The Opening of the British Empire Exhibition, 23 April 1924

 Guest post by local historian Philip Grant in a personal capacity

The front page header for Wembley’s local newspaper, reporting the event. (Source: Brent Archives)

 

Wembley had made front page news in April 1923, when its new stadium had hosted an F.A. Cup Final amid chaotic scenes. One year on, crowds again descended on Wembley, but this time for a much more organised event. The stadium had been built for the British Empire Exhibition, and on 23 April 1924 (Saint George’s Day) the exhibition itself was to be opened.

 

One week earlier, the press had been allowed to share the details for the opening with the public. It would be conducted by King George V, and would be preceded by a royal carriage drive through Wembley itself. Even though the procession would not take place until after 11am, there were apparently large crowds of people lining the route two hours earlier, with several hundred police officers drafted in to control them.

 

Timetable for the procession, from “The Wembley News”, 17 April 1924.

 

 Members and Officials of Wembley Council, from “The Wembley News”, 24 April 1924.
(Both images from Brent Archives – local newspaper microfilms)

 

Among those looking forward to the event were the members of Wembley Urban District Council (what a contrast they look from the councillors and Senior Officers of Brent, 100 years later!). It had been agreed that they could give a brief welcome to the King on his way to the stadium. Wembley had only been set up as a separate local authority thirty years earlier, now they would have the chance to be part of a famous occasion. 

 

The Council had decorated the High Road with flags and bunting, and had asked the residents of Swinderby Road and Ranelagh Road to decorate the fronts of their houses as well. There was a small crowd waiting to see the King and Queen arrive by car from Windsor, and transfer to an open carriage at the junction of Eagle Road. Seventy years later, a lady who had been there as a local teenager remembered Queen Mary instructing her husband as to what he had to do (or, as she put it, ‘giving him earache’!).

 

Wembley Town Hall in the High Road, decorated for King George V’s silver jubilee in 1935.

 

All the shops in the High Road were closed for the day, so that staff and shoppers could witness the Royal visit. The procession did not stop at the Town Hall (demolished in 1962, and replaced by a department store – now Primark), as the Council had built itself a decorated platform at Wembley Green (now commonly known as Wembley Triangle, where the High Road joins Wembley Hill Road).

 

The Council and the King, from “The Wembley News”, 24 April 1924.
(Brent Archives – local newspaper microfilms)

 

Typical of attitudes to the Royal family at that time, “The Wembley News” reported that: ‘Their majesties had consented to break the great procession at the Green and to receive the homage of their local subjects.’ Three minutes was allowed in the procession timetable for this stop, which saw the Home Secretary introduce the Chairman of Wembley Council, Mr Hewitt, to ‘their majesties’.

 

The Chairman handed an illuminated address to the King, having to stretch across as the carriage had not stopped close enough to the Council’s platform. Then a girl, Betty Soilleux, had to climb onto a chair to present a bouquet to the Queen. The King’s only recorded words during his encounter with Wembley Council were to ‘express his disappointment at the weather’, which was grey and chilly.

 

 

 A paragraph from “The Wembley News”, 24 April 1924. (Brent Archives – local newspaper microfilms)

 

The procession then passed on and into the stadium, where invited guests, and up to 100,000 members of the general public, who were allowed to stand on the terraces free of charge, had already been entertained with music from military bands. Among the crowds were all the pupils of Wembley’s Elementary schools (for children aged five to thirteen), who had been brought there to witness the ceremony.

 

The royal carriage inside the stadium. (From a coloured newsreel film)

 

The King was welcomed onto an ornate royal dais by the Prince of Wales, as President of the Exhibition. Dressed in naval uniform, the Prince gave a short address, inviting his father to open ‘a complete and vivid representation of all your Empire’. He hoped that the result of the Exhibition would be: 

 

‘to impress upon all the peoples of your Empire … that they should work unitedly and energetically to develop the resources of the Empire for the benefit of the British race, for the benefit of those other races which have accepted our guardianship over their destinies, and for the benefit of mankind generally.’

 

[Personally, I find the sentiments in that statement offensive, although they do reflect the views held by the British elite at that time!]

