Syndicate of Discontent
The Syndicate of Discontent was a label given to the opposition to Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher during his first term as First Sea Lord from 1904 to 1910.
Fisher wrote to an unidentified correspondent on 3 January 1907:
A naval friend in the enemy's camp told me the day before yesterday that the "Syndicate of Discontent" (as they call these Naval Adullamites!) were now about to redouble their efforts against the Admiralty.[1]
This was the first recorded mention of a Syndicate. The term was clearly not Fisher's, yet he occasionally credited as its inventor. Just five days after he wrote this a letter from Sir William White, lately Director of Naval Construction, appeared in The Times under the pseudonym "Civis", which read in part:
Already the engines of vessels at sea are being directly controlled from the bridge as in a motor-car, and the efforts of all the members of the syndicate of discontent cannot arrest the scientific evolution of the Fleet, the substance of which has been co-ordinated by one great brain.[2]
That White is generally included in the Syndicate is a sign of just how disconnected opposition to Fisher was and how elastic "membership" was.[3][4] Fisher wrote of FitzGerald in 1915, "This is an Admiral who from being a close friend became my malignant enemy!"[5]
Members are said to have included:
- Admiral Lord Beresford[3]
- Admiral Sir Cyprian A. G. Bridge
- L. Cope Cornford[3]
- Admiral Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, Bart.[4]
- Admiral Sir Reginald N. Custance[3]
- Admiral of the Fleet Sir Arthur D. Fanshawe[4]
- Admiral C. C. Penrose FitzGerald
- Admiral The Hon. Sir Edmund R. Fremantle[4]
- Admiral Sir R. Vesey Hamilton[3]
- Admiral of the Fleet Lord Walter Kerr[4]
- Lady Londonderry.[3]
- Admiral Sir Albert H. Markham[4]
- Sir Clements R. Markham.[4]
- Admiral of the Fleet Sir Hedworth Meux, born Lambton.[3]
- Admiral of the Fleet Sir Gerard H. U. Noel
- Lieutenant-Colonel Charles à C. Repington
- Admiral of the Fleet Sir Frederick W. Richards[3]
- Admiral of the Fleet Sir Edward H. Seymour[4]
- Lord Sydenham[3]
- Sir William H. White[3]
- H. W. Wilson[3]
Footnotes
- ↑ Fear God and Dread Nought. Volume II. p. 110.
- ↑ "Naval Discipline", The Times, 8 Jan. 1907, p. 5.
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 Marder. From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow. I. p. 77.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 Lambert. The Foundations of Naval History. p. 197.
- ↑ Fear God and Dread Nought. Volume II. p. 112n.
Bibliography
- Fisher of Kilverstone, Lord (1956). Marder, Arthur J.. ed. Fear God and Dread Nought: The Correspondence of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher of Kilverstone: Years of Power, 1904-1912. Volume II. London: Jonathan Cape.
- Lambert, Andrew (1998). The Foundations of Naval History: John Knox Laughton, the Royal Navy and the Historical Profession. London: Chatham Publishing.
- Marder, Arthur J. (1961). From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904-1919: The Road to War, 1904-1914. Volume I. London: Oxford University Press.
