Charity and mutual aid: the pillars of English associations

Having established the structures and social and cultural activities of English ethnic associations, Chapter 5 examines in detail the two critical pillars of English ethnic associationalism: charity and mutual aid. It does this through the charity dispensed by St George’s societies, and the collective self-help facilitated in particular by the Sons of England (there are no detailed archives for the OSStG, hence the focus on the SoE). The chapter explores both levels of support and the regulatory framework adopted by the associations to disburse funds. By exploring the aid distributed by St George’s societies, this chapter enables us to examine the level of associational networking between organisations in dispensing charity to all immigrant groups, and the extent to which this gave those organisations a wider civic role. We have located particularly good records for the SoE in Canada and thus explore the workings of this friendly society. Quite unlike the St George’s societies, the SoE built up reserves of members’ funds, which were expended on sickness, unemployment and burial benefits. Ranging across Canada from the Maritimes to British Columbia, and entailing thousands of members in hundreds of lodges, and engaging in the good management of funds and the promulgation of a shared English culture, the Sons add very significantly to our understanding of what it meant to be English in North America.

Independent and sectarian: working-class English associational culture

This chapter moves beyond the St George’s societies that scholars portray as proof that the English principally indulged in elite civic activism rather than ethnic behaviour. A second tier of English association developed in the 1870s catering specifically for independent working class migrants. The Order of the Sons of St George (OSStG; 1870) and the Sons of England (1874) represented something different. Clearly, working-class Englishmen and women in the US and Canada felt the need for another type of organization—one whose fees they could afford, something that provided them with mutual aid. These English ethnic friendly societies drew upon homeland traditions. In the US, they also took shape with an American culture of associating. Such organizations were structured by the imperatives of class solidarity and ethnic togetherness. Indeed, ethnicity also sponsored (and was sponsored by) tension and competition with the Irish. This chapter traces these developments with a particular view to the context in which they were founded, and where they were set up. The OSStG, for instance, came about in part as a coordinated response to a heightened ethnic consciousness.

The origins and development of the English diaspora in North America

Chapter 1 frames the following discussion of English associations and ethnic activities by charting English migration to North America from the mid-1700s. The earlier emigrants carried with them cultural characteristics, habits and customs that were critical in shaping the social and civic life that marked the English as foundational and invisible within America society. We problematize existing scholarship and challenge the assumption that the hegemony of the English language and the early immigrants’ foundational context provided all subsequent English migrants with a permanent and unchanging advantage over other migrant groups by default. Ordinary English migrants faced the same challenges and hardships as any other group; working-class immigrants in particular dealt with many common economic pressures regardless of their origins. Ultimately, the English had much in common with those of other backgrounds. The English settled in all colonies, counties and states; they were loaded towards the urban and industrial areas, but the focus upon the north-east—in both the colonial and early Republican period, as well as north of the border in what was to become Canada—gradually gave way to greater diffusion: a diffusion in line with the spread of ethnic associations. In the nineteenth century, English-born immigrants—the mainstay of English ethnic associations—came to be hugely out-numbered by several immigrant groups, most notably the Irish, with whom innate tensions were reprised in the new country. Chapter 1 explores such factors as a frame for the study that follows.

Ethnic activities and leisure cultures

Charity and mutual aid—hierarchical and reciprocal types of ethnic associationalism—divided the St George’s societies from the Sons of St George and the Sons of England. However, such divisions did not create intra-ethnic hostility between them. Regardless of this significant turn in the history of English ethnic associational culture in North America, all associations were united in their patriotism to England, which remained a constant. And despite their different social composition and emphases, the elite and middle-class St George’s societies still shared a number of characteristics with the more working-class organisations focused on providing collective self-help. Chapter 4 traces the inner workings and activities of the different organisations to explore these commonalities both in terms of their structures and membership, but also with respect to the events and socio-cultural pursuits they promoted. St George’s Days, dinners, dances, lectures, day trips and sports, were all used to emphasize shared identity in the new communities. Moreover, the somewhat chauvinistic deployment of Anglo-Saxon rhetoric and of pugnacious, loud expressions of loyalty to the monarchy were critical for all of these English groups, united them behind common principles. Such shared values were customarily expressed at dinners and parades, but also at more specific events organized for coronations and jubilees. War also played a significant role, heightening the sense of loyalty to the crown and shared roots—even in the republican United States. Indeed wars afforded an opportunity for the English in North America to send funds home to aid widows and orphans, with large sums generated. Each of these aspects is explored here.

