The 'Service Members' in Parliament, the Armed Forces, and British Politics during the Great War

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Modern Britain has generally been regarded as a civilian and constitutional state par excellence, a polity in which military power was firmly subordinated to the civilian authority of Parliament. Yet the political and military elites in Britain, even in what many contemporaries regarded as a 'democratic' age, never constituted two wholly separate and distinct castes. My research explores this problem through a study of 264 Members of Parliament who served in the armed forces during the Great War. Transcending the narrow, institutional focus of previous work on British civil-military relations, this project comprises a study of professional and political cultures that also addresses important questions about the nature of the British state and the place of the armed forces within society.The 'Service Members' occupied a unique and controversial position in the armed forces, in Parliament, and in wider British political life. Ennobled soldiers had long sat in the House of Lords, but the question of whether an individual could simultaneously be an officer (and thus a servant of the crown) and an MP (and therefore a servant of the people) was far more problematic. Existing constitutional precedent appeared largely irrelevant to the unprecedented conditions of the Great War.Wartime coalition government placed the normal rules of politics under unusual strain. In these circumstances, military service could provide a common identity, and even a basis for common action, for MPs from rival parties. By 1915 an influential lobby of military MPs, both Unionist and Liberal, was campaigning energetically for the introduction of military conscription. My research explores the ways in which the activities of Service Members contributed to the breakdown of conventional party politics, and the extent to which these MPs came to constitute a 'military' faction in the House of Commons.Political interventions by Service Members proved highly controversial. Critics denounced what they regarded as a dangerous and incongruous 'Cromwellian' intrusion into the supposedly democratic politics of the twentieth century. But Fighting MPs did not work simply to advance the agenda of the military establishment at the expense of civilian control. Service Members in the field often used parliamentary privilege to circumvent the military chain of command, sending critical accounts of their military superiors to political colleagues in Westminster and Whitehall. As one MP declared, 'we were the British equivalent of the Soviet Commissars, using the Press, the platform, the House of Commons, and private appreciations - to the rage and despair of all Brasshattery'. My research therefore also explores the novel ways in which Service Members worked to assert parliamentary authority over the military leadership.Most controversially of all, Fighting MPs who attended the House of Commons during the War came to identify themselves as the political 'representatives' of the armed forces. In doing so they were not simply acting as mouthpieces for the high command, but were consciously staking their claim to political authority on their right to speak 'on behalf' of common soldiers. At a time when an unprecedented proportion of the British population was under arms, these claims profoundly influenced contemporary debates about the nature of citizenship, the rights of electors, and the responsibilities of Parliament. By 1915, even a pillar of the establishment such as 'The Times' was arguing that a House of Commons which did not include soldiers on its benches was not truly representative of the nation, and was therefore neither competent to direct the conduct of the war nor fit to legislate on any other question of importance - from taxation to the enfranchisement of women. By exploring this controversial debate, my research profoundly challenges assumptions about the civilian nature of male political culture in Britain during the twentieth century.