The White Feather: A Sketch of English Recruiting" (Arnold Bennett, 1914)
The White Feather Campaign was a prominent enlistment campaign and shamingritual in Britain during the First World War, in which women gave white feathers to non-enlisting men, symbolising cowardice and shaming them into signing up. The white feather campaign is noted for the role of many prominent early feminists and suffragettes in starting it, such as Emmeline Pankhurst, and Emma Orczy.[1]
Although the campaign was unpopular among the public, often causing mental suffering and suicides among men, it was seen as a success by the government, and the Pankhurst sisters as well as the Women's Social and Political Union received recognition from the government for their contributions. The campaign is also interpreted as one of the reasons behind the passing of the Representation of the People Act, which first granted franchise to land-owning women.
At the outset of World War I, Britain relied on voluntary enlistment. However, as the war stretched long, and Britain started running out of working-age men to death or injury, there was a shortage of troops, which prompted the government to start conscripting men in 1916, and later decreasing the age of conscription through the Military Service Act.[2] Britain also started recruiting children, with about 250,000 minors serving with the country in WW1.[3] In August 1914, Admiral Charles Penrose-Fitzgerald founded what became known as the “Order of the White Feather.” He enlisted groups of young women to hand out white feathers – a traditional symbol of cowardice – to men in civilian attire in public places.[4][5][6] The group that he founded (with prominent members being the authors Emma Orczy and Mary Augusta Ward) was known as the White Feather Brigade or the Order of the White Feather.[7] The Order and their recruiting methods quickly spread across Britain. Women of all backgrounds contributed their influence to the war effort.[8][9] These so-called “white feather girls” combed streets, trams, theaters and other public spaces, pinning feathers onto unsuspecting young men as a public rebuke for their failure to join the military.[10]
This was part of a larger shift towards propaganda drawing heavily on themes of gender,[11] to highlight the innocent vulnerability of mothers, wives and daughters,[12][13] and to guilt men by implying they would be emasculated if they did not fight.[11]
WWI recruitment poster referring to the German bombardment of Scarborough, invoking the female casualties in the war in order to coax men into enlisting.
The White Feather Movement was effective in drumming up enlistment – many men reportedly volunteered soon after being handed a feather, unable to bear the stigma. In Britain, it started to cause problems for the government when public servants and men in essential occupations came under pressure to enlist. That prompted Home SecretaryReginald McKenna to issue employees in state industries with lapel badges reading "King and Country" to indicate that they were serving the war effort. Likewise, the Silver War Badge, which was given to service personnel who had been honourably discharged by wounds or sickness, was first issued in September 1916 to prevent veterans from being challenged for not wearing uniform.[7] Anecdotes from the time indicate that the campaign was unpopular among soldiers, not least because soldiers who were home on leave could find themselves presented with feathers.[7]
Role of the suffragettes
A significant faction of British suffragettes enthusiastically embraced the war effort and the White Feather Movement, viewing them as an opportunity to demonstrate women’s patriotism and claim a stake in national service. Leading the pro-war charge was Emmeline Pankhurst, the famous militant suffragette and leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). As soon as war broke out in 1914, Emmeline and her eldest daughter Christabel Pankhurst dramatically pivoted their organisation's focus from fighting for the vote to fighting for the country.[14][10]
The British government, keen to secure the support of these influential militants, released all WSPU suffragettes from prison in August 1914, effectively striking a bargain: the WSPU would suspend its suffrage agitation and devote its energies to recruiting men and mobilising women for war work.[14][15]Emmeline Pankhurst declared that suffragettes must now “fight for their country as they fought for the vote,” telling her followers that the struggle for women’s rights would be meaningless if Britain itself were defeated. The movement also received a £2,000 grant from the government to aid in campaigning.[16]
At a mass demonstration in 1915 billed as the “Women’s Right to Serve” procession, Pankhurst led 30,000 women through London with banners encouraging men to participate in the War. Sylvia Pankhurst later recounted that during Emmeline’s recruiting tours, WSPU members “handed out white feathers to every young man they encountered wearing civilian dress”[9] According to Sylvia, WSPU enthusiasts would even appear at public meetings waving placards reading “Intern Them All” – a sign of their ultra-patriotic fervor against allegedly unpatriotic men and enemy aliens.[9] Sylvia later speculated that the WSPU’s women and the unofficial white feather distributors were “one in the same.”[17]
