Ernest Bennett (politician)

Sir Ernest Nathaniel Bennett (12 December 1865 – 2 February 1947) was a British academic, politician, explorer and writer.[1]

Bennett in 1932

Lineage

Ernest Bennett's grandfather, Thomas Bennett (of Roseacre, Lancashire), was born in 1785 and died in 1868. He married Rachel Diggle in 1812, by whom he had a number of children, three of which obtained scholarships to go on to university from Kirkham Grammar School. They were Peter Bennett (vicar of Forcett, Yorkshire), George Bennett (of whom presently), and Edward Bennett (vicar of Laneham, Nottinghamshire).[2] George Bennett (1826–1897) was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he received a M.A. degree. Like his two brothers (above), George became a clergyman and was canon of St. Paul's on the island of St. Helena in the 1850s. He followed Piers Claughton (the first Bishop of St. Helena) to Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he was Warden of St. Thomas' College and chaplain to the Bishop from 1863 to 1866. Upon his return to the UK, George became Master of Kirby Hill Grammar School (which closed in 1957 and is now owned by the Landmark Trust). He concluded his ecclesiastical career as the Rector of Rede, Suffolk (1885–96). George married Eliza, the daughter of Captain Thomas Fewson of the East India Company, in 1856, by whom he had three children: Mary (eldest), Ernest, and Gertrude. Ernest Nathaniel Bennett was born in 1865 in Colombo, Sri Lanka.[3]

Academic career

Bennett was educated at Durham School and went up to Wadham College, Oxford in 1885. He transferred from Wadham to Hertford College on a five-year scholarship in the same year. Bennett obtained a First in Classical Moderations (the first part of Literae Humanores, or "Greats") in 1887, and a First also in the final exams in 1889. He then studied for a second B.A. degree in Theology, for which he secured another First in the exams in 1890. Bennett was elected a Fellow of Hertford in 1891. He continued to be actively involved in the work of the college, while also lecturing for Wadham, Pembroke and Lincoln colleges, until 1906 when he was elected to Parliament. Bennett remained a non-resident Fellow until 1915, when his marriage required his resignation (many college Fellowships of that era required that holders be unmarried).[4] He published a number of academic studies during this period.[5]

War correspondent

Bennett served as a war correspondent during the Cretan insurrection in 1897. He was registered with the Turks, but was captured by the Greeks, threatened with execution, and only released on his recognition by a Greek officer who happened to have known him at Oxford.[6] In 1898, he joined the British expedition to Khartoum led by General Kitchener, again as a war correspondent. He witnessed the Battle of Omdurman, in which an Anglo-Egyptian army of 25,000 defeated some 50,000 Ansar (or Dervish) followers of the Khalifa to the Mahdi. The Dervish army suffered around 23,000 casualties compared to only 330 from the British-led force. He wrote an article shortly afterwards for the Contemporary Review in which he complained of British atrocities against wounded Dervishes after the battle, which provoked a hostile reaction from patriotic readers in Britain.[7] He exchanged views on this and other matters with Winston Churchill (also present at the battle and whom he met en route), and the subsequent books of both authors on the subject of the battle acknowledged the other.[8] In 1899 he joined the Voluntary Ambulance Corps in South Africa at the outset of the Boer War, and wrote a book about his experiences.[9] In 1911, Bennett was accredited as a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian to cover the Italo-Turkish War in what is now Libya. He was attached to the Turkish Army, and during this time he got to know Kemal Atatürk.[10] Bennett later worked as a press censor for the Turkish Army in Thrace during the Balkan War, and was made a Pasha in reward.

