International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa Press Cuttings Archives

Today we want to focus on an important collection held on microfiche – the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa Press Cuttings Archives.


The International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa (IDAF) was an anti-apartheid organization that smuggled £100 million into South Africa for the defence of thousands of political activists, and to provide aid for their families while they were in prison. It paid lawyers to defend political detainees and provided financial support families of political prisoners. It published numerous books and films on repression in South Africa. IDAF, was the brain-child of John Collins, a canon of St Paul's Cathedral. The organisation resulted from Canon Collins's guaranteeing the legal costs and support for the 156 accused under the 1956 Treason Trials, and their families. The organisation continued to support anti-apartheid activists through the Rivonia Trial and numerous other political trials (most of which were not high profile). Defence and Aid became an international organisation in 1965, with branches in Britain, New Zealand, Scandinavia, Holland and India.

On 18 March 1966, the South African Defence and Aid Committee was banned as an 'unlawful organisation' under the Suppression of Communism Act. Lengthy prison sentences were promised for those who handled money on behalf of IDAF and the Terrorism Act made it a capital offence to attempt to bring about social change with the help of a foreign government or institution, even when no violence was involved.

IDAF reacted by creating a system where a network of respectable individual donors funded defences, who in turn received funds from IDAF, and with the assistance of a network of friendly solicitors who corresponded with the South African trial lawyers and transmitted funds to them. IDAF’s welfare programme, aimed at alleviating the hardship of both political prisoners and their dependents, also relied on circumventing a direct connection with IDAF, with the use of hundreds of letter writers sending money directly to recipients through the post.

As well as raising and transmitting funds, IDAF continuing public activities, with research and publicity sections. The work of these sections included monitoring the press, and IDAF built up a large press-cuttings archive. This was microfilmed in 1991 before IDAF transferred its activities to South Africa, and copies lodged in countries affected by apartheid, as well as research libraries in Europe and North America

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library was fortunate to be selected by IDAF as the UK depository for microfiche copies of the South Africa and Namibia press cuttings archives. These include some 500,000 press cuttings from the South African, Namibian and British press from 1975 to 1990 and documenting all aspects of apartheid in South Africa, especially resistance and repression. The Namibian materials cover the South African occupation and the apartheid system subsequently imposed on the people of that country. Both archives include materials on cultural, social and economic issues and international relations. The Library holds an index to these, and in addition many of IDAF publications, including its journal Focus.

Featured collection: West India Committee rare books (2)

In vivid contrast to the anti-abolitionist perspective of Bridges’ Annals stand the stoutly anti-slavery sentiments of Edwin Angel Wallbridge’s The Demerara Martyr, Memoirs of the Rev. John Smith, Missionary to Demerara. This 1848 first edition, which is also extremely scarce, examines the Demerara slave rebellion of 1823, taking the figure of John Smith as its central focus.

John Smith was born in Northamptonshire and had a background in trade. At the age of eighteen, he underwent a religious conversion and felt a calling to missionary service. Smith received some training in Essex and Gosport and was ordained, accepting a missionary post in Demerara. He set out with his new wife, Jane, a fellow member of the evangelical movement and in February, 1817, arrived at his post at Le Resouvenir estate in Demerara. Demerara, a former Dutch colony, had been in British hands since 1814, and was to become part of British Guiana in 1831.

Some reservations had been expressed about Smith’s suitability for the post in Demerara, notes E. V. Da Costa, a historian of the Demerara slave uprising. Smith’s referee to the London Missionary Society, the Reverend John Angell James, described the would-be missionary as “entirely a novice” and ill-prepared for such a challenging posting, where a missionary was likely to encounter hostility and resentment from slave-owners. Da Costa points out that Smith’s working-class origins, youth and lack of experience must have made it impossible to gain the trust and respect of the status-conscious landowners of Demerara, and contributed to his fatal alienation from them.