The psychological toll of receiving a white feather was significant. Men who were unable to enlist due to medical reasons or other exemptions faced public humiliation, leading to feelings of emasculation and depression. Some men even committed suicide over being medically refused for service, instead of choosing to be publicly humiliated by women who knew nothing of their situation.[21] One notable case was Robert Greaves, who took his own life after receiving a white feather, despite being classified as unfit for military service due to a physical disability.[22] A year later, a taxi driver also committed suicide upon receiving a feather.[23][21]
Some recipients of feathers were in fact serving soldiers on leave or woundedveterans, incidents that exposed the zealotry of the campaign.[24][10] Occasionally injured veterans were mistakenly targeted, such as Reuben W. Farrow who after being aggressively asked by a woman on a tram why he would not do his duty, turned around and showed his missing hand causing her to apologise.[7]
Although Admiral Fitzgerald, as well as propagandists Lord Esher and Arthur Conan Doyle urged women to shun men out of uniform, and hand out feathers, the authorities frequently showed horror when women actually practiced it. In a lecture exhorting girls of the Women’s League of Honour to send their men to war, Major Leonard Darwin clarified that he was “very far from admiring those women who go up to young men in the street…and abuse them for not enlisting, a proceeding which requires no courage on the woman’s part, but merely a complete absence of modesty.”[25][26]
On more than one occasion, White feathers were handed out to teenagers, who then lied about their age to recruiters in order to join.[27] Such as James Lovegrove.[28]
Private Norman Demuth, who was discharged from the British Army after he had been wounded in 1916, received numerous white feathers after he returned from the Western Front. In Forgotten Voices of the Great War, Demuth says:
Almost the last feather I received was on a bus. I was sitting near the door when I became aware of two women on the other side talking at me, and I thought to myself, "Oh Lord, here we go again". One lent forward and produced a feather and said, "Here's a gift for a brave soldier." I took it and said, "Thank you very much—I wanted one of those." Then I took my pipe out of my pocket and put this feather down the stem and worked it in a way I've never worked a pipe cleaner before. When it was filthy I pulled it out and said, "You know, we didn't get these in the trenches", and handed it back to her. She instinctively put out her hand and took it, so there she was sitting with this filthy pipe cleaner in her hand and all the other people on the bus began to get indignant. Then she dropped it and got up to get out, but we were nowhere near a stopping place and the bus went on quite a long way while she got well and truly barracked by the rest of the people on the bus. I sat back and laughed like mad.[29]
Perhaps the most misplaced use of a white feather was when one was presented to Seaman George Samson, who was on his way in civilian clothes to a public reception being held in his honour for having been awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in the Gallipoli campaign.[30] The pacifist Fenner Brockway remarked he received so many white feathers that he had enough to make a fan.[31]
Legacy
Government and media accolades soon followed for those feminist leaders who demonstrated zealous patriotism. Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst were praised by the establishment press for their efforts to incite men into enlisting.[10] The WSPU’s newspaper was rebranded Britannia to reflect its nationalist mission. In 1918, Christabel Pankhurst even stood for Parliament in the so-called “Khaki Election” as a candidate of the ruling coalition – and was endorsed by Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s government (a ‘coupon’ endorsement) in recognition of her wartime loyalty.[32]
Soon after the 1918 Armistice, the Parliament passed the Representation of the People Act, which granted the vote to women over the age of 30[33] – a landmark, though partial, victory for women’s suffrage. This outcome was widely interpreted as a reward for women’s loyalty and contributions during the war. Politicians who had opposed women’s suffrage before the war, such as former Prime MinisterH. H. Asquith, changed their position in 1917–1918 in part because they were impressed by women’s patriotic service.[10]
In popular culture
Literature
Rilla of Ingleside (1921), sees Anne Shirley's son, Walter Blythe, enlist in the First World War after receiving a white feather in the mail; he dies in battle.[34]
The Man Who Stayed at Home, a 1914 play by J. E. Harold Terry and Lechmere Worrall, was renamed The White Feather when staged in North America. The title character is a British secret agent who is falsely perceived to be a coward for his refusal to enlist.[35]
In The Camels are Coming (1932), Biggles is handed a white feather by a woman while on leave in civilian clothes, who is later taken aback to find he is a Royal Flying Corps' leading pilot.