Military and Red Cross service

In 1900 (through 1902), Bennett assumed command (as a Lieutenant) of a platoon of Oxford University Volunteers of the 1st Battalion of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in the Orange River Colony during the Boer War. Too old to serve on the front line in the First World War, Bennett was initially a British Red Cross (BRX) Commissioner in Belgium, France and Serbia (1914–15). Bennett sailed for Serbia in January 1915 with Sir Thomas Lipton in the latter's yacht, the Erin, which had been dedicated to the transport of medical personnel and supplies for the BRX, initially to France and subsequently to the Balkans. The BRX Mission was responding to a catastrophic outbreak of typhus which had started in Serbian camps holding Austrian prisoners of war and was spreading rapidly to the Serbian population. Some 150,000 people are believed to have died from typhus during this epidemic, which was so virulent that it interrupted military action in Serbia for nearly six months until it was brought under control. Of the 350 Serbian doctors in the country, more than a third also died of the disease while treating their patients. Bennett (though not medically qualified himself) was put in charge of the second BRX unit (of two units deployed).[11] The Serbian Commander in Chief Radomir Putnik personally commended Bennett on the conditions in his unit's hospital at the Villa Zlatibor in Vrnjačka Banja, and Bennett was later awarded the Serbian Order of the White Eagle (third class) in recognition of his services. Bennett left Serbia in June 1915, by which time the epidemic had been largely subdued. A few months after this, military activity resumed, the Serbian front collapsed and the hospital was overrun by the Austrians. Bennett later joined the Staff of the 11th Infantry Brigade, British Expeditionary Force, and was then attached to the IX Army Corps H.Q. in 1917, with the rank of Captain. He also worked with the Admiralty Intelligence Division.[12] He concluded his military service, with the British Army of the Rhine HQ, in 1919.

Political career

Bennett was elected Liberal Member of Parliament for Woodstock, Oxfordshire, in 1906.[13] He campaigned, inter alia, in favour of women's suffrage. In 1904, he tried (as prospective candidate) to recruit the support of Winston Churchill (a fellow Liberal at the time) for women's suffrage, asking him to speak to the subject in Bicester, Oxfordshire. Churchill declined the offer.[14] Bennett lost the Woodstock seat in 1910. In 1916, Bennett left the Liberal Party and joined the Labour Party. He contested a number of seats as a Labour candidate in successive elections, until he finally secured Cardiff Central in 1929.[15] He retained this seat in 1931 and 1935, before retiring from politics in 1945.[16]

Bennett was highly critical of the terms of the Versailles Treaty (concluding the First World War in 1919), which he considered to be inconsistent with Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points (the basis of the Armistice with Germany), too harsh and liable to sow the seeds of renewed conflict. Quite apart from the excessive financial burden that the reparations placed on Germany, Bennett believed that the Treaty put too much blame on Germany for starting the War, when in reality the whole of Europe had been dragged into unintended global conflict by a multitude of bilateral treaties and alliances triggered by a relatively local dispute between Serbia and Austria-Hungary.[17][18] By virtue of his marriage into the Kleinwort dynasty (of which more presently), Bennett had acquired a significant German dimension to his family. He was anxious to avoid another war, especially one which would involve strife within his new enlarged family.

Through his involvement with the Labour Party, Bennett became close to Ramsay MacDonald, Labour Party leader from 1922 to 1935.[19] MacDonald was likewise opposed to the terms of the Versailles Treaty, and sought to mollify them in his first brief period as Prime Minister of the short lived Labour government in 1924. Bennett was also friendly with Philip Snowden, who became godfather to Bennett's eldest son. When MacDonald formed a new government in 1929, Snowden became his Chancellor of Exchequer. In 1931, the economic situation had deteriorated significantly. The cabinet was split on how to address the situation. MacDonald supported further austerity, and unable to carry his Labour party on the issue, he was asked by the King to lead a National coalition government with the Liberals and Conservatives.

The formation of the new National Government was quickly followed by a general election, with many candidates putting themselves forward as coalition ("National") candidates. The National ticket won the day, and MacDonald achieved the largest ever mandate for a government in parliamentary history. Unfortunately for him, the vast majority of former Labour members of parliament deserted him (and lost their seats), and only a handful of his former party (including Bennett and Snowden) followed him on the National Labour ticket. Under the coalition sharing of jobs, Snowden retained the position of Chancellor of Exchequer, and Bennett was rewarded (in 1932) with a junior ministerial position (Assistant Postmaster-General).[20] When MacDonald agreed to tariff increases in 1932, Snowden (who believed in free trade) resigned. Macdonald's increasing political isolation sapped his morale, and his health began to deteriorate. In 1935 he resigned in favour of Stanley Baldwin as leader of the National government. Baldwin led the National government to victory again at the 1935 general election. Bennett retained his seat for National Labour, but with a Conservative now in command Bennett lost out in the subsequent ministerial reshuffle and returned to the back benches. He retired from the House of Commons in 1945.

