The Liverpool Lectures, 17th December 2014

I had an exchange of tweets with revisionist Professor Gary Sheffield. He promoted the idea that the anti-war movement began some years after the Great War. This is not the case.

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Journalists and academics must have been well aware of how dissent was suppressed in the Centenary, but what could they do? Their newspapers and universities would have received the message from the State and complied – apart from some notable exceptions such as Liverpool and Dundee Universities. Their jobs were on the line, so they had no choice. I’m not aware of any mainstream journalist or academic speaking out during the centenary years.

But freelance writers are actually free, so when I received an invitation to do a WW1 lecture at Liverpool University, I went for it.

This was my chance to slip under the wire. Again. To present the story of Charley and his comrades and expose everything I had discovered about the war to a key audience.

In particular, to bring to their attention a media black-out on anything anti-war during the centenary years, including Gove’s bêtes noire – Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder Goes Fourth. 

I recall that just beforehand I had an exchange of tweets with revisionist Professor Gary Sheffield about the Great War. Revisionists often promote the idea that the anti-war movement began some years after the Great War. This is not the case and I cited the example of journalist E.D. Morel who brought powerful evidence against the State during the war years. Gary told me Morel was mistaken in his allegations. The State sent him to prison on a trumped-up charge and broke his health. 

Edmund Dene Morel © Creative Commons