The City and Imperial Propaganda

Urban Development and the Provincial Press: The Forging of Imperial and Civic Identities

When Empire Day was launched in 1903, the cause was quickly championed by imperial movements. Since local agencies were the key propagators of Empire we need to explore the contrasting urban infrastructures of British and Antipodean cities. For this study, three representative English cities were selected and four taken from New Zealand and Australia. The three English communities selected—Portsmouth, Coventry, and Leeds—were primarily chosen for their contrasting municipal profiles since a strong civic culture and identity may have acted as a conduit for the imperial message. ²¹ While Leeds represented the larger Edwardian city with a population of approximately 500,000, Coventry and Portsmouth were medium-sized communities of between 120,000 and 180,000 residents in 1911. ²² The significant physical and cultural naval presence in Portsmouth ensured that its local economy and national portrayal were bound tightly to imperial grandeur. ²³ Alongside the naval influence, the city possessed a strong civic culture and an increasingly important skilled working-class sector employed in the Royal Dockyard. ²⁴ Coventry, on the other hand, had neither an obvious imperial identity nor a strong civic culture. Between 1870 and 1939, the city emerged as an industrial boom town because of the bicycle and car trades employing vast armies of migrant semi-skilled workers. ²⁵ Finally, Leeds represented the older manufacturing city that was at the forefront of disseminating the civic ideal through architecture and schemes of social citizenship. ²⁶ The city developed rapidly through the industrial revolution and built its manufacturing base and wealth on the dress trades and mechanical engineering. ²⁷ In addition, Leeds had a greater ethnic diversity than both Portsmouth and Coventry since the city accommodated a significant Eastern European Jewish community by 1914. ²⁸ There was, however, some similarity in the profile of councillors in the three communities. While Portsmouth’s council was dominated by professionals and a “shopocracy” of business interests, Coventry and Leeds councils reflected both the influential retail body and industrial interests. What united all of these councillors was that their business interests were based in their own communities. ²⁹

In contrast to English settlements, Antipodean towns were influenced in their design by post-enlightenment thinking and were, of course, largely unfettered by European early modern legacies. Thus, by the end of the nineteenth century all Antipodean cities had invariably been laid out on a grid system and were far more ordered in their appearance when compared to the English city. Moreover, Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s (1796–1862) ideas were highly influential in relation to the appearance of the Antipodean settlements. As the visionary planner behind the majority of the New Zealand settlements and the South Australian settlement of Adelaide, he attempted, in the words of Erik Olssen, “to combine the physical environment of the country with the social, cultural and economic opportunities of the town.” ³⁰ Wakefield’s vision was summarized in his book, A View of the Art of Colonization, which appeared in 1849. The American planner Frederick Law Olmsted went as far as to suggest in the 1920s that Antipodean settlements were the precursor of the Garden City movement. ³¹ Indeed, Christchurch eventually became known as “The Garden City” and, Olssen notes, Antipodean cities were more generally characterized as possessing a “generous provision for parks, public institutions, churches, schools and cemeteries.” ³²

In both Australia and New Zealand, the profile of city elites suggests that those serving on the city council were drawn from the professions and the merchant class. ³³ Unlike their English counterparts, shopkeepers were noticeably absent from holding such posts in the antipodes. Many of the councillors had been born in Britain and Ireland and held considerable commercial interests beyond the local economy.

From the mid-nineteenth century, there was a growing belief among English urban elites that monumental buildings and the dissemination of civic culture could act as a riposte to the bleak view of urban degeneration that had been propagated by novels, parliamentary inquiries, and socio-religious pamphlets from the 1870s. ³⁴ For the civic leaders in Australia and New Zealand, the urban squalor of English cities was a constant reminder that they could develop new improved environments modeled on the civic architecture of progressive towns such as Birmingham. Thus, alongside the monumental buildings, civic ceremony was invented and employed to embody a public sense of identity and social position in the city. As Simon Gunn has noted, the public procession culture was very much a nineteenth-century phenomenon in which “social groups and institutions staked their claim for a place in the social body of the town.” ³⁵ The Victorian parade also exuded a sense of social hierarchy with the sequential order of the procession that gave a physical form to the urban elites’ legitimacy and authority. The parade was also designed to engender a sense of inclusiveness by incorporating diverse social identities, though every effort was made to ensure that social hierarchy was not infringed. Moreover, the procession also sent clear signals to onlookers that certain groups or institutions not included in the procession were deemed to have no significant role in the social body or civic culture of the town.

