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.)

Ram Singh Nehra, - a Wembley Indian in the 1930s - Part 1

This Guest Post by Philip Grant reveals an interesting moment in Brent history and perhaps our national history.

 

This article results from a local history enquiry received in October 2021. What did we know about a British Indian Union Garden Party, held at 43 Chalkhill Road Wembley in July 1934, or Mr & Mrs R.S. Nehra who hosted it? The initial answer was “nothing”, but further research online by several Wembley History Society members began to uncover a story which deserved to be shared with a wider audience. That’s what I hope to do here.

 

The British Indian Union Garden Party invitation card. (Image from the internet)

 

Ram Singh Nehra was not the first Indian to live in Wembley. A former farmhouse at the eastern end of what is now Wembley High Road was renamed “Rhampore” in 1882, when it became the residence of His Highness Rajah Rampal Singh. He was one of the founder members of the Indian National Congress Party, and started “The Hindusthan” monthly newspaper while living here, before returning to India as ruler of Kalakankar in 1885. After his first (Indian) wife died in 1871, he had married an English woman, Princess Alice.

 

Mr Nehra, we discovered, was a solicitor. He was also Joint Honorary Secretary, along with an Englishman, of the British Indian Union, an organisation aimed at fostering good relations between people in this country and the Indian “Dominion” that it ruled. It’s interesting to note that the VIPs who guests were invited to meet included an Afghan, a Nepalese and a Saudi Arabian. As well as the invitation, we also have photographs of the garden party, and the Nepalese Ambassador who attended it.

 

A magazine photograph and caption about the garden party in July 1934.

 

 

General Bahadur Rana, the Nepalese Ambassador, in full uniform. (Images from the internet)

 

As well as his involvement with the British Indian Union, Ram Singh Nehra was also the President of the Central Hindu Society of Great Britain. In that capacity, he had welcomed General Bahadur Rana at Victoria Station, when he arrived to be his country’s first Ambassador to the United Kingdom in May 1934, greeting him with a garland of pink and blue sweet peas.

 

In a short speech, Nehra welcomed the General to London, as the only representative of an independent Hindu State. He went on to say: ‘The independent kingdom of Nepal is the ancient Raj that has preserved its integrity and independence, and has withstood all foreign attacks and attempts at conquest.’ The “Daily Mirror” reported this, with a photograph.

 

Ram Singh Nehra welcoming General Bahadur Rana in May 1934. (“Daily Mirror” image)

 

Another organisation that Nehra was a member, and early Treasurer, of was the League of Coloured Peoples. This had been founded in London in 1931 by the Jamaican-born doctor, Harold Moody, with the aim of fighting discrimination against coloured people, especially in employment and housing, and to improve relations between the races. 

 

It’s magazine “The Keys”, in July 1933, reported a speech given by Nehra to a conference the League had organised. His subject was “The East African”, and he spoke from personal experience. He described East Africa as ‘the land of the future’, but said that racial relations there were very bad, and that ‘the African did not have a very happy time’. ‘The lot of the Indian’, he said, ‘was a bit better than that of the African, but they were beginning to realise that co-operation between them was essential if any progress was to be made.’

 

To explain how Ram Singh Nehra came to be in East Africa, it is probably best to start at the beginning. He was born in the Punjab city of Ludhiana, to a well-off family, in 1896. After matriculating from the local Arya High School, he went to the Government College in Lahore, gaining a B.A. Honours degree in 1917. Because of the First World War, he had to wait until 1919 before he could come to England, to study law at London University. 

 

Nehra qualified as a barrister of the Middle Temple in 1921. There was little chance for an Indian to exercise his profession successfully in this country, so he started his practice at the High Court in the British controlled Uganda Protectorate. After finding that Uganda was ‘too small’, he moved Britain’s Kenya Colony and the seaport of Mombasa. Here he soon became Secretary of the Mombasa Indian Association, and involved in local social and political life. 

 

A 1920s postcard view of the Old Harbour, Mombasa. (Image from the internet)

 

It was in Mombasa that Ram Singh met the future Mrs Nehra. Eileen Myfanwy Brazel was born in Swansea in 1897, and shipping lists record that Miss E.M. Brazel, a short-hand typist, boarded a ship bound for Mombasa in June 1923. I would assume that she had been recruited in the UK for a job in Kenya, either by the colonial government or a large trading company. How ever she came to be in Mombasa, she met Nehra, and married him.