Although Smith was not popular among the planters of Demerara, he seems to have engaged well with the slaves to whom he ministered, gradually tailoring his schedule of services and the content of his sermons to their needs and interests. He did not, however, further or favour the slave rebellion which commenced on August 18, 1823. On the other hand, he also refused to join a militia of planters to counter the rebellion. For this he was arrested, convicted by a court martial of fomenting discontent among the slaves, and condemned to death by hanging. He died of a lung disease while in prison, before news of the English government’s decision to grant him clemency reached Demerara. The hostility of the colonial authorities carried over even into the funeral arrangements, according to Wallbridge. Mrs Smith was not allowed to follow her husband’s coffin to the graveyard, and the monument which members of Smith’s congregation built was summarily torn down.

The account of the events leading to Smith’s death was written by fellow missionary Wallbridge to commemorate Smith and rehabilitate him as a martyr rather than conspirator and convicted felon. Wallbridge draws on Smith’s own diary and correspondence, including letters written from prison, and quotes from them at length. Wallbridge’s narrative, published fifteen years after the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, concludes with stern pronouncements on the lingering effects of slavery and the ongoing need to defend the precarious “civil and religious liberty” which had been secured for the people of British Guiana: “the deteriorating influence of slavery is not confined to those who were once unjustly held in bondage; it taints – it still taints every part of the social frame ….”

The Demerara Martyr is part of the West India Committee deposit, which was entrusted to the Institute of Commonwealth Studies on permanent loan from the Crown Agents in 1977.

Sources:

Da Costa, Emilia Viotti, Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Mitchell, Don, Mitchell’s West Indian Bibliography, 9th edition [ http://www.books.ai/, accessed 19 March, 2009], s.v. “Wallbridge, Edwin Angel” and “[Smith, John]”.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [ http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25850, accessed 20 March 2009], s.v. “Smith, John (1792?–1824)”.
Wallbridge, Edwin Angel, The Demerara Martyr: Memoirs of the Rev. John Smith, Missionary to Demerara, London: Charles Gilpin, 1848.

Featured collection: West India Committee rare books

George Wilson Bridges’ The Annals of Jamaica, a history of the West Indies and an apology for slavery, was published by John Murray in two volumes in London in 1827 and 1828.

Bridges (1788-1863) was an Anglican clergyman, but his move to Jamaica in 1816 took place under the shadow of scandal. He had been obliged to leave England after he fathered a son before marriage and eloped with the mother, Elizabeth Raby Brooks. In Jamaica, he took up the lucrative rectorship of St Ann’s parish.

Bridges had a chequered career in Jamaica. Although he had success serving as a mouthpiece for slave-owners and in persecuting Methodist missionaries on the island, in 1829 he was himself investigated for the savage beating of Kitty Hilton, his slave. The Jamaican council of protection, which exonerated him, was harshly criticised by Viscount Goderich, secretary of the Colonial Office, for failing to bring Bridges to account for the physical abuse. Bridges also provoked controversy with his Annals, where he discussed, among other things, the deportation from Jamaica of two free black men, Louise Celeste Descesne and John Escoffery. The book’s publisher, John Murray, was prosecuted in 1829 for libels against Descesne and Escoffery in the second volume, and Murray cooperated in the book’s recall and suppression.

This first edition, held by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies library, is interesting not only because of its rarity but also because it bears an inscription by its author. Bridges dedicates the book thus:

The unworthy Author, in / presenting this work to / Joseph Sharp / hopes that he may be / allowed to solicit his prayers / for one under the heavy hand / of an offended God – and / to subscribe himself his / afflicted friend / G W Bridges / Jamaica – 25th Feb: 1837.

Bridges’ melancholy references to his afflictions probably refer to the death of his four daughters in a boating accident on January 1, 1837. Bridges’ wife Elizabeth had left him in 1834, and was in England at the time of their death.