This civic space and monumental building was an unambiguous signal to the populace of where the power, culture, and authority lay in a town. By the late nineteenth century, this civic space became increasingly used to celebrate events of empire, fusing both the local civic and imperial messages. For the civic elite, a direct association with empire could only strengthen their own authority and legitimacy within the town and nation generally. This was never so more apparent than during the second Boer War in which, for perhaps the first significant time, the civic arena was officially given over to matters of empire. English cities, to varying degrees, marked troop departures and returns, celebrated victories, and commemorated the fallen through the official civic events. ³⁶ Moreover, these new civic buildings had become established in the minds of the populace since unofficial celebrations often spontaneously gathered at these recently constructed civic spaces. ³⁷

This fusion of civic ritual and imperial culture did not develop to the same intensity in New Zealand and Australia. Antipodean cities (Auckland, and Melbourne, for example) were located in what could be delineated as a “Pacific” as opposed to an “Atlantic” (London and New York) urban system; the essential characteristics of which were wealth derived from commercial rather than industrial capitalism, smaller population density, lower-rise buildings, and healthier urban conditions. ³⁸ Moreover, the Antipodean cities all functioned as entrepots with strong links to their hinterlands. “The cities,” Lionel Frost notes, “provided inputs for primary production, then collected processed and distributed it.” ³⁹ He also notes a far lower proportion of nonskilled manual laborers compared to European cities, the workforce enjoying shorter working hours and a higher standard of living. ⁴⁰ Whereas the English nineteenth-century city invariably became associated with a single industrial product, for example, Portsmouth dockyard, Coventry’s motor industry, and Leeds with textiles, epithets awarded to antipodean cities saw them branded in “non-industrial” terms. Significantly, in comparison with their British counterparts, an imperial civic culture was slower to emerge. In the most extreme case, Christchurch’s citizens declined to fund the construction of a town hall, the lack of which certainly stifled the emergence of civic ceremony. Auckland’s town hall finally opened in 1911. The most notable Edwardian civic celebrations on Empire Day took place in Melbourne. While an evening’s entertainment took place on Empire Day at the town hall, even in this location, “Empire” seems to have failed to occupy wider civic space. ⁴¹ Melbourne was, for example, one of the last imperial cities to erect a statue to Victoria, eventually doing so in 1907. Existing monuments in the city that reflected the imperial dimension, such as the statue of Charles Gordon of Khartoum, had fallen into neglect by the outbreak of the Great War. ⁴² Indeed, at the dawn of the new century, Antipodean architects of the built environment increasingly looked to North America for their inspiration. Melbourne was becoming what Miles Lewis calls a “Queen Anne Chicago.” ⁴³ The American influence continued thereafter, the most notable building erected in the interwar period being the Manchester Unity Building on Swanston Street, which imitated the Chicago Tribune Building, constructed in the early 1930s.

Those that did look back to the mother country delighted in contrasting the evils of the English industrial city with their own new planned urban developments. Collectively Antipodean cities branded themselves “Better Britain,” their planned topography clearly struck travel writers who published their observations in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century. James Belich, David Hamer, and Dominic Alessio among others have subsequently shown how notions of “Better Britain” were used in literature aimed at enticing migrants to the Antipodes, although comparisons were also made to the cities of Southern Europe. One guide to New Zealand published in 1884 portrayed Auckland as the “Naples of New Zealand.” ⁴⁴ As Alessio has noted in his study of urban booster literature, contemporary commentators such as Edward Wakefield, writing in the 1880s, stressed that “it is very unusual in the colony for more than one family to live in one house.” ⁴⁵ Descriptions of Antipodean cities in this period often stressed the fact that they did not reproduce old world evils. Henry Bolitho observed in the 1920 that New Zealand’s towns and cities “have never developed beyond the point of being commercial centres for the farming land behind them.” ⁴⁶ Moreover, H. H. Hayter had argued in the 1890s that old world conditions were not likely to emerge in Australia because of their “great extent” and “abundance of space, (and) modern developments in transportation,” which meant that “slums were unlikely to develop.” ⁴⁷

While contrasts in the built environment partly explains the differences in the way Empire Day was observed, another important factor was the evolution of the press in each context. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the British newspaper press enacted a dual role in a local community. At one level, the newspaper provided day-to-day coverage of the town’s events and activities. However, at another level, the press also created multiple identities about community and disseminated a sense of the interconnected loyalties of town, nation, and Empire. The newspapers, then, played a significant role in reflecting and projecting a sense of locality and identity in a community. ⁴⁸ The late nineteenth century marked a watershed in working-class reading habits with the arrival of a cheap daily popular press that focused attention more keenly on creating a sense of local identity. From the 1870s, a new style of journalism seized upon regional news and particularly sport as a way of distinguishing themselves from older provincial or national publications. Significantly, through an emphasis on personal and local news, newspapers were able to tap into a new and growing market of working-class readers. This played well with working-class readers, who, by the late nineteenth century, had developed a narrow sense of place that accentuated the importance of local and regional identities. ⁴⁹

