Citizen Soldiers: The Liverpool Territorials in the First World War

Abstract

As Helen McCartney suggests, there are relatively few studies of battalions of the Territorial Force during the Great War compared with the attention that has been devoted to the ‘Pals’ battalions of the New Armies. Consequently, her study of the 1/6th and 1/10th Battalions of the King's Liverpool Regiment, respectively the Liverpool Rifles and the Liverpool Scottish, is to be welcomed. The study is doubly valuable, however, for being set within the wider context of the nature of the wartime experience for civilians temporarily transformed into soldiers and their assimilation into the military machine. By the very nature of their pre-war military commitments, of course, Territorials were somewhat different from those who enlisted purely as wartime recruits, but equally reluctant to forego their civilian family and community links and, indeed, were accustomed to a rather more relaxed system of discipline than regulars, through their presumed greater social exclusivity. In reality, as McCartney fully recognises, most Territorials were actually drawn from the working class though, as it happens, the two units she chooses to study are distinctive for being both ‘collar and cuff’ battalions: one a former ‘class corps’ of the old rifle volunteer force and the other one with a particular ‘ethnic’ identity. In fact, the latter dominate the book, since most of the surviving archives relate to the Liverpool Scottish rather than the Rifles. Neither battalion reflected what might be regarded as the pre-war norm for the Territorial Force as a whole and, indeed, most of the other Territorial battalions in Liverpool were far more working-class. What is particularly interesting about her findings is that the Liverpool Rifles and Liverpool Scottish were able to maintain much of their original social composition and their ethos well into the war, at a time when the pressure of casualties was eroding pre-war identities. In part, as she demonstrates, this was due to the political influence of the Earl of Derby. However, she also argues convincingly that a broad regional homogeneity was sustained by Liverpool and Lancashire units for particular reasons relating to military recruiting organisation that have been overlooked, and that the drafting system was far less arbitrary and dysfunctional than other historians have suggested. She also believes that the working of the Training Reserve was not intended to ‘nationalise’ the army, though this was the outcome in some cases. In addition, McCartney adds to the growing body of recent work which suggests a far closer link between soldier and civilian and between front and home front than was sometimes assumed in the past, drawing upon the provincial press to demonstrate that, for all practical purposes, censorship relating to service conditions did not exist at the local level. Two interesting illustrations reproduced from the Northern Daily Dispatch and Liverpool Daily News, for example, are atmospheric, and illegal, photographs taken in action by a member of the Liverpool Scottish in June 1915. McCartney also addresses questions of discipline and morale, again adding usefully to other recent studies and re-emphasising the significance of local identity, albeit increasingly at the divisional rather than the battalion level. It is certainly clear that the men of the Liverpool Rifles and Liverpool Scottish did not regard themselves as ‘victims’ of the system. The coverage of individual experience is a well-trodden path, and there is less scope for originality in this section of the book, though McCartney perhaps misses the opportunity to develop the sadly fleeting references to the apparent rivalry within the Liverpool Scottish between the future Hollywood star, Basil Rathbone, who won the MC with the battalion, and the future radio star of Mrs Dale's Diary. Nonetheless, McCartney has produced an impressive piece of research and a very real contribution to the historiography of the British army in the Great War.