Despite the growing European tensions of the 1930s, Bennett remained sympathetic to German grievances originating from the Versailles Treaty. Having visited Germany during the economic chaos of the Weimar Republic, Bennett admired the way in which the new Nazi government had rebuilt the country's economy and restored its confidence—in sharp contrast to the apparent malaise afflicting the UK in the early 1930s.[21] He was a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship, a society committed to furthering understanding between the two countries.[22] This organisation can be seen as an instrument of Anglo-German appeasement, which effectively it was. The appeasement of Germany is now viewed by the majority of historians as having been a mistake.[23] But to some English men and women, including Bennett, who had lived through the First World War and were keen to avoid another seemingly pointless European bloodbath, it offered (at the time) hope for peace.[24]

In 1940, as the Second World War unfolded and France fell, Archibald Ramsay (a Scottish Unionist MP) was interned under Defence Regulation 18b as a security risk and potential traitor. Ramsay was a man who professed extreme right wing opinions, was pro-German and also avowedly anti-Semitic. In 1941, it was revealed that he had compiled a book (the "Red Book") of members of his "Right Club", which as the name suggests included people who he deemed to hold the "right" views and to be "right" wing. Despite pressure to reveal the names to the House of Commons, the then Home Secretary (Herbert Morrison) refused to do so, on the grounds that it was impossible to know if all the 235 names in the book were really members. The list of names was not made public until 1989. Bennett's name was among them. Although it is possible that his name was included by Ramsay without his permission (to encourage others), it seems more probable that Bennett was indeed a member.[25]

Without a written constitution or rule book, and without ready access to the list of members (which was secret), new recruits to the Right Club could not have been entirely sure of all the political positions with which they were being aligned, other than what Ramsay told them at the point of recruitment. In the case of Bennett, Ramsay is likely to have sold membership based on the Club's pro-German, pro-peace, and anti-Bolshevik line, which would have been broadly consistent with Bennett's views. However, historians of the Red Book generally concede that the anti-Semitic philosophy associated with the Right Club (via Ramsay's opinions) would have been at odds with Bennett's own expressed position.[26] Bennett made clear on numerous occasions that he was against the persecution of the Jews by the Nazi government, stating (for example) in 1936 that he "frankly deplore[d] Germany's harsh treatment of her Jewish subjects", and again in 1939, that he "could not accept" German explanations "of Jewish arrogance, their mutual control of the legal and medical professions, and so on ... as any real justification for wholesale methods of persecution".[27] While Bennett did side (on a balance of the arguments) in favour of the Arabs against the Zionists on the question of unlimited Jewish immigration to Palestine, this did not make him an anti-Semite. He was not in favour of a separate Jewish state in Palestine, which he feared would lead to conflict with the Arabs and the enmity of the Muslim world, but he was nevertheless willing to accept a significant and expanded (but not politically dominant) Jewish presence in Palestine.[28] If Bennett faces criticism on this score, it is that he was willing to subordinate his genuine concern for the fate of the Jews in Europe to the greater cause, as he saw it, of avoiding another war with Germany.

Natural and supernatural interests

Bennett's intellectual curiosity extended beyond traditional academic boundaries. In the winter of 1896/7, he explored the island of Socotra with the archaeologist and explorer Theodore Bent (who was accompanied by his co-explorer wife Mabel).[29] Bennett closely observed the wildlife on the island and collected a range of insects and spiders which he donated to the Hope Museum, Oxford.[30] This collection was described and analysed in a published article the following year.[31] Bennett was credited with the discovery of a number of new species and sub-species, some of which were named after him.[32] Bennett wrote about his experiences more generally, as did Bent (though his work was published posthumously).[33]

Bennett's other more unconventional interest was in ghosts. He was a member of the Council of the Society for Psychical Research, and spent much time investigating haunted houses.[34] While he undoubtedly hoped for positive findings, his rigorous and systematic scientific approach left him empty handed in the end.[35] He wrote extensively on the subject, and was regularly interviewed by the BBC.[36]