The local press in Australia and New Zealand grew rather differently to its British counterpart since Antipodean city dailies remained wedded to a rather conservative style of journalism. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was little coverage of local news and sport and therefore empire celebrations tended to be reported within national rather than provincial contexts. As Sybil Nolan has noted of Melbourne’s Liberal daily The Age, first published in the 1850s, the style of journalism had changed but little by the turn of the century. Nolan notes of The Age’s appearance that “the typography and column settings changed little, and photographs were used sparingly, and often as single column blocks with little regard for understanding of their interest or appeal.” ⁵⁰ A journalist subsequently employed on the paper looked back at the format of The Age in early twentieth century with disdain. “Who could get a sense of urgency from a front page made up of classified ads?” ⁵¹ There was a similar style used by a leading competitor, The Argus, which also retained a rather dated format, but tried a little harder to include on its pages a more attractive grouping of photographs. This staid journalism remained unchallenged in the antipodean context until the early 1920s, when papers such as the Sun News-Pictorial appeared—chief features of this paper being a more sensationalist tabloid style of new presentation with large photographs, the greater obsession with “celebrity” and the championing of sport, especially Australian Rules Football, which symbolized an emerging national identity. ⁵² The coverage of Empire issues judging by a comparison of The Argus and the Sun News-Pictorial’s indexes demonstrate a comparable coverage of Empire on the part of the latter publication. The Argus’s Empire news was placed under one of six categories: “Empire Day,” “The Empire,” “Empire Marketing Board,” “Empire Press Conference,” “Empire Reciprocity League,” and “Empire Shopping Week” in the interwar period. In 1930, for example, Empire news garnered twenty-eight entries while the Sun News-Pictorial’s index contained twenty-six entries under two headings, “Empire” and “Empire Day.”

Empire Day: Dissemination and Reception in the City

The initial idea of marking a day to commemorate the British Empire was first taken-up by Canadian schools in the 1890s. Inspired by this celebration, Lord Meath, the great imperial enthusiast, founded Empire Day in 1903 to remind citizens in Britain and her colonies of their duties and responsibilities to the largest empire the world had ever seen. He chose May 24, the birthday of the late Queen Victoria, to commemorate the event that continued in Britain to 1958, when it was renamed “Commonwealth Day.” ⁵³ Meath’s objective was to establish a movement that would exult the “magnificence and power of the Empire” and create a bond between its four hundred million imperial subjects. In 1905, Meath claimed that six self-governing Colonies, twenty-two Crown Colonies and Schools in thirty-nine British local authorities had observed Empire Day. ⁵⁴ The Empire Day movement itself represents an interesting case study in imperial dissemination since Meath bypassed central government to rely on the civic elites in British towns and cities to take up the cause. Similarly, in the colonies, an appeal was made to those in local governance to adopt Empire Day rather than to central administrators.

In England, there can be little doubt that during the Edwardian period, Empire Day grew to become an annual event in many schools. Taking the Empire Day Movement’s own figures, the number of state schools marking Empire Day seems substantial. By 1907, 12,544 out of a total of 20,451 council schools celebrated Empire Day and by 1919 only four Local Educational Authorities refused to adopt it. ⁵⁵ While Meath had been largely successful in writing to local authorities requesting that Empire Day be observed in schools, his campaign to secure the day as an official holiday was met with less enthusiasm by the Liberal government. In 1908, the House of Commons rejected the proposal for Empire Day to become an official ceremony and only amid the Great War’s recruitment crisis of 1916 did the plan receive government support. ⁵⁶

Empire Day was recognized swiftly in New Zealand, being welcomed by Prime Minster Richard Seddon, and marked from its inception in 1903. However, in Australia, national political considerations undermined initial attempts to commemorate the day. Empire Day was initially rejected by Edmund Barton, first premier of Australia, but eventually adopted by the Federal parliament in 1905. Until this point, fear of alienating Labor members that were required to maintain a stable government steered politicians away from its implementation. The ministry of George Reid, which adopted it in 1905, saw it as a means uniting various parliamentary factions against the socialist threat. ⁵⁷ One of the most prominent groups to lobby for its introduction in New South Wales was the British Empire League (BEL). BEL’s call to mark Empire was backed at the town hall by a succession of Lord Mayors, with Charles Pleasance holding the position when Empire Day was first introduced. It was also promoted by groups such as the Australian Women’s National League (AWNL), formed in 1904, and the Victoria League, where a Victorian branch operated from 1907. In New Zealand, Empire Day was initially marked by the laying of a foundation stone of the Ranfurly veterans home in Auckland, while Christchurch unveiled its statue of Queen Victoria. As the day wore on, some cities provided entertainment some of which had an imperial theme. ⁵⁸