That same year, Bridges left for Canada with his surviving son, and after a five-year sojourn, returned to England. Bridges and his wife were never reconciled, but after her death, he explored the estrangement in a private publication entitled Outlines and Notes of Twenty-Nine Years, referring to the period between estrangement and Elizabeth’s death in 1862.

In addition to the Annals and Outlines, Bridges published several pro-slavery tracts. These included A Voice from Jamaica (1823), which argued against Wilberforce’s Appeal in favour of abolition, published earlier that year. He also published collections of his own photography.

The Annals of Jamaica is part of the West India Committee deposit, which was entrusted to the Institute of Commonwealth Studies on permanent loan from the Crown Agents in 1977.

Sources:

Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, London: for the London Society for the Abolition of Slavery, vol. 3, 1831.
Bridges, George Wilson, The Annals of Jamaica (2 vols.), London: John Murray, 1827-8.
Hannavy, John, ed., Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-century Photography, London: Routledge, 2008, s.v. “Bridges, Reverend George Wilson”.
Mitchell, Don, Mitchell’s West Indian Bibliography, 9th edition [ http://www.books.ai/ , accessed 19 March, 2009], s.v. “Bridges, George Wilson”, “Lushington, Stephen”, “Lescesne, Louis Celeste” and “Escoffery, John”.
Turner, Mary, Slaves and Missionaries: The Disintegration of Jamaican Slave Society, 1787-1834, Barbados: The Press University of the West Indies, 1998.

Featured Collection: British West Indies Regiment

On Armistice Day we highlight some material relating to the West Indian contribution to the Great War. The Institute of Commonwealth Studies holds some records of the British West Indies Regiment, Incluided within the West India Committee papers. These include the War Diary of the 1st Battalion of the British West Indies Regiment, detailing the operational history of the battalion, and the papers of the West Indian Contingent Committee and Ladies Committee – established to provide for the welfare of West Indian soldiers, who visited the camps at Seaford in Sussex and Plymouth, where the units were stationed, raising funds and providing comforts for men in hospitals, clothing, sports equipment and musical instruments, and entertainment and board and lodging for those visiting London.

The experience of West Indian soldiers in the Great War exacerbated underlying tensions and contradictions implicit in West Indian society, stimulating the growth of working-class consciousness and facilitating the growth of black consciousness and nationalism. Peter Fraser has described the war as “a bog into which flowed an idealized loyalty to Britain and an innocent belief in the justice of the metropolitan British and out of which flowed more realistic, jaundiced and cynical views of the true nature of the Imperial connection.”

Despite the level of support for the war effort from the British West Indies, the War Office was initially hostile and reluctant to accept black West Indians. Despite this early unease, by the end of the war 15,601 West Indians had been recruited and sent to do military service in Palestine, Egypt, Mesopotamia, East Africa, India, France, Italy, Belgium and England as members of the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR). 185 soldiers were killed or died due to wounds received, a further 697 soldiers were wounded and 1071 died of sickness. The high level of illness has been attributed to the conditions of wartime service, with a poor and irregular diet, unsanitary and overcrowded conditions, poor medical care, climatic conditions and the high incidence of contagious diseases. The Regiment was awarded 5 DSOs, 9 MCs, 2 MBEs, 8 DCMs, 37 MMs and 49 Mentions in Dispatches.

Although two battalions of the BWIR were involved in fighting in Palestine and Jordan against the Turkish army (where they sustained many casualties and honours) the War Office determined that Black colonial troops would not fight against Europeans, consequently most members of BWIR functioned in non-combat positions, as labour battalions. Members of the BWIR also experienced discrimination in housing, promotion, treatment in demobilisation and even pay. The most blatant experience occurred at the end of the war when the entire BWIR were denied a pay rise granted to other imperial troops under Army Order No.1 of 1918. The BWIR soldiers protested quickly and angrily and were supported by West Indian Contingent Committee who pointed out the hypocrisy and impossibility of the situation and warned of the serious effect differentiation would have on public opinion in the colonies when the West Indies contingent was demobilised. Discriminatory treatment was a significant factor in a four day mutiny by the men of the ninth battalion, in December, 1918. These events at Taranto, Italy produced much anxiety in the Colonial Office and impelled it into pressing the War Office to grant the BWIR the pay increase. The argument was won, but not so much as a triumph of fair pay and justice but as an effort to prevent unrest in the West Indies.