 

Eileen must have returned to Britain when expecting their first child, as their son, Grenville Brazel Nehra, was born at her parents’ home in Swansea in December 1925. Nehra himself remained in Mombasa, carrying on his profession in the courts there, and becoming a pillar of the Indian community. 

 

There had been trading links between India and East Africa for centuries, before indentured labourers were brought from India in the 1890s to build the Uganda Railway. Some of these men settled in what became the Kenya Colony, and their families and other Indians came to join them, particularly from the Punjab and Gujerat. 

 

By the 1920s, the Indian and Arab communities were allowed a small number of seats on the Colony’s Legislative Council. At first, they refused to nominate candidates for these elections, demanding as many seats as the British (although there were none for the native Africans!). Their demands were ignored, but the Colonial Government appointed local Indians to fill those seats, and Ram Singh Nehra became a member of Kenya’s Legislative Council.

 

I don’t know exactly when Nehra left Kenya, and finally moved to Wembley. The birth of Mr & Mrs Nehra’s second child, Sheila, in July 1930 was registered in the Hendon District, which included Wembley, so they may have been living at 43 Chalkhill Road by then. Their home, “The Shalimar”, was part of the Metropolitan Railway’s Chalkhill Estate, laid out on land the company had bought in the 1880s to build their tracks across, and developed as part of “Metroland” after the First World War.

 

The Chalkhill Estate on the 1935 O.S. map, with “The Shalimar”, 43 Chalkhill Road, arrowed.

 

Nehra was certainly practicing as a solicitor, from an office in High Holborn, by 1930. As well as directory entries for him, a case in Willesden County Court, where he was acting for the claimant, was reported in the “Daily Herald” in March 1931, under the headline “House for Veiled Woman and Retinue”!

 

Not content with his legal work, and the organisations he was active in, Ram Singh Nehra also founded and edited a magazine, “The Indian”. He said: ‘This journal is a link between Indians all over the world. The more they know of each other, the better for all concerned.’ Its aim was: ‘To protect, strengthen and further the political, social, economic and general welfare of Indians everywhere.’ The annual subscription in 1935 was 9 shillings, or 6 Rupees (post free). 

 

As well as articles by contributors on subjects such as Swaraj (self-rule) for India, and the caste system, challenging prejudice was one of the main subjects for Nehra’s own pieces. In a 1935 article, headed “Colour Hatred” he began with an incident at a London council meeting:

 

‘It is most regrettable that an increasing amount of evidence is available on the question of colour hatred in England, Germany, Italy, etc. Recently, Alderman Richards, a Conservative member of Finsbury Council, London, passed an unbecoming remark against Dr C.L. Katial, an Indian member of the Council, simply on the ground of colour.’

 

He reported that a motion had been tabled, expressing ‘profound abhorrence’ of the Alderman’s personal attack on a distinguished fellow member, and his ‘refusal to withdraw his unseemly remarks.’  When the motion, under which the Council ‘unhesitatingly dissociated itself’ from what Alderman Richards had said, because it ‘militated against the maintenance of harmonious relationships between persons of different races’, was put to a vote by the Mayor: ‘the local Council passed it by 13 votes to 11.’ 

 

Nehra’s article went on to give further examples of colour hatred, from elsewhere in London, in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. It concluded with these thought-provoking paragraphs:

 

‘We wonder where these hatreds by the white men would lead them to if the coloured people begin to retaliate, on the ground of the colourless skin of the semi-civilized Europeans who simply pride themselves on the absence of the sun-resisting pigment in their skin. 

 

[George] Bernard Shaw at the conclusion of his South African tour gave as his considered opinion that the best way to avoid world war and ensure peace was to encourage marriages between coloured and colourless races in large numbers.’

