Thousands gathered to remember the Fallen
In 1932, long after the Great War had ended, the war memorial in the city centre had been unveiled and would now be the focal point of Bristol’s biggest Remembrance Day ceremonies. Eugene Byrne looks at first one, and its troubled background.
BRISTOL’S main civic war memorial, the Cenotaph in the city centre, was only unveiled in June of 1932, a scorching hot day on which many present fainted.
Coming 14 years after the Armistice was signed, and following no end of argument over what form the memorial should take and where it should be, a design was finally chosen and it was erected in a spot where formal Remembrance Day ceremonies had already been taking place for some years.
On Friday November 11 1932, the first Remembrance Day was marked at the new war memorial “sacred to the memory of Bristol’s sons and daughters who made the supreme sacrifice”.
The day dawned bright and sunny, and thousands gathered around the cenotaph from dawn onwards. By the time the military – territorials, regulars and members of the Royal Naval Volunteer
Reserve and the band of the 4th Battalion, the Gloucesters – had arrived, there were tens of thousands, including ranks of members of the Royal British Legion.
The Civic Parade, the Lord Mayor, Sheriff, Aldermen and Councillors walked up from Corn Street, led by the Bristol Constabulary band playing ‘O God Our Help in Ages Past’ arrived. Dr Ferrier Hulme, a Methodist minister, led the prayers for thankful hearts, unselfish lives and peace in our time.
The Chief Constable, Charles Maby, raised his hand for the two minutes’ silence to begin and tens of thousands of people, already silent, even seemed to hold their breath.
Then the Last Post, then the Reveille, then more prayers, this time from the Dean of Bristol, then all sang the national anthem.
The Lord Mayor was first to lay a wreath on behalf of the city, then the Chief Constable, and then more wreaths.
What seems remarkable now is not just the scale and solemnity of the occasion, but the fact that the Cenotaph was lit up that evening and all day long, and into the night, people filed past to look at the wreaths and pay their respects.
Over on the College Green that same evening, an area close to the Queen Victoria statue was floodlight, showing the thousands of poppies and little wooden crosses planted into the ground.
Almost everyone wore a poppy in their coats or jackets, and most of them were bought on the day or day before. No politician or public figure seems to have felt any obligation to be seen wearing one for weeks beforehand, unlike nowadays.
The memorial has been the focus of Armistice Day, latterly Remembrance Sunday, commemorations ever since. But commemoration of the war dead for Bristolians in 1932 was very different to how it is nowadays.
The greatest difference was that 80 years ago, absolutely everyone present that day had lost friends, sons, husbands, brothers, uncles, comrades, neighbours, workmates, old school pals, in the Great War. The sense of loss, the need for everyone in the community to come together to honour them and to feel that their loss had meant something, was immense.
The other difference was that many of the men who had served were in real distress. Unemployment rates were high and there was a great deal of unrest on the streets. In February of that year there had been a full-scale riot after the council, which was responsible for unemployment relief payments, had announced plans to reduce the dole.
The disturbances, mostly centred on Old Market, were only the biggest in a whole year of demonstrations, scuffles between unemployed men and the police, and
invasions of the council chamber by protestors.
This was why large numbers of police officers were on duty around the cenotaph during the day and well into the evening. It wasn’t to protect the memorial; nobody in their right mind would have even dreamed of desecrating or disrespecting it in any way.
It was because the authorities feared that this highly visible monument to the suffering and sacrifice in the war would become a rallying point for those whose efforts had been so poorly rewarded.
Behind the headlines there were thousands of real-life stories of loss, though that year perhaps the most poignant in the region was not from Bristol, but from Highbridge in Somerset. There, a young man with tears in his eyes placed two poppies
on the rails of the town memorial after the two minutes’ silence.
Nobody recognised him. He was not local. When asked, he explained that he had walked up from Devon. He was “on the tramp”, looking for any kind of work he could find and was making his way back towards his home in Yorkshire. He had lost his father and four brothers in the war.
There was another curious coda to the story in Bristol, where remembrance services had taken place in other parts of the city, too. The Rev. Brian Osborne, Rector of St Michael’s and Chaplain to the 6th Battalion the Gloucesters, had helped conduct services at the Victoria Rooms and at the 6th’s HQ on St Michaels Hill. He was catching a tram home when he had a seizure and died on the spot.