On Saturday 20th June 1936 between 8,000 and 10,000 people gathered at Maumbury Rings in Dorchester for a peace rally organised by a committee chaired by Mr W. Clarke and supported by peace societies and organisations from across the Southwest of England.
The Peace Rally had been advertised as far afield as Salisbury, Newport, Southampton and Bristol and people from across the south came by rail, coach or car. The railway company arranged special facilities at all stations within 60 miles of Dorchester. An article in the Western Gazette in February about the organisation of the rally states that
“The villages of the South-West will be flooded with a hundred thousand handbills, and the towns will be placarded with monster posters advertising the rally.”
In an account of one of the speakers, Vera Brittain, an author who had served as a nurse in the First World War, she describes travelling to Dorchester “through a shimmering heatwave”. The sweltering heat meant huge orange umbrellas were put up to protect those on the speakers’ platform.
The rally began with live music from 2.30-3.30 and then at 3.30 four speakers appealed to the crowd to support their calls for peace. Alongside Vera Brittain the speakers were Canon “Dick” Sheppard, Dr. Donald Soper, a methodist minister, and George Lansbury, a labour MP. Author and playwright Laurence Housman was the chairman.
Vera Brittain recalls the event as a turning point in her involvement with pacifism. She writes
“When my turn came I was panic-stricken. This Christian platform was like no other on which I had stood: here my little speech in support of collective security would strike a discordant note. Its basis was political, but the message of my fellow speakers sprang from the love of God.”
She describes her speech as “the biggest disappointment to thousands on that spectacular afternoon”, although there is no reflection of this in the newspaper reports of the rally.
Brittain had been a supporter of the idea of peace before the rally but had been reluctant to commit to the idea that all war was wrong, partly because she had witnessed how pacifists had been reviled in the press during the First World War and knew choosing that path would be unpopular with many. Despite this when Dick Sheppard approached her after the rally and asked her to join his Peace Pledge Union she reflected on it for 6 months and then agreed.
The rally also inspired authors Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, who attended the rally to help sell copies of the communist newspaper the Daily Worker. After the Peace Rally they placed a letter in the local newspapers asking support to form a Dorset Peace Council.
On 15th August 1936 Townsend Warner writes to Elizabeth Wade White:
“My Peace Council, by the way, is now in being; and despite that drive through Dorchester carrying those mackerel naked and ungarnished I got a most unanimous and flattering official appointment as its secretary”.
A second letter on the 29th August describes how
“…the thing is established, and I am its official secretary. I have even made a speech, standing on a waggon in a field, supported by Mayors and clergymen, and an upright piano, on which a red-haired middle-aged girl guide playing the strains of peace – mostly militant.”
Despite this show of support for peace it was only three years later that the Second World War began. The question of how to support peace in the face of aggression and injustice is a question that is as relevant today as it was 1936.
My father was Robert Gray the organising secretary of the Peace Rally. Sadly a lot of photos and accounts we had were sent to someone in Glasgow who was writing a book about the Peace movement in the 3Os and when my mother asked for them to be returned for some reason they weren’t or were lost in The post. Thankfully a friend had kept some photos along with accounts and I have these now.
George Lansbury became a friend in that he came to stay and asked when war broke out to send some of his family to be evacuated for a short period on the farm. I was born in 1944 so don’t remember any of this. I have books signed by GL and gifted to my parents.
Dad, years later invited Donald Soper to address a meeting along with Pastor Niemoller at Sherborne ,and remained a pacifist throughout his lifetime.