The Wheatsheaf

Treaty of Versailles signed.
Spontaneous celebrations – but they do not rival those of Armistice Day, despite
‘youthful folly’,
causing ‘much alarm here and there by letting off squibs and crackers in the thronged streets’.

‘Peace Sunday’ – churches and chapels with, ‘in many cases’, ‘crowded congregations’.
Saturday and Sunday two weeks later:
Celebratory events and memorial services and gifts of tobacco for demobilized soldiers;
sports events at the County Ground;
free shows, film concerts, dinners;
10,000 at the service in the GWR Park on the Sunday:
‘Let us remember before God the brave and the true who have died by death of Honour,
and have departed into the Resurrection of Eternal Life, especially those men who from this town have fallen in the War.’

Massive crowd at the GWR Park with the children of the town marching in procession (11,000 children present, many with a cup or mug in hand):
‘It is hard to picture the appearance of Swindon … on that afternoon; all the main thoroughfares were lined with dense throngs…
and from all quarters of the town gay processions of children were converging on the Park
… the sight of this multitude of children, seated in sections on heavy planks lent by the GWR Company was a delightful spectacle

But despite the displays and tableaux such as ‘Victory, with Peace greeting Britannia’, there was discord and disorder and rioting …
An impressively expensive town council flag pole –
‘The Peace Flag’ – burned by demobilized soldiers and supporters.
They carry the smouldering pole along Regent Street and then Bridge Street, singing in unison as they march:
‘Old soldiers never die, They only fade away.’
Thousands involved in ‘The Swindon Riots’ that carry on in desultory fashion (many windows smashed, including some at the Labour Exchange; two shops looted) for a few days until a heavy force of the Old Bill wield their truncheons – ‘in the early hours of Wednesday morning the police were forced to use their batons in repelling an ugly rush made upon them in Bridge Street’. The Mayor asks for a voluntary curfew; trade unions disassociate themselves from the riots (despite the view of some national newspapers);
local trade unions say they will investigate the grievances of ex-servicemen;
the Mayor addresses them at the Princes Street Recreation Ground;
ex-servicemen form pickets to deter rioters.
It ends – but is a reminder that ‘coming events cast shadows before’.

𝄞
I want to go home, I want to go home.
I don’t want to go in the trenches no more,
Where whizzbangs and shrapnel they whistle and roar.
Take me over the see, where the Alleyman can’t get at me.
Oh my, I don’t want to die, I want to go home.
I want to go home, I want to go home.