In the 1997 book Jingo, citizens of Ankh-Morpork are handed white feathers for not enlisting to fight in the war against Klatch.[37]
In the novel Birds of a Feather (2004), girls take it upon themselves to hand out feathers to young men not in uniform to shame them into enlisting in The Great War.[38]
In the 2015 graphic novelSuffrajitsu: Mrs. Pankhurst's Amazons, Christabel Pankhurst is depicted encouraging women to hand white feathers to young men they see out of uniform. Persephone Wright heretofore a staunch supporter of Pankhurst's Votes for Women campaigns, rejects the idea, saying "a man who's been shamed into service isn't a volunteer at all".
Music
The Order of the White Feather was the inspiration for the Weddings Parties Anything song "Scorn of the Women", which concerns a man who is deemed medically unfit for service when he attempts to enlist, and is unjustly accused of cowardice.
In 1983, new wave band Kajagoogoo released their debut album called White Feathers, whose opener was the title track, a light-hearted allegory for weak people.
Film and television
In the TV series To Serve Them All My Days, David Powlett-Jones, a shell-shocked officer, takes a position in a school. Suspecting a fellow teacher may be avoiding war duty, he muses, "I'd give a good deal to know whether he's really got a gammy knee", to which an acerbic colleague responds, "I suppose we couldn't get some chubby cherub to give him the white feather"..
The 2000 Canadian miniseries, Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story, includes a scene in which Anne Shirley's fiancé, Gilbert Blythe, receives a white feather, despite the fact he is a medical doctor and so provides an essential service at home. He eventually does enlist, and much of the plot deals with Anne searching for him when he's declared missing in action.
In the 2007 British period drama Lilies, the brother of the protagonists is discharged from the military during World War I after his boat sinks and he is one of a handful of shell-shocked survivors. Billy is given numerous white feathers for his perceived cowardice, and begins to hallucinate them choking him. This is a recurring theme throughout the series.
In the 2010 Australian film Beneath Hill 60 about real-life soldier Oliver Woodward, Woodward, before enlisting, receives several feathers to which he jokingly states, "Just a few more feathers, and I'll have a whole chicken."
In Downton Abbey, a pair of young women interrupt a benefit concert to hand out white feathers to the men who have not enlisted, before being ordered out by an angry Earl of Grantham.
In the 2021 film The King's Man, Conrad is given a white feather to shame him into enlisting in the British Army.
1 2 Burnham, Karyn (2014). The Courage of Cowards: The untold Stories of the First World War Conscientious Objectors. Havertown: Pen and Sword. ISBN978-1-78159-295-3.
↑ "Can It Be True?" editorial by "W.M." from the 3 April 1940, issue of the Daily Mirror: "Is it possible that nitwit girls are reviving the infamous "white feather" campaign of the last war? Rumours reach us from Doncaster to the effect that certain female louts are thus insulting male workers in or out of reserved occupations". Referenced 29 October 2012, retrieved 29 January 2013
↑ Winspear, Jacqueline. Birds of a Feather. Soho Press, 2004.
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