On June 17, 1904, Lord Meath issued a circular to the press outlining the values that underpinned his new Empire Day movement. Within his original declaration, Meath emphasized the importance of instilling a sense of patriotism within the civic realm. He believed that “patriotism and the sense of civic duty should find their first expression at home, and then afterwards extend themselves to the furthest limits of the Empire.” ⁵⁹ He added that civic duty could only flourish if class and selfish interests were subordinate to the national interest. The weight placed on civic duty was attractive to local elites who, after all, were charged with implementing Empire Day in their respective communities. The local authorities in Portsmouth, Coventry, and Leeds all adopted Empire Day but planned the event to target differing civic issues. By the Edwardian period, Portsmouth’s civic elite and local press regarded the city with its rich naval heritage as “the gateway to the Empire.” ⁶⁰ A successful national campaign by John Fisher, the First Sea Lord, to increase public expenditure on the navy and build the powerful Dreadnought battleships in the Portsmouth dockyard intrinsically linked the town with the expansion and protection of the British Empire. ⁶¹ Portsmouth schools already enjoyed a close relationship with the military and were widely perceived as pioneering military drill practices in 1900. ⁶² With such a significant stake in maintaining the security of the empire, one might expect that Portsmouth’s council schools were among the first twelve thousand schools in England to enthusiastically adopt Empire Day in 1905. However, in contrast with Coventry and Leeds, the implementation of Empire Day in Portsmouth met with some resistance and was not systematically adopted until 1913. ⁶³

From its inception in 1903, Empire Day had struggled to gain a foothold in Portsmouth’s council schools. While the private and religious schools in the town embraced the event, teachers in the council schools resisted attempts by the municipal authorities to join a civic and military procession for Empire Day. It was significant that the Grammar School and St. Lukes (Church of England) were eager participants in early Empire Days as their respective Cadet corps and Drum and Fife band helped stamp a military character over the proceedings. St. Lukes began celebrating Empire Day in 1906 when teachers gave lessons on empire and patriotism and pupils then paraded around the playground. ⁶⁴ However, by 1908, the town’s authorities were eager to establish a civic and military ceremony and invited both local schools and military personnel to mark the occasion. According to the Mayor’s plan outlined in the local press:

At three o’clock a procession will be formed and the Cadet Corps with the band playing and colours flying will march to the reserve enclosure on the Common. Arriving at the Arena, the Cadet Corps will fall in line with the School children in alphabetical order from the right. At 3.30, the Cadet Corps will troop the colours at the saluting base, the School children and Cadet Corps will march past and give three cheers and sing “God Save the King.” ⁶⁵

Matters came to a head in May 1908 when the Mayor stated that having secured permission from the local education committee, all children older than ten years attending Portsmouth council schools were to take part in the ceremony. ⁶⁶ This was the first time that the civic elite had drawn council schools into the event, and it was an invitation that was not entirely welcome. Such was the palpable disquiet among Portsmouth’s council teachers, the Mayor convened a large, well-attended meeting in the Town Hall to discuss the council school’s contribution to Empire Day. The Major opened the meeting “warmly commending the scheme” and hoped the teachers would approve the patriotic and “inspiring spectacle.” Clearly aware that some teachers were uncomfortable with marking Empire Day in this fashion, the Mayor confirmed that there was no compulsion for teachers to attend and those not participating were granted a half-day holiday. The teachers unanimously rejected the proposal. The most damning criticism of the program, and one that perhaps revealed the underlying hostility by some teachers, was aired by one headmistress who believed that “the spectacle would be lowering to the tone of school life.” Met with this hostility, the Mayor had no choice but to withdraw the council school sector from Empire Day parade, though urging they be included in the parade in the following year. ⁶⁷ Portsmouth council school teachers, however, did mark Empire Day in a less militarized fashion since lessons on Britain and her colonies were taught in the morning prior to the half-day holiday in the afternoon. ⁶⁸ Moreover, by 1913, teachers diluted the event further by merging it with a prize-giving day for pupils with the best attendance. Prior to the First World War, a militarized civic parade, however, appears to have been a step too far for many council school teachers in the town. ⁶⁹

The local press who, along with the civic elite, had pressed for the council sector’s inclusion, did not take too kindly to the Mayor’s very public defeat. ⁷⁰ After surveying Empire Day around the country, an angry Evening News editorial asked,

And what is Portsmouth doing—Portsmouth, one of the gates of the Empire, proudly boasting that it is the greatest naval port in the world? Well, Portsmouth is not quite sure what it will do on Empire Day. There may be a distribution of prizes in the schools by members of the education committee—if the books are ready in time what is officially considered rather doubtful. After that the children will have a half-holiday, which they may spend at their sweet will, with no necessary obtrusion of any thoughts of Empire and its meaning. If that is all that Portsmouth is going to do, it certainly fall far short of what Portsmouth might do. ⁷¹

This rather haphazard adoption of Empire Day in Portsmouth continued until the First World War when the event was nationally recognized.

