daily Telegraph),
Percival Philips (Daily
Express and the Morning Post),
William Beach Thomas (Daily
Mail and the Daily Mirror)
Henry Perry Robinson (The
Times and the Daily News) and
Herbert Russell (Reuters News Agency). Before
their reports could be sent back to England, they had to be submitted
to C. E. Montague, the former leader writer
of the Manchester Guardian.
Over the next three years other journalists such as John
Buchan, Valentine Williams, Hamilton
Fyfe and Henry Nevinson, became accredited
war correspondents. To remain on the Western
Front, these journalists had to accept government control over what
they wrote.
DORA was also used to control civilian behaviour. This including regulating
alcohol consumption and food
supplies. In October 1915 the British government announced several
measures they believed would reduce alcohol consumption. A No Treating
Order laid down that people could not buy alcoholic drinks for other
people. Public House opening times were also reduced to 12.00 noon to
2.30 pm and 6.30 to 9.30 pm. Before the law was changed, public houses
could open from 5 am in the morning to 12.30 pm at night.
In
1916 the Clyde Workers' Committee journal, The Worker, was prosecuted
under the Defence of the Realm Act for an article criticizing the war.
William Gallacher and John
Muir, the editor were both found guilty and sent to prison. Gallacher
for six months and Muir for a year.
The
Clyde Workers' Committee was formed to campaign against the Munitions
Act, which forbade engineers from leaving the works where they were
employed. On 25th March 1916, David Kirkwood
and other members of the Clyde Workers' Committee were arrested by the
authorities under the Defence of the Realm Act.
Then men were court-martialled and sentenced to be deported from Glasgow.
The Ministry of Food did not introduce food
rationing until January 1918. Sugar was the first to be rationed
and this was later followed by butchers' meat. The idea of rationing
food was to guarantee supplies, not to reduce consumption. This was
successful and official figures show that the intake of calories almost
kept up to the pre-war level.
The
growing disillusionment with the war was reflected in the novels that
were written at the time. A. T. Fitzroy's Despised
and Rejected was published in April 1918. A thousand copies
were sold before the book was banned and its publisher, C. W. Daniel,
was successfully prosecuted for sedition. Another novel, What
Not: A Prophetic Comedy by Rose Macaulay
was due to be published in the autumn of 1918. When the censors discovered
that the book ridiculed wartime bureaucracy, its publication was stopped
and did not appear until after the Armistice.
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