Journalism, justice and war: The life of Henry W. Nevinson

But war tells only part and an equivocal part of the story. As the classical scholar Professor Gilbert Murray suggests, 'One felt that he went to the wars because he hated wars as he hated all oppressions, all infliction of suffering by the weak on the strong'. The memorial meeting has been organised by the National Council for Civil Liberties and English P.E.N (Poets, Essayists and Novelists). Nevinson has been president of both. The former suffragette Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence pays tribute to his commitment to women's suffrage. Other speeches dwell on his support for Irish freedom and his campaigning in the British press against slavery in West Africa. Nevinson's services to literature are praised. Vera Brittain, who suggested the event, reads some of his exquisite prose. His fellow radical journalist and friend H. N. Brailsford stresses Nevinson's service to the progressive press, placing special emphasis on his literary craftsmanship and poetry. He explains how proud Nevinson was of 'having served two great teams under two great captains, 'on the Manchester Guardian under C. P. Scott and on the weekly paper The Nation under Massingham'. And it is particularly appropriate that we are meeting this evening in The Newsroom as the Manchester Guardian was one of the three daily British newspapers for which Nevinson wrote for decades. He undertook a dozen overseas assignments for the paper starting in 1907 as well as covering some controversial issues at home too. He became known as an outstanding war and special correspondent, as a literary figure and as a champion of what today we call human rights. Indeed, the societies represented at Nevinson's memorial suggest the catholicity of his interests: they included the Anti-Slavery Society, the Women's Liberal Federation, the Rationalist Press Association, the Poetry Society, Labour Party, Society of Authors, National Guild of Co-operators, English Folk Dance and Song Society, West Indian Students in Great Britain, the Electrical Trades Union, the Suffragette Fellowship and the BBC. Messages came from countries such as Greece, the USSR (of which he had been very critical) and Czechoslovakia.

E. M. Forster who presided at the memorial, wrote an article in the mid-twenties for the New Leader entitled 'Literature or Life? Henry W. Nevinson; The Boy Who Never Stuck'. In this talk I want to look back to see how such how such a varied group of people came together to celebrate Nevinson's life. And I wish to explore a little further the tensions inherent in the story of this war and special correspondent committed to literary pursuits who, perhaps above all, saw himself as a champion of justice. And in so doing I'll be drawing on issues and events that he wrote about in the Manchester Guardian (the MG) as well as the wonderfully rich diary that Nevinson kept. Henry Woodd Nevinson was born exactly a hundred and fifty years ago in mid century, in the Midlands and into a somewhat dull, middle class family. They were fervent Evangelicals. Perhaps all this is not surprising - rebels have, after all, to rebel against something and it can anyway be argued that Nevinson's passionate championing of the rights of others owes not a little to that Evangelical background even though it was now divested of religious fervour. And the Bible, along with the passion for classical Greek that he developed at Shrewsbury School, certainly had an impact on the sculpting of his distinctive style. Nevinson did not, however, move easily into the ranks of the newspaper correspondent: far from it. And he never had any training for the job, let alone counselling after his traumatic experiences. He wasn't even employed on the staff of a newspaper when he got his first commission. And, although he became hailed as the last of the great Victorian war correspondents, the first war that Nevinson covered was not until 1897. Moreover, he was 40, an age which then signalled slowing down rather than rushing off to participate in a conflict in remote mountainous areas of northern Greece.

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