In contrast to Portsmouth, Coventry’s Empire Day celebrations emphasized the moral duty of the imperial subject, toning down the militarized overtones that were evident in the south coast town. The absence of military-style parades in Coventry may have been instrumental in avoiding the problems that Portsmouth encountered and was sufficient to placate council school teachers wary of imperialism. In 1907, there were no official activities to mark the event, with only the Midland Daily Telegraph noting that thousands of schools in the country were celebrating Empire Day. The newspaper was a lead advocate for the Empire Day movement in Coventry as the editor lamented that “our children in the present day are taught too little about the Empire as it now exists . . . the introduction of ‘Empire Day’ should lead to the dissemination of wider and more perfect information on our colonies.” However, whereas the Portsmouth press saw Empire Day as a valuable education for children destined for military service, the Coventry newspapers stressed the importance of balancing an imperial education with social welfare at home. The Midland Daily Telegraph was alert to contemporary anxieties that industrial strife and poor urban social conditions could adversely affect the future stability of the empire, arguing that “if there be rot at the core the Empire must pine and perish.” ⁷² It was not until 1909 that the Coventry civic authorities organized a comprehensive program of Empire Day celebrations. ⁷³ The town council shunned any form of parade or militarized spectacle through the city and instead private, religious, and council schools followed a similar program of events. The Midland Daily Telegraph described Empire Day as “largely a children’s festival,” though there were many more flags displayed on public and private building than the previous year. ⁷⁴ School children would receive a special lesson on the British Empire, followed by a visit and a speech from a local dignitary such as the Mayor, councillor, or member of the clergy. In the speeches delivered to the children, local dignitaries not only outlined the significance of the British Empire but also emphasized the importance of obedience and discipline. In Hale Street School (Church of England), Rev. E. B. Saunderson warned pupils against being “idle, self-indulgent, cruel, disrespectful and disobedient to their parents and those in authority” since “it was the morality of the people which would be the determining cause of the stability or downfall of the Empire.” ⁷⁵ At the same time, the Midland Daily Telegraph reminded its readers that the key to a stable and prosperous empire was fostering security and social cohesion at home: “disease and discontent at the centre do not make for the healthfulness and happiness of the peoples on the borderland of Imperial rule.” ⁷⁶ The civic elites’ stress on obedience and social welfare was perhaps a response to the turbulent industrial relations that had beset Coventry’s new staple industries. The city was paralysed by an engineering strike in 1899 and, though official trade unionism was relatively weak, the motor and bicycle sectors were regularly hit by unofficial strikes and industrial disputes throughout the Edwardian period. ⁷⁷

In Leeds, the large influx of Jewish immigrants that had settled in the Leyland part of the city had effectively created Jewish-dominated council schools. The Leyland and Darley Street schools, which were run by the local authority, had a catchment area in the heart of the Jewish quarter of Leeds. In line with most schools in Leeds, Leyland and Darley Street schools were visited regularly by civic elites and industrialists. However, children in these schools were undoubtedly monitored more closely for “degenerative traits” and for their commitment to the civic, nation, and empire. Indeed, just as Empire Day in Portsmouth and Coventry attempted to counter local anxieties, the movement in Leeds endeavored to address concerns about racial and urban degeneration. For example, the growth of slum conditions in Leyland, the Jewish district of Leeds, was consistently attributed to the racial characteristics of the Jewish community. Alderman Ward, the Sanitary Committee Chairman, believed that in the Jewish quarter of Leeds “the people that work in these sweaters’ shops are very filthy. You only have to go into the district where they live to discover this. This is not surprising seeing that they come from parts of Russia which are almost beyond the pale of civilisation.” ⁷⁸ The town council’s Inspector for Jewish Workshops helped confirm this view noting a year later that Jews were ‘not notorious for their cleanliness and order’. ⁷⁹ Alongside a civic consensus that the new Jewish immigrants were responsible for increasing urban squalor, the Leeds Mercury, a liberal leaning newspaper, commented in 1900 that

were it not for the dirt which seems to dog the habitation and life of every Eastern native, and of the Israelite in particular, the Jew would be almost a model citizen. One thing will strike the visitor to any Jewish colony—whether it be in Whitechapel or in Birmingham, or that “delightful” district of Leeds, the Leylands—and that is the number of children possessed by each family. The streets swarm with little members of the “Chosen People” to an extent which will simply surprise him. ⁸⁰

The assumption that an inferior and uncivilized race was multiplying and perpetuating Leeds’ slum districts triggered fears that Britain’s urban Anglo-Saxon stock would be irreparably damaged. ⁸¹