Marriage and children

Bennett married Marguerite Kleinwort, eldest daughter (of five) of Herman Greverus Kleinwort, and granddaughter of Alexander Friedrich Kleinwort, who founded the eponymous bank. The marriage took place in October 1915 and linked Bennett to Kleinwort's German cousins, as well as to the relatives of his new German mother-in-law (née Marguerite Gunther). Bennett was comparatively old (within two months of his fiftieth birthday) for a first marriage, and his wife, though fifteen years younger, was also not in her first youth. Nevertheless, the couple produced three healthy children, Francis (1916–2005), Frederic (1918–2002), and Marguerite (1922–2012). Both Francis and Frederic served in the British Army in the Second World War, reaching the rank of captain (Royal Artillery) and major (Royal Artillery) respectively. Francis Bennett subsequently engaged in local politics in London, obtained a CBE in 1963, and was deputy chairman of the Greater London Council in 1975-6. Frederic Bennett also entered politics, and was a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1951 until his retirement in 1987. He was knighted in 1964.

Sir Ernest Bennett died in February 1947 aged 81, less than two weeks before the marriage of his eldest son to the Hon. Ruth Gordon Catto, daughter of Thomas Sivewright Catto, Governor of the Bank of England. He is buried in Oxford.[37]

Works
  • Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries, Rivingtons, London, 1900
  • The downfall of the dervishes: being a sketch of the final Sudan campaign of 1898, London: Methuen, 1898
  • With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train, Swan Sonnenshein, London, 1900
  • With the Turks in Tripoli; being some experiences in the Turco-Italian war of 1911, London: Methuen, 1912
  • Problems of village life, London: Williams and Norgate, 1914
  • (tr.) The German army in Belgium, the white book of May 1915, London: Swarthmore Press, 1921.
  • Apparitions and haunted houses; a survey of evidence, London: Faber and Faber, 1939
  • Apollonius; or, The present and future of psychical research, London: Kegan Paul, [n.d.]. In the series Today and Tomorrow.