 

In reporting the Finsbury Council vote (above), Nehra had noted: ‘The eleven represented the Tory Party.’ His own views were more to the left, and there is clear evidence of that. The previously separate Urban Districts of Kingsbury and Wembley agreed to merge from April 1934. Elections were arranged for all of the seats on the new Wembley Council, to take place in March. When the candidates were announced, this was the entry in the “Wembley News” on 2 March 1934 for Kingsbury’s Fryent Ward:-

 

 

Ram Singh Nehra, ‘an Indian’, was standing as a Labour Party candidate for a seat on the new Wembley Council. You can see him pictured among the photos of those candidates, from the 16 March 1934 edition of the “Wembley News”:-

 

Some of the Labour candidates, pictured in the “Wembley News”. (Images courtesy of Brent Archives)

 

If elected, Nehra would not be the first foreign-born local councillor (see José Diaz – the Spanish Chairman), but would the people of Wembley in the 1930s vote for a man who wasn’t white?

 

 I hope you can join me next weekend, for Part 2, to find out.

Philip Grant,
December 2021.

Brent Council should work with the community on Barham Park Library

Guest blog by Philip Grant following the Barham Park Planning Committee decision and the Freinds of Barham Library's statement that they would challenge any appeal by the Trustees of Barham Park Trust

As at 3pm on 16 December, Brent's Planning Department had not been notified of any appeal by the Planning Inspectorate (to whom any appeal by the Barham Park Trust, or by a Brent Council Officer in Regeneration's Property and Asset Management section on their behalf) would be made. However, as I doubt whether the "Friends" would put out this Statement without firm evidence of the facts, I will comment on the basis that an appeal has been made.

A blog item on the original Planning Committee decision can be found at: http://www.wembleymatters.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/planning-committee-upholds-community.html
I am convinced that Brent's Planning Committee made the right decision, and that the Planning Officer's recommendation to give consent to the change of use was wrong because it relied on a document which was dishonest. 

At the Civic Centre on the evening of the meeting I spoke with people from both sides of the argument. Although she has been criticised for supporting the application, Cllr. Mary Daly did so only because she saw the Trustees deal with ACAVA as the only way to get the Barham Park buildings back into use quickly. She, like me and others, is concerned that the longer the buildings remain empty, the more chance there is that they will fall into disrepair, and suffer the fate of Titus Barham's mansion in the park, which was demolished in the 1950's after years of neglect by Wembley Council, to whom it had been gifted for the benefit of local people, along with the park and remaining buildings in it, in 1937.

I did not think that letting all of the space to ACAVA for artists' studios was the only answer, and after speaking to representatives of Pivot Point and FoBPL, I wrote to all of the Barham Park Trustees on 15 November. I suggested to them that they should invite ACAVA to join them in an attempt to find a solution, by sitting down with the two local community groups who also wished to use part of the buildings, on a "without prejudice" basis, to see whether they could agree a workable way in which they could all share the facilities currently allocated solely to ACAVA. If they could agree how they would share the buildings, Council Officers should be instructed to draw up the necessary agreements to allow this to happen as soon as possible.

There may be some people within Brent Council who regard my efforts to get involved and give advice (on matters where I feel I have the knowledge or experience to make sensible suggestions) as "troublemaking", but here I was definitely trying to help as a "troubleshooter". I genuinely thought that 'given goodwill on all sides, this could be the way to get the buildings back into use, for ACAVA and for the local community, producing rental income to contribute to the refurbishment costs and help pay for the future maintenance of the buildings and to bring life back into the park.'

I have not heard back from any of the five Trustees (Cllrs Crane, Denselow, Hirani, Mashari and Ruth Moher), or from anyone at the Council on their behalf. If they have taken up my suggestion, I have not heard any word of it. I had said in my email to them: 'I realise that you may wish to take advice from Council Officers on my suggestions, but please remember that you are the Trustees, and the decisions are yours.' Despite this, it looks as if the Council Officers have got the upper hand (with the support or acquiescence of our elected Councillors, with their Trustee hats on). Their plans have been thwarted, quite rightly, by Brent’s Planning Committee, but they are determined that at whatever cost in (Council Taxpayers') money, and whatever the delay, and potential consequences in terms of the future of the Barham Park buildings, their will must prevail. 

Sadly, it makes the final comment in my email to the Barham Park Trustees of 15 November seem prophetic: 'I believe that the time of Officers would be better spent in working on a solution to the problem, rather than in searching for reasons to try to justify a scheme which is not a solution to it, and will only prolong the discord between Council and local community, rather than healing it.' 

Can anyone, please, explain why Brent Council makes it so difficult for Councillors, Council Officers and local people to work together for the mutual benefit of our community?

Philip Grant.