In 1903, the Leeds Local Authority invited Dr. Hall, a medical researcher, to examine 100 children for a study investigating the perceived decline of the Anglo-Saxon race. He found that thirty of the fifty working-class children had rickets compared to ten of fifty children from the more affluent areas of Leeds. ⁸² Working-class and Jewish children were identified as requiring additional instruction in healthy activities and moral guidance. For the Leeds educational authorities, physical exercise through activities such as school drill would not only physically improve children but also reveal the extent to which working-class pupils suffered from physical deficiencies. Moreover, alongside its physical benefits, military drill was adjudged to be an effective method in instilling patriotism within Jewish scholars and help foster a commitment to both city and nation. For example, in a bid to demonstrate how military drill could improve physical health and cultivate a loyalty to their locality and nation, the Leeds council invited the Inspector of Schools from London to Darley Street School. In June 1904, Darley Street School’s entire six hundred pupils performed a military drill prompting the Inspector to note that drill helped introduce scholars to “the subject of ‘duty’” in “aspects of school life, the home life and citizenship.” ⁸³ Indeed, it appears that the Jewish children were subjected to regular scrutiny by the authorities, who were keen to detect any signs of degeneracy. Later in 1904, Darley Street School was visited by the MP, and former vice president of the Education Committee, Sir John Gorst and his daughter to inspect the health and well-being of the pupils. ⁸⁴ It was reported that the school “is attended by several hundred Jewish children, whom Sir John was interested to see in the light of recent comments as to the physique of the races as compared with Christian children.” ⁸⁵

Not surprisingly, then, Empire Day was also seen by the local authority as a vehicle to inculcate loyalty into an Eastern European Jewish community deemed unreliable and unpatriotic. Leeds Jewish council schools were some of the first in the country to observe Empire Day since they were already marking the importance of empire before Lord Meath’s movement was established. Commenting on the development of Empire Day, the Yorkshire Evening Post noted that “Leeds stands creditably prominent in this matter” as the city’s Jewish schools had acted as “pioneers of the movement.” The pupils of Darley and Leyland council schools, who were almost entirely Jewish, received intensive instruction on the British Empire far earlier than their contemporaries in other Leeds council schools. Prior to the Empire Day Movement, the pupils of Leyland School received lessons on the Empire and were instructed to write letters to children in the Australian, New Zealand, Indian, South African, and Canadian colonies. The lessons were designed to cultivate “loyal and dutiful citizens and true patriots” and “foster friendship and true understanding between children of the colonies and the mother country.” ⁸⁶ There was a particular emphasis on race, as the Jewish children were instructed that the Anglo-Saxon race possessed “firmness of ambition, self sacrifice and adventure.” ⁸⁷ Likewise, on Empire Day in 1905, the scholars of Darley Street School assembled to hear an address from the headmaster “on the Empire and the duty of Jewish children to England.” The headmaster also stressed that the children should appreciate the religious tolerance that the English man afforded to them, after which patriotic songs were sung. Thus, in both schools, values that Jewish children should aspire to were cast as racial characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon race. Only by adopting the values of loyalty, duty, and patriotism to their adopted country and empire could the Jewish community successfully emulate the English race and assimilate into British society. ⁸⁸ In supporting the Empire Day movement, the Yorkshire Evening Post also reminded readers that it was the innate qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race that was the driving force behind imperial successes. The editor noted that “the Empire is at once the monument and the living expression of the dauntless courage, the dauntless determination, and the adventuress spirit of the Anglo-Saxon race.” ⁸⁹

While the civic elites were preoccupied with the two Jewish schools, the remaining council schools appear not to have celebrated Empire Day during the early stages of the movement. For example in 1907, the Yorkshire Evening Post noted that Empire Day had “slipped by practically unnoticed in Leeds,” adding that only the two Jewish schools celebrated the event “by decorating the rooms with Union Jacks” and by “organising patriotic tableaux.” ⁹⁰ In the non-Jewish council school log books surveyed, the first account of Empire Day appears in St Peter’s Square council school in 1916. This is not to claim that Empire Day was not marked in council schools until 1916, but it was significant that the event did not merit an entry until the First World War. Such was the low-key nature of Empire Day in 1908, the Yorkshire Evening Post decided to investigate whether the working-class man in Leeds was conversant with the event. After interviewing a variety of characters in Leeds, a thoroughly dispirited journalist concluded that Empire Day was an exercise in providing Jewish children with an imperial education, while the rest of the population remained ignorant of the celebration. ⁹¹

Like the English case studies, the transmission of Empire Day was beset with problems from its inception, though in the Antipodean towns the casting of the celebration within vague national terms evidently failed to excite either urban elites or the public at large. Australian and New Zealand cities also had a more fundamental issue of whether to observe Empire Day on either May 24 or the Prince of Wales’s birthday on June 6, which had been observed as public holiday since the 1860s. Tradesmen and shopkeepers were especially reluctant to observe two public holidays because of the potential loss of revenue. Other interest groups had more ideological reasons for failing to promote Empire Day. Monarchists wanted to observe the Prince of Wales’s birthday, as they believed the monarchy was the truer symbol of colonial union with the mother country than the more recently instigated Empire Day. The BEL favored Empire Day and vigorously backed its introduction in Sydney, being an association with political and economic Empire integration as its goal. ⁹² In reality it appears that neither the winter holiday of the Prince of Wales’s birthday nor the King’s Birthday, marked later in the year, were treated as anything but an opportunity for pleasure seekers to find fun in the city or the country. Horse racing and regattas were popular events staged on both these public holidays. ⁹³ Indeed, the idea that Empire Day might be discontinued was broached on the pages of the Melbourne dailies, but continued into the interwar period. At no stage, however, was it staged as a public holiday in that city. ⁹⁴