Notes and references
  1. "BENNETT, Sir Ernest Nathaniel". Who Was Who. A & C Black. 1920–2008. Retrieved 27 August 2011.
  2. The History of the Parish of Kirkham, in the County of Lancaster, Fishwick, H. ed., Chetham Society: Historical and Literary Remains connected with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Cheshire, Vol. 92, 1874, Chapter VIII, The Free Grammar School.
  3. Bennett's year of birth has been incorrectly reported by many other sources as 1868. Hertford College records in fact indicate that his year of birth was 1865. His gravestone in Oxford also shows that his year of birth was 1865. His correct date of birth is cited in Oxford Men and their Colleges, 1880–92, Joseph Foster, 2 vols, 1893, James Parker & Co., Oxford.
  4. Hertford College Records.
  5. Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries, Ernest N. Bennett, Rivingtons, London, 1900; and various articles in the Classical Review and Expositor.
  6. Among the Cretan Insurgents, Ernest N. Bennett, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, February 1898.
  7. After Omdurman, E. N. Bennett, Contemporary Review, Vol. 75, 1899. In a letter to his mother in 1899, Winston Churchill commented that this article "which has created such a stir" was "vy [sic] clever" and as far as his experience went "absolutely correct". He added that he intended to confirm the article in his forthcoming book on the Sudan campaign and "print certain excerpts in the appendix" (see Winston S. Churchill, Randolph S. Churchill, Companion Volume 1, Part 2, Heinemann, 1967). By the time of his book's second edition in 1902, however, critical references regarding the conduct of the war had been largely expunged, as Churchill – who was by now in parliament – realized that it was not politically wise to air such views in public. Bennett's own political career meanwhile stalled, and he did not get elected to parliament until 1906.
  8. The Downfall of the Dervishes, E.N. Bennett, Methuen, London, 1899; The River War, Winston S. Churchill, Longmans, London, 1899. Bennett's book remained on the reading list of schools in the Sudan until the 1960s, as it was considered by teachers there to be the most objective account of the battle available.
  9. With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train, E. N. Bennett, Swan Sonnenshein, London, 1900.
  10. With the Turks in Tripoli, Ernest N. Bennett, Methuen, London, 1912. Bennett knew Fethi Okyar, the Turkish Ambassador to London (and a former prime minister). In 1938, when Bennett learned that Okyar was planning to go to Istanbul to attend to the dying Atatürk, he asked him to take a copy of this book and present it to Atatürk as a memento. Okyar was with Atatürk as his end approached in the Dolmabahçe Palace, and he later confided to Bennett that the book was on Atatürk's bedside table when he died.
  11. See Some Recent Experiences in Serbia, E.N. Bennett, Nineteenth Century and After, Vol. 78, July–Dec 1915; The Story of a Red Cross Unit in Serbia, James Berry, J.& A. Churchill, London, 1916; and Typhus fever with particular reference to the Serbian epidemic, Richard P. Strong, et al., Harvard University Press, 1920.
  12. Admiralty Intelligence resumed contact with Bennett during 1940–41 to tap his intimate knowledge of the geography and topography of the Lofoten Islands, off the north-west coast of Norway above the Arctic Circle. Bennett had spent many summers there on fishing trips before the war, and had written about the islands for the Listener magazine (Life in the Lofoden Islands, Sir Ernest Bennett, The Listener, 23 February 1939). The Royal Navy subsequently launched two successful raids (Operation Claymore and Operation Anklet) on the German-occupied Lofoten Islands in March and December 1941.
  13. Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "W" (part 5)
  14. Letter from E. N. Bennett to W. S. Churchill, 21 November 1904, Churchill College Archives, Cambridge University.
  15. Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "C" (part 2)
  16. For more on Bennett's political career and his time as a war correspondent, see Ernest Bennett and War, Roger T. Stearn, Soldiers of the Queen, Issue 105, The Victorian Military Society, June 2001; see also the entry for Ernest Bennett in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, by the same author.
  17. See, for example, Bennett's speech to the Union of Democratic Control, 11 November 1920.
  18. Bennett translated an official German (1915) account of German reprisals in Belgium in 1914 in order to counter related Allied claims of atrocities (and Allied propaganda based on these claims). He described the German actions as no worse than British "reprisals" in Ireland six years later; The German Army in Belgium, the White Book of May 1915, translated by E. N. Bennett, Swarthmore Press, London, 1921.
  19. Bennett's eldest son, Francis, remained a close friend of Sheila, third daughter and youngest child of MacDonald, until her death in 1995.
  20. Bennett was bestowed with a Knighthood for political services in 1930. Bennett initially served on the Indian Franchise Committee (1931–32) under the Chairmanship of Lord Lothian, which was charged with examining the case for strengthening women's suffrage in India. Although the committee's findings fell short of recommending full adult franchise (because of the country's size, large population and high rate of adult (and especially female) illiteracy), it did recommend that ways be found to increase the ratio of female to male voters from the prevailing 1:20 to 1:5.
