WE ARE LEGION!
As the Royal British Legion marks its centenary, we celebrate the larger-than-life characters who brought the charity into being... including a waterskiing double amputee and the fearless ‘physical giant’ who led it
THOSE who brought the Royal British Legion into being 100 years ago tomorrow were not crusty old civil servants but young men who had served in the Armed Forces. The average age of a British Legion branch in 1921 was 28 years old. The national chairman of the fledgling Legion was still six months short of his 35th birthday, the honorary treasurer was 34 and the first Patron, Edward Prince of Wales, was only 27.
This was a young organisation with energy, a determination to hold the government of the day to account and with a desire to plan for a brighter future for those it cared for. It also attracted some larger-than-life characters. Foremost among these was Major (later Sir) Benn Jack Brunel Cohen MP.
He was one of the greatest campaigners the Legion ever had. Born in Liverpool in 1886, the sixth of nine children, he entered the family retail business in Liverpool on leaving school in 1903 and three years later joined the 1st Volunteer Battalion of the King’s Liverpool Regiment.
On July 31, 1917, during the Third Battle of Ypres, he sustained severe wounds under machine gun fire and had to have both his legs amputated above the knee.
He was fitted with prosthetic limbs and able to walk short distances on sticks but, for most of his life, relied on his electric wheelchair or his adapted car.
Having entered Parliament, Major Jack as he was known coped with his disability in a matter-of-fact manner and used his position as Conservative MP for Liverpool (Fairfield) to campaign for disabled ex-servicemen and, indeed, all people with disabilities.
Despite his injuries, one of the father-ofthree’s passions remained waterskiing. He had a board specially designed so he could sit on it behind a speed boat and enjoy the same exhilaration as his friends, although he made sure he skied first thing in the morning before anyone else was around so they would not see him without his prosthetics.
But it was this single-minded determination to continue with life as ordinary as possible at all costs that carried through his work for the Legion.
THE Royal British Legion celebrates its 100th birthday tomorrow. For most people in this country the Legion is associated with poppies and Remembrance. But it does so much more. It is a welfare organisation that has had people at its heart for the last century. The Legion was born out of the bloodiest conflict in history to date.
More than a million men who served in the British Army from the UK, the former colonies and the then Empire lost their lives during the First World War. A further 1.75 million men were either permanently disabled or disadvantaged by their war service.
‘We have attracted it to men who want to do service in peace, just as they did service in war’
THERE was a desperate need for help and, over the final two years of the conflict, several organisations emerged to help stand up for the interests of those who returned injured. Some focused on care, others on pensions for the wounded, others still on the widows and orphans.
In 1920, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, who had commanded British forces on the Western Front, encouraged the four main organisations to come together to form a single body that would be able to lobby the government, fight for the rights of returning servicemen and help those left bereft, widowed or orphaned.
The British Legion came into being on May 15, 1921, after nine long months of negotiations. Haig was the first President and would devote the rest of his life to the needs of the men and their families who had suffered as a result of war service.
Although Haig was the single most important influence on the acceptance of the Legion as a force to be reckoned with by the government and the public, he was aided by men of extraordinary ability.
The first national chairman was Thomas (later Sir) Frederick Lister. Standing 6ft 6½in, he was taller by a head at least than the average man for the age. He had volunteered for service in the Royal Garrison Artillery in 1914 but in 1916 was shot and badly wounded so returned to Britain.
On his recovery he set about thinking of other men who, once recovered from their wounds, were sent back to the front line. As chairman of the National Federation of Discharged Soldiers and Sailors he came to prominence during the Unity Conferences of 1920 and was unanimously elected chairman of the new British Legion. Although only in his early thirties, Lister was not fazed by men who were his senior in age or rank. He was fearless in approaching complex issues and was able to hold his own in meetings where heated views were exchanged. He arrested attention and compelled respect from delegates.
One wrote of him: “It is not so much that he is by way of a physical giant, but he at all times displays an easy and
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effortless command of himself and of any subject he tackles which marks him out as a man who, as they said of [Lord] Kitchener, has a brain packed in ice.
“Not that this means he is the refrigerator order of officials; no man has a quicker sense of humour or a more joyous laugh.”
Lister was an ideal chairman. His quick grasp of essentials and his mastery of big, complex subjects were balanced by his keen sense of humour. He could remain “superhumanly cool in crises that would raise blisters on the brain of 99 men in 100”.
He also understood how to head off dissent. When the threat of serious unrest arose during the General Strike of 1926, it was Lister who was credited with holding the Legion to a moderate course.
Fred Lister, like other early Legion office holders, gave of his time freely and on a voluntary basis. He continued to work full time in the accident department of the Liverpool and London Globe Insurance Company.
He spent most of his weekends and many evenings attending to Legion business, travelling the length and breadth of the country to meetings, conferences and other Legion events.
He said years later: “I think that the secret of Legion success has been the fact that we have attracted to it men who, outside of their daily occupations, are determined to place the Legion first in their thoughts, and who really and genuinely want to do service in peace, just as they did service in the war.” Legion, Cohen was championing the causes of the disabled in parliament.
He used his maiden speech to urge that men disabled by their war service should be taught a trade and helped to find a job. Six months later, in July 1919, he raised a parliamentary question asking why wounded former ex-servicemen were to be excluded from theVictory Parade.Was it right they were left to view the parade from the sidelines?
Over the course of his parliamentary career, he served on more than 30 government committees and voluntary bodies dealing with questions about the welfare not only of former servicemen and women but also of the disabled in general.
George Crosfield, the Legion’s first vicechairman,
IF EVER there was an example of that selfless commitment to the Legion, it was set by Lister. He retired as chairman in 1927 but continued to work tirelessly for the Legion, chairing many committees, until his death in 1966.
Major Jack Cohen was honorary treasurer for the first 25 years of the Legion’s existence. Even before the formation of the was a generation older than Lister and Cohen.
A personal friend of Haig, he had served with distinction in the First World War. He was injured in France and lost a leg but retrained as a night fighter pilot, flying with the newly formed Royal Air Force from September 1918.
Crosfield went on to become chairman of the Legion in 1927 and served for four years. During this time he worked hard to achieve an understanding with ex-servicemen from former enemy countries to join together in the pursuit of permanent peace.
Always popular with the Legion members, he presided over the Great Pilgrimage of 1928 when 11,000 veterans, widows and orphans paid a week-long visit to the battlefields of France and Belgium to mark the 10th anniversary of the 100 days, the battles that led to the end of the First World War.
Crosfield, like Lister, Cohen, Haig and others instinctively understood that one of the Legion’s key roles was to be a family to its members and in this it has been successful. This was the calibre of men who served as the first officers of the British Legion. They were full of energy and enthusiasm and they were determined to leave no stone unturned in support of those who suffered in the First World War. The three pillars of Remembrance, Welfare and Campaigning have remained central to the Legion’s creed, with different weight being given to each over time.
The secret to the Legion’s success has been its ability to change with the times and that comes, in part, from being created by such extraordinarily devoted and characterful founders.
●●We Are The Legion: The Royal British Legion at 100 by Julie Summers (Profile Editions, £18.99) is out now. For free UK delivery, call Express Bookshop on 01872
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