On the other side of the Tasman, opinion was also divided over which day should take precedence. The Press looked forward to closer bonds of Empire (possibly federation of the Empire) and the establishment of a regularly observed Empire Day, and while Auckland’s New Zealand Herald also preferred to see Empire Day observed rather than the Prince of Wales’ birthday, it favored looser bonds of sentiment. Among the wider populace, there appears to have been a lack of interest in Empire Day. Descriptions provided in the local press indicated a rather indifferent attitude toward the remote concept of imperial unity. In its coverage of Empire Day in 1908, Wellington’s Evening Post provided a description of celebrations in New Zealand’s major centers. In Dunedin, it noted that “there was nothing to especially indicate Empire Day,” while in Christchurch, “Empire Services were conducted in the churches, and a patriotic concert was held in King Edward barracks and choral hall.” In Auckland, “rainy weather and a tramway strike” had put a dampener on potential celebrations while in Wellington “flags are lying limp on land and sea in honour of the Empire, but the popular sentiment is as listless as the bunting.” According to the paper this was “not because the people are not Imperialist, but because there is confusion about the observance of two holidays within a week of each other.” ⁹⁵ Ultimately the decision was taken to abandon the observation of May 24 as Empire Day in New Zealand and the years after 1910 witnessed its demise. The Prince of Wales’ birthday on June 6 was then declared a public holiday and was to be celebrated at the same time as Empire Day. ⁹⁶

While public indifference seems to have been a common attitude to the celebration, how was Empire presented in the provincial press before 1914? Unlike English towns, the Empire Day movement was not employed by urban elites to solve the social and cultural “problems” of the modern city. This was evident when The Press, the leading Christchurch daily, noted on Empire Day 1907.

The whole essence of the celebration of Empire Day lies in the fact that it induces us to look outward and not inwards. Local patriotism is an admirable thing, and we have more than once urged that in the celebration both of the anniversary of the province and of the anniversary colony some remembrance should be accorded to the builders of New Zealand. But the celebration of which to-day is the occasion have for their subject, not the creation and development of any single unit of the Empire, but the world wide Empire. ⁹⁷

Thus, the Antipodean dailies looked not unsurprisingly to a rather vague and bland conception of imperial unity based around trade and defense interests or a looser Empire based on sentiment. The vagueness of Empire Day was taken up by the Argus journalist and imperialist Donald Macdonald. From 1907 onwards, Macdonald was responsible for providing editorial reflection on Empire. On more than one occasion, he stressed a common heritage and the historical evolution of the British Empire. ⁹⁸ In 1909, in the midst of the German “naval scare,” it projected national rather than city interests on to the celebrations. It noted that “a federated Canada, a federated Australia and a federated South Africa move along the broad paths to individual greatness, yet each of them is destined to become more and more a buttress to the island home which is the centre of them all.” ⁹⁹ By 1913, MacDonald began his reflections of Empire by asking “What is the Empire? The question is being asked thousands of times in these days of empire, and answered in almost as many different ways.” His own answer was in itself the rather vague notion of “the material expression of the spirit of the race.” ¹⁰⁰ In Sydney, the BEL took a lead role in organizing celebrations. Archdeacon F. B. Boyce, president of the League, advocated May 24 as a kind of “Empire Christmas Day” where British heritage would be commonly appreciated. ¹⁰¹ An organization that advocated imperial preference, the BEL also used the day to advise businesses and businessmen to display the union jack on their premises and on their persons. ¹⁰² The vision of Empire projected in the Sydney Morning Herald suggested that “in the increasing purpose of Empire the dominions come to count for more and more and in recognition of that fact the parliament at Westminster is willing and sometimes anxious to give them a greater share in the councils of Great Britain than they have ever yet possessed.” ¹⁰³