  21. Bennett believed that Germany had lost too much territory under the Versailles Treaty, and that its efforts to annex lands where the majority of the population was ethnically German were reasonable. Bennett was not, however, an admirer of Fascism per se, or of unjustified territorial acquisition. He objected to the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, and supported the sanctions imposed on Italy by the League of Nations in 1935.
  22. The Anglo-German Fellowship was established in 1935 and dissolved itself in 1939 with the outbreak of war. Lord Temple Mount, Chairman, stated that membership did not assume support for Nazism or anti-Semitism.
  23. For alternative views on appeasement, see Chamberlain and the Lost Peace, John Charmley, Hodder & Stoughton, 1989, and Neville Chamberlain and the British Road to War, Frank McDonough, Manchester, 1998.
  24. Bennett was much more suspicious of the Soviet Union, which he considered to be no less oppressive, territorially aggressive, and equally willing to persecute religious groups (e.g., the Orthodox Christian Church).
  25. Apart from his name being in the Red Book, there is no other evidence available that Bennett had anything to do with the Right Club, or with Ramsay. The Security Services (who would have been aware of this) do not appear to have been unduly concerned, as Bennett remained on the sensitive House of Commons National Expenditure (i.e., Defence) Committee throughout the duration of the war, including as vice-chairman (Hansard). He was offered a baronetcy in 1943, but declined (Sir Frederic Bennett, letter to the editor of the Daily Telegraph, 22 May 1990).
  26. Patriotism Perverted, Captain Ramsey, the Right Club and British Anti-Semitism, 1939–40, Richard Griffiths, Constable, 1998; The Red Book, The Membership List of the Right Club – 1939, Robin Saikia, Foxely Books, 2010.
  27. E.N. Bennett, Letter to the Editor of the Times, 23 March 1936; and Sir Ernest Bennett, Letter to the Editor of the Cambrian News, 3 February 1939.
  28. Speech to House of Commons, 24 November 1938 (Hansard). Bennett acknowledged the "many moving appeals ... on behalf of the oppressed Jews in Europe." He "sympathize[d] deeply with their sufferings", but argued that "whatever the fate of these unhappy people in Central Europe ... Palestine [could not] provide an adequate solution for their distress", because of the scale of the implied immigration and the Arab dimension. Bennett's view was that nations sympathetic to the plight of would be Jewish refugees should take them into their own lands, and not stuff them (for convenience or in deference to the Zionist cause) into a small country (with few resources) against the will of the majority of people already living there. Bennett also bemoaned the lack of any attention in the prevailing debate to Christian interests in Palestine.
  29. Theodore Bent contracted malaria while on Socotra and died shortly after returning to London in May 1897.
  30. A History of the Hope Entomological Collections in the University Museum, Oxford, Audrey Z. Smith, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986.
  31. On a Collection of Insects and Arachnids made by Mr. E.N. Bennett in Socotra, with Descriptions of new Species, F.A. Dixey, M. Burr, & Rev. O. Pickard-Cambridge, Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1898, Part III. See also On a small Collection of Birds made in Socotra by E.N. Bennett, H.B. Tristram, Ibis, Volume 40, Issue 2, April 1898.
  32. The new species were Nephila bennetti (Arachnidae) and Papilio demodocus bennetti (Lepidoptera).
  33. 'Two Months in Socotra', Ernest N. Bennett, Longman's Magazine, September 1897; and 'The Island of Socotra', J. Theodore Bent, Nineteenth Century, June 1897; also see 'The Isle of Bliss', Sir Ernest Bennett, The Living Age, August 1938, the title being the translation of the Sanskrit name for the island (Dvipa Sukhadhara). The Bents’ full account of their visit to Socotra with Bennett is recorded in Chapters 29-34 of their 1900 monograph, Southern Arabia.
  34. Bennett supported a private members' Bill in 1930 to exempt spiritualism and psychical research from the still extant Witchcraft and Vagrancy Act, under which offences carried a mandatory one year prison sentence.
  35. On 17 May 1928, Bennett camped for two weeks on a beach near the Frangokastello castle in Crete, hoping to witness the drosoulites phenomenon. He consulted many local sources who described in some detail the phantoms (or "dew people") who were supposed to appear at dawn in late May every year (ghosts of fallen warriors from a battle there on 18 May 1828). He failed to see anything, but three days after he struck camp and left, the drosoulites were reported to have appeared in unusual splendour; see The "drosoulites", the display of Sfakia, Angelos Tanagras, Psychic Researches, January 1929, Athenian Society of Psychical Research.
  36. The Future of Psychical Research – Part I, Room for Ghosts in the Field of Science, & Part II, Modern Science Tends to Clear the Path for It, E.N. Bennett, The Century Magazine, October & November 1926; Apollonius or the Future of Psychical Research, E.N. Bennett, Kegan Paul, London, 1927; Apparitions and Haunted Houses, a Survey of Evidence, Sir Ernest Bennett, Faber & Faber, 1939; Inquiry into the Unknown, (BBC recordings, 1934), Besterman (editor), Methuen, 1934; Things I Cannot Explain, (BBC recordings, 1937), Listener Magazine, October 1937 – January 1938.
  37. Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford OX2 8EE.
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