More photographs from the collection are available here

ANZAC Day - Collection of the Month

On ANZAC Day the Library is pleased to launch its first collection/book of the month.

Anzac Day is commemorated by Australia and New Zealand on 25 April every year to remember members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who landed at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I. Anzac Day is also a public holiday in the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa and Tonga.

The Ellis Ashmead Bartlett papers (ICS 84) are listed on the ULRLS Archives Database, and include diaries, reports and photographs of the battles at Gallipoli as well as documentation on the aftermath of this unsuccessful campaign.

Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett was born in 1881. He began his career as a war correspondent in 1904, covering the siege of the Russian port of Port Arthur by the Japanese, and entering the city with the victors. His account, Port Arthur: the siege and capitulation (London 1906) was well received. For the next few years he mixed a full social life in London and the country and in Paris (as described in his diaries) with periods as a war correspondent and writer and a developing political career. At the outbreak of war in 1914 Ashmead-Bartlett returned from Bucharest to volunteer for his old regiment, but was turned down for medical reasons. He was selected by the National Press Association as the London Press representative on the Dardanelles Campaign, which began in March 1915. He was soon critical of the conduct of the campaign by the Allied commander Sir Ian Hamilton and the General Staff. Returning to London in June 1915 (having survived the sinking of the 'Majestic' on 26 May) he discussed the campaign with senior ministers and politicians (Asquith, Balfour, Carson, Bonar Law, Churchill, Kitchener) and presented a memorandum on the subject to the cabinet. Ashmead-Bartlett returned to the Dardanelles at the end of June, his equipment now including a movie camera which he used to make the only moving pictures of the campaign. Further disastrous landings and assaults in August and, in his view, the continued mismanagement of the campaign led him to make another attempt to influence the government, by sending a letter to the Prime Minister with Australian correspondent Keith Murdoch. Though the letter was seized by the military authorities, Murdoch wrote another version from memory, and this was delivered to Asquith via the Australian PM Fisher. Ashmead-Bartlett was dismissed as a war correspondent in the Dardanelles on 30 September 1915 (he had already unsuccessfully applied to the NPA to be relieved). Exactly how much effect his interventions had will probably remain unclear, but Ashmead-Bartlett might have been partly responsible for the withdrawal from Gallipoli in 1915 and the subsequent resignation of Churchill. The issue of Ashmead-Bartlett's role in the campaign continued to be raised well after it ended. He was invited to give evidence to the Dardanelles Commission in 1917 and the publication of his books, Ashmead Bartlett's Despatches from the Dardanelles (1916) and The Uncensored Dardanelles (1928), and those of Sir Ian Hamilton and others usually caused a flurry of articles and letters in the press. Ashmead-Bartlett claimed that the War Office persecuted him after his dismissal and in 1916 attempted to prevent him delivering a series of lectures on the Dardanelles campaign in England, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

The collections held at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library include a substantial amount of material relating to Ashmead-Bartlett's involvement in the Gallipoli campaign as well as other material relating to the rest of his career. The collection includes diaries, which include covedrage of the Dardanelles campaign (1915) and the subsequent lecture tour of America, Australia and New Zealand (1916); correspondence (1892-1930, predominantly 1907-1930), relating mainly to journalistic activities, particularly in the Dardanelles; articles and writings (1900-1930) written by Ashmead-Bartlett, mainly as war correspondent; and a large collection of photographs taken during the Dardanelles campaign, including the one above.