 

The royal dais at the east end of the stadium, 23 April 1924. (From a coloured newsreel film)

 

The King’s opening address was broadcast via wireless across the country by the new BBC, the first time that his voice had been heard on radio. This extract from his speech gives a flavour of how he viewed the British Empire:

 

‘The Exhibition may be said to reveal to us the whole Empire in little, containing within its 220 acres of ground a vivid model of the architecture, art and industry of all the races which come under the British Flag. It represents to the world a graphic illustration of that spirit of free and tolerant co-operation which has inspired peoples of different races, creeds, institutions, and ways of thought, to unite in a single commonwealth and to contribute their varying national gifts to one great end.

 

This Exhibition will enable us to take stock of the resources, actual and potential, of the Empire as a whole; to consider where these exist and how they can best be developed and utilised; to take counsel together how the peoples can co-operate to supply one another’s needs, and to promote national well-being. It stands for a co-ordination of our scientific knowledge and a common effort to overcome disease, and to better the difficult conditions which still surround life in many parts of the Empire.’

 

King George V reading his opening address. (From a coloured newsreel film)

 

As I wrote in a guest post at the start of this year, King George V had visited most parts of what would become “his Empire” when he was younger. He saw himself as a father figure, and had some concern for the needs of people in other nations within his “family”. But he still had the blinkered, British-centric, view that the Empire was “a good thing”. If he had been taught the history of how the British Empire had come about, and the various atrocities committed in the course of British imperialism (some very recent then, like the Amritsar, or Jallianwala Bagh, massacre just five years earlier), he was ignoring those facts, or at least keeping quiet about them.

 

The world-wide spread of the Empire was demonstrated when, after King George had spoken the words: ‘I declare the British Empire Exhibition open’, they were sent by telegraph through under-ocean cables to Canada, then via Pacific islands, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and St Helena, arriving back at Wembley in just 80 seconds. A Post Office telegram boy then delivered the message in an envelope, and handed it to the King.

 

Postcard showing the telegram being delivered to the King. (Source; Brent Archives)

 

The telegram boy was 17-year old Henry Annals. Seventy years later, and still living in Wembley, he said that he had been delivering messages to the Exhibition site for over a year, including during the 1923 F.A. Cup Final. For most of that time it had been a muddy building site, so he was given a new uniform to wear on the morning of 23 April, and had to quickly sew on a light blue arm band, as a sign that he was allowed access to all areas of the ceremony.

 

The Post Office also took advantage of the occasion to issue Britain’s first ever commemorative postage stamps. They featured a lion, which was meant to represent the strength of the Empire, although it was not the lion design chosen as the symbol for the exhibition itself.

 

The two 1924 British Empire Exhibition commemorative stamps.

 

Some people may have been satisfied with a First Day Cover of the new stamps as a souvenir of the opening of the Exhibition, but the Vicar of Wembley asked for more. John Silvester (father of the ballroom dancer and band leader, Victor Silvester), who was also attending the ceremony in the stadium as a Wembley councillor, asked the exhibition organisers to give him the thrones used by the King and Queen! 

 

They said “yes”, he could have them for his church, after they had been used for the closing ceremony for the 1925 edition of the exhibition, as the organisers were not sure what to do with them after that (they were large and heavy - made of Canadian pine and English oak). One hundred years later, they are still in St. John the Evangelist Church, at the western end of Wembley High Road.

 

The Royal Thrones, in the north aisle of St John’s Church.

 

I’ve commemorated the centenary of the British Empire Exhibition’s opening, and there will probably be other articles relating to the exhibition later in the year. The centenary of this major exhibition at Wembley Park gives us the opportunity to learn more about the history of the former British Empire, which has many dark sides as well as the benefits claimed by the speeches at the opening ceremony. 

 

I would also repeat my (and Martin’s) earlier invitation to anyone whose roots are in one of the nations represented at the 1924 exhibition, to share their views on “Empire”, or their family’s stories of how they came to Wembley (or Brent). Please do that in a comment below, or in your own guest post. Your voices deserve to be heard, and learning more about the past, from different perspectives, should be one of the legacies of this centenary year.

Philip Grant.

 

(With thanks to Mike Gorringe for the notes of his meeting in 1994 with Henry and Mrs Annals.)