In commenting yesterday on Kipling's 'Munitions Memo' in TLS, to which Lisa
Lewis drew our attention and which David Page identified on line at >
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/this_week/story.aspx?story_id=2109695 ,
I wrote
'Kipling's interest shown here in munitions workers coupled with
the reference in 'The Gardener' to Helen's visit to a munitions factory
makes
it likely that it was in 1918 that he himself toured such an establishment -
does anyone know of a recorded visit?'
Having reread the piece and related it to WW1 happenings, I think now that,
while Kipling may have visited a munitions factory, or many factories,
during the war, this memo was probably in response to the latest in a series
of very disruptive workers' strikes in munitions and other factories in
1918, possibly that on May Day 1918 when John Maclean called for workers to
follow the example of the Russian Revolution and end the war. 100,000
Glaswegians stopped work and in April Maclean was arrested, charged with
sedition and was later condemned to five years hard labour. He won his
release at the end of the war.
Roger Ayers
|