By HILARY GAVIN
IN THE Napoleonic Wars Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington branded his own common British soldiers as “the scum of the earth.”
The Duke was venting his anger in a dispatch to the High Tory Earl Bathurst as his troops began looting in the aftermath of the joint Spanish, Portuguese and British victory at the Battle of Vitoria in 1813 during the Peninsula War.
Now, I’ve no idea how much of this looting took place back then in the Basque Country, but I know the Duke was well aware that his soldiers came from what the ruling classes considered to be the dregs of Regency Britain.
If you go online, you’ll discover plenty of historians debating the nature of the common soldier in the Peninsula War. On the whole, it is widely accepted that the majority of the troops enlisted in the British Army either because they had nothing to lose as hardened criminals or couldn’t find work as farm labourers.
As far as I can tell, our academics have their work cut out researching authentic voices from this underbelly of Georgian society in the early 1800s as the unwashed masses were, in the main, written-off in history around the time.
Today, I suspect that the majority of people living in Britain would condemn Wellington’s soldiers as a rag-tag band of lawless men who were intrinsically BAD people simply because they were poor, uneducated and naturally stupid.
However, we, as a society, are not quite so quick to condemn Wellington’s upper-class 18th Hussars cavalrymen whom the Duke branded as “a disgrace to the name of soldier, in action as well as elsewhere” during the Napoleonic Wars.
If I’m being truthful, I thought we – as an enlightened humane society – had moved beyond the early 19th century and later Victorian Era’s blind disapproval of the poor as idle, unfit, sexually promiscuous and drunken creatures.
And I find it ironic that – at the time the Duke of Wellington was branding his common soldiers “scum” – the Prince Regent, later King George IV, was himself being widely lampooned as corrupt, debauched and depraved.
Of course, we equate the later class-ridden Victorian Era with strict morality and social propriety when the poor were blamed for simply being poor to justify locking them away in Workhouses.
By contrast, the rather rotund widowed Queen Victoria was viewed as a symbol of virtue by society – it’s just a pity the same couldn’t be said of her pleasure-seeking son “Bertie” who went on to become King Edward VII.
You could argue, as I would, that it was undoubtedly a case of “one law for the rich, and one for the poor” or “do as I say, and not as I do” among the ruling aristocracy as they kept the working classes under the thumb in Industrial Britain.
With this mindset very much to the forefront, it’s little wonder that Darwin’s theory of the Origin of the Species morphed into Eugenics in the 1880s and paved the way for the horrors of Nazi Germany fifty years on.
Of course, the majority of the working class in the industrial towns of the Midlands, northern England and in the mining valleys of South Wales during this time were decent God-fearing, law-abiding citizens. They, like their counterparts in southern Scotland, had to feed their families after all.
On the whole workers in northern England and Wales were non-conformist Christians, whose wives and mothers started joining the burgeoning Temperance Movement to preach against the evils of alcoholism and gambling.
Meanwhile, their menfolk discovered power in numbers at work as unions began to grow to demand better pay and conditions, and camaraderie on the football and rugby terraces flourished as they cheered on their local teams together.
A far cry from drunken wretches, I’d say!
At this point I have to admit that my limited knowledge of the common soldier in the Peninsula War only extends to the fictional character and soldier Richard Sharpe in Bernard Cornwell’s novels, who was portrayed on telly by the brusque, but rather sexy, Yorkshireman Sean Bean (see YouTube trailer above).
Saying that, I know a fair bit about the New Model Army that arose during the English Civil War (War of the Three Kingdoms) which military historians consider to be the forerunner of the British Army and Georgian Redcoats.
These Roundheads (so-called due to the shape of their protective metal helmets), were formed as a disciplined and revolutionary fighting force that secured victory for the Parliamentarian Forces at the Battle of Naseby in 1645.
These were, in essence, Oliver Cromwell’s men whose ranks were drawn from the Puritan London Guilds and from English market towns and cities and farms. On the whole, they were devout protestants who took their instructions from God alone, and not a king, as laid out in their Soldier’s Catechism.
If you’ve not studied the English Civil War, why not take a look because I would argue that it was a truly revolutionary period in England, at least, when the down-trodden Guild and farm workers of Anglo Saxon heritage began to kick back at what has been dubbed somewhen in history as the old feudal Norman Yoke.
Of course, it all ended in tears for the Levellers, who sought greater democracy and suffrage at the Putney Debates in 1647, as the grandees of the New Model Army, Halifax, Cromwell and Ireton etc, ignored and ultimately eradicated radicalism.
Once again, I ask you, whether you would consider the Leveller leaders to be evolutionary inferior drunken wretches? Or were they God-fearing men who were demanding a say in life for both themselves and their loved-ones?
So, this brings me full circle to our modern-day society where I, for one, am despondent about the growing backlash against “undesirables” who are convening on street benches in our towns and cities to drink and socialise.
Our district councillors’ knee-jerk reaction in Chichester has been to appease fearful residents by imposing an anti-social dispersal order giving officials the power to stop individuals drinking in the street and confiscate alcohol.
As far as I can see from a report on the latest CDC Communities and Wellbeing committee meeting at the council’s Pallant HQ in my local Chichester Observer, members didn’t discuss the reasons why the less-advantaged in our society are drinking on park benches. So my question to them is: “Why not?”
I, myself, don’t frequent pubs in the city nowadays because I cannot afford to pay the exorbitant prices for a glass or two of wine so I can only image people less fortunate than me living in and around Chichester can’t either.
On the other side of our increasing class divide in Britain, I should say I’ve seen our CDC leader Adrian Moss enjoying a tipple or two of his choice (most probably alcoholic) outside at least one drinking establishment in the city in recent years.
So, I’m bemused as to why CDC officers didn’t flag up the matter of affordability to councillors, and why they – in turn – didn’t address this matter or explore why supermarkets and convenience stores continue to ply consumers across our nation with cheap booze – wine, cider and beer – with bottles stacked on shelves within reach of children and teenagers? Undisputably irresponsible!!!
If you want to stop anti-social behaviour, start with the supermarket chains – I say, because a Zero Tolerance policy on so-called drunks and undesirables will only send them underground to illegal drinking or drugs dens.
Righto, readers, I’m off my soapbox now, but before I leave you I should mention my motivation for writing this blog post was a Veterans’ Foundation Facebook post asking the public to “Help Stop Suicide in Veterans” (see Facebook link below).
Accordingly to their statistics, and I’ve no reason to doubt the foundation’s source, FIVE British veterans take their own lives every week. Shocking!
Of course, British squaddies always had a chequered reputation in the Twentieth Century as heavy drinkers and rabble-rousers in bars and pubs.
More often than not these soldiers grew up in industrial cities of England, like Newcastle Upon Tyne, and joined the British Army in times of hardship such as in the Eighties when Margaret Thatcher privatised our staple industries.
I, for one, don’t have any statistics to hand, but there’s little doubt that we all accept that a disproportionate number of down-and-outs and beggars living rough on Britain’s streets today are ex-combat veterans struggling to fit into civvy life.
My only hope today is that we stop branding ex-servicemen and women, who risked all for Queen and Country, as “the scum of the earth”. Instead, I would ask you to start to address your fears of these so-called undesirables to enable you to reach out to them in their hour of need.
By HILARY GAVIN
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Hilary Gavin, Journalist & Writer, T/A Business & Commas, Hunston, PO20 1NY
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