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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 has been repeatedly credited as its inventor.[2] Just five days later a letter from Sir William White, under pseudonym "Civis", appeared in The Times, 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.[3]
That White is generally included in the Syndicate is a sign of just how disconnected opposition to Fisher was and how elastic "membership" was.[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[4]
- Admiral Sir Cyprian A. G. Bridge
- L. Cope Cornford[4]
- Admiral Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, Bart.[6]
- Admiral Sir Reginald N. Custance[4]
- Admiral of the Fleet Sir Arthur D. Fanshawe[6]
- Admiral C. C. Penrose FitzGerald
- Admiral The Hon. Sir Edmund R. Fremantle[6]
- Admiral Sir R. Vesey Hamilton[4]
- Admiral of the Fleet Lord Walter Kerr[6]
- Lady Londonderry.[4]
- Admiral Sir Albert H. Markham[6]
- Sir Clements R. Markham.[6]
- Admiral of the Fleet Sir Hedworth Meux, born Lambton.[4]
- Admiral of the Fleet Sir Gerard H. U. Noel
- Lieutenant-Colonel Charles à C. Repington
- Admiral of the Fleet Sir Frederick W. Richards[4]
- Admiral of the Fleet Sir Edward H. Seymour[6]
- Lord Sydenham[4]
- Sir William H. White[4]
- H. W. Wilson[4]
Footnotes
- ↑ Fear God and Dread Nought. Volume II. p. 110.
- ↑ Goldrick. "The Battleship Fleet: The Test of War, 1895-1919". Hill, ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy. p. 286.
- ↑ "Naval Discipline", The Times, 8 Jan. 1907, p. 5.
- ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 4.10 Marder. From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow. I. p. 77.
- ↑ Fear God and Dread Nought. Volume II. p. 112n.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 Lambert. The Foundations of Naval History. p. 197.
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.
- 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.