Imperial culture was not, however, confined to the “public” sphere of streets, town halls, and the pages of the city press. Given that Empire Day was not observed as a public holiday in the majority of antipodean cities, one of the most important arenas for marking the day occurred in the school environment. ¹⁰⁴ The Argus had realized this shortly after the introduction of Empire Day, noting that, “Here in Melbourne the day will be above all things the children’s day. The children of the metropolitan area will have deeply impressed on their susceptible minds the principles and duties of imperial citizenship.” ¹⁰⁵ Directors of Education in both Australia and New Zealand were, indeed, enthusiastic supporters of the Empire Day and instructed teachers to promote Empire. School newspapers in both contexts were launched and in the years before 1914 a significant proportion of their content was devoted to describing and celebrating the British Empire. ¹⁰⁶ The School Paper was first distributed to Melbourne’s schools in 1897, while in New Zealand the School Journal was established in 1907. In Australia during the Edwardian period, teachers were instructed by directors of state education on the pages of the education gazettes to promote values of Empire on May 24. ¹⁰⁷ A sense of imperial citizenship was to be developed through lessons in geography, history, poetry, and reading. ¹⁰⁸ It is evident, however, from a close scrutiny of both the New Zealand and Australian school publications and also extant school log books that local patriotism or civic boosterism did not find a place in this arena any more than among the adult population. Since the urban environment and provincial press had evolved differently to that of England, Empire Day was not conceived as an antidote to the social and cultural crises of a modern European city. As Malone notes of the New Zealand School Journal, it was introduced partly because there was a lack of uniformity as far as school text books were concerned. “Its treatment of Empire was essentially a romantic concept, the ideology of Empire was not notable for its logical consistency.” ¹⁰⁹ While the Argus had hoped Empire Day would be a key date in the calendar to impress school children with the duties of imperial citizenship, the paper was forced to admit in 1913 that this hope had largely been unrealized. Editorial comment under the heading “A Divided Festival” noted:

Perhaps the feature which most appealed to the infantile mind was the fact that there were no lessons during the afternoon. The school committee, aided by the district councils, arranged all sorts of little entertainments; free kinematograph, shows, sports, and distribution of sweets and fruits and cakes. . . . Perhaps the greatest visible expression of rejoicing is that which will be seen tonight by many thousands of people. Each year the whole of the suburbs extending from Surrey Hills to Canterbury and Camberwell are illuminated. . . . Bonfires will be lit and fireworks will be let off by the citizens. ¹¹⁰

It is not entirely clear from this report how far these celebrations were linked to a sentiment of Empire citizenship or whether this description is more suggestive of a carnival than a patriotic observance. In fact, it appears Empire Day became a night of revelry much sooner than historians have believed. ¹¹¹

In the Southern hemisphere, then, opinion formers used Empire Day as a reminder to colonial citizens of where Australia and New Zealand stood in the British Empire. Unlike English cities, imperial propaganda was not seen as the antidote to social and urban problems. Thus, in contrast to Leeds where Empire Day was employed to instill loyalty in “inferior races,” New Zealand schools did not target the event to nonwhite indigenous communities. A survey of extant Pakeha and Maori school log books suggests that Empire Day was given a very low profile, despite school teachers being instructed to observe the Day. ¹¹² The celebrations were further obstructed by the fact that school children were often on a winter break when the celebrations were supposed to occur. ¹¹³ Where Empire Day was marked, it often appears to have taken the form of a holiday granted to the children without any lessons in the meaning of Empire being provided. ¹¹⁴ T. B. Strong, Chief Inspector of primary schools for New Zealand, provided further guidance in an issue of the Education Gazette in 1921. ¹¹⁵ Yet a perusal of school log books reveals a lack of evidence of Empire Day observance and is rather supportive of Roger Openshaw’s observation that patriotism in wider society did not find its way into schools because “a number of New Zealand primary school teachers were inadequately trained.” ¹¹⁶ From 1916, Anzac Day commemorations further eclipsed Empire Day as the annual observance of New Zealand’s place within Empire. Teachers in some instances appeared to resent “celebration” days, as they obstructed teaching. A comment made in the log book of Kaiwhara school, for example, in relation to the marking of Dominion Day, which had been introduced in 1907 to mark New Zealand’s new position within the Empire, noted a few years later that “it is about time the Dominion Day farce was put an end to, for it serves no useful purpose whatever and only provides another opportunity for needlessly interrupting.” ¹¹⁷

Conclusion

The history of Empire Day from its inception in 1903 to the outbreak of the First World War provides an interesting case study on the complexities of endeavoring to transmit a uniform celebration of empire across England and her colonies. Despite its creation through a single movement led by Lord Meath, local contexts informed and shaped the character and transmission of Empire Day. In England, the celebration was seized upon by the civic authorities to help resolve perceived social problems in their respective cities. The more uniform introduction of Empire Day via national parliament in both Australia and New Zealand and the better urban conditions that existed in the Antipodean cities helped foster a national rather than local dimension to the event. In addition, the city councillors, who often made their wealth from international exports and imports, did not have the vested interests in local communities that their English counterparts possessed in British cities. To assume that the creation and impressive adoption of Empire Day by governments at national and local levels in English and colonial cities was an indication of successful imperial inculcation underestimates the importance of how the event was diffused through differing national civic agencies. Meath’s Empire Day was perhaps the most successful imperial event in terms of its adoption in the Empire. However, it was filtered through a myriad of national and local contexts that ensured the central imperial message was recast by those in governance to address the immediate concerns of the day in urban or national contexts.