Introduction: ethnic associationalism and an English diaspora

In early 1953, a major storm hit parts of northern Europe, causing the North Sea to flood. Over 300 people died on land along the east coast of England, with a similar number also perishing at sea. The country’s eastern coastline was devastated, properties were severely damaged, and thousands of people had to be evacuated from their homes....

The making of a global diaspora

Transnational connections and communication were critical for English ethnic associations. But this was by no means restricted to the United States and Canada as English associational connections linked all geographies of the English-speaking world. Consequently, chapter 7 extends the geographical focus, placing our North American research in the broader context by examining the spread of English societies around the world, and adopts a transnational framework to explore levels of communication between territories. In particular we investigate the spread of St George’s societies to locations beyond their first formation, examining developments in Africa and Australasia, While Australasian St George’s societies developed at about the same time as those in the Mid-West of America, and thus reflected the internal colonisation of both British and American worlds, they were not in any sense joined up at that point. Enduring connection did not in fact occur till the Royal Society of St George appeared in 1894 to bond Anglo-world’s various English societies. Celebrations of monarchy and Empire were critical in this globalization, providing a communal adhesive for English migrants wherever they were located. A similar anchor—albeit for a very different reason—was war. Not only did it heighten a sense of belonging among many, invigorating shared roots as the common denominator, it was, critically, a belonging often framed by Britishness rather than Englishness, and one paramount among those keen to stress the shared cultural characteristic of the English, British, Americans and neo-Britons in Empire. Still, Englishness was employed within that wider identity to help the ‘motherland’. English associations around the world collected funds in support of the war effort, or to help the widows and orphans of soldiers who had made the ultimate sacrifice, during both world wars, and, more directly and actively, the Toronto St George’s Society provided homes for children who had been sent over from England during the Second World War. All of these actions and communications criss-crossing the world—connecting diaspora English not only with the old homeland, but also each other—point not just to what Anderson called an ‘imagined community’, but also to an ‘imagined community’ made real through consistent practical connection.

English, Scots and Germans compared: British and continental perspectives

The English ethnic associationalism we describe in this book was not unique; indeed, it was part of a world of associations. Providing a comparative context is therefore crucial. Chapter 6 charts the evolution and purpose of those ethnic clubs and societies established in North America by other migrant groups. We focus particularly on Scots and Germans and explore the beginnings of the associational culture of these groups. The Scots were the most active in the early phase of settlement, also anchoring their associationalism in philanthropy. St Andrew’s societies, much as those of St George, had an elite dimension, but catered for a broader migrant cohort—those in distress. Similarities in the work of the two organisations even led to concrete co-operation. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, however, the Scots developed a second and distinct tier: an ethnic associational culture at the heart of which lay sport. This contributed to a significant proliferation in Scottish ethnic associational activity—though one that was trumped, in the early twentieth century—by the Scottish mutualist branches in both the US and Canada (Order of Scottish Clans and the Sons of Scotland respectively). We also develop non-British/Irish comparators through an examination of developments in the German immigrant community in North America to establish to what extent language was a factor in immigrant adjustment to new world realities. Examining the Germans will also permit consideration of how external developments—in this case particularly the First and Second World Wars—were watersheds that united British Isle migrants, while casting out Germans and the more militant wings of the Irish.

Elite associations: from local to transnational

Chapter 2 explores, first, the development of elite English associations in North America, focusing on St George’s societies. These earliest English societies were more than gentlemen’s dining and drinking clubs, and extended beyond the cultural life of the colonial tavern where they often met. Their roles encompassed social, cultural, civic and also emotional aspects of immigrant community life. Critically, however, the idea of charity underpinned them and provided the basis for all their activities, with the societies established for the purpose of aiding fellow English migrants who were in distress. This associational anchor of benevolence continues to be a mainstay for the St George’s societies that are still active today. And it was one that spread with the St George’s tradition—first to the largest centres of the original Thirteen Colonies and then, in the 1830s, to British North America. All this was in tune with the patterns of English migration, as well as its overall volume, with a plethora of new societies being founded in the mid-nineteenth century to cater for the mass arrival of migrants. Hence, while the associations’ leaders were comprised of the migrant elite, the work of St George’s societies had wider resonances for it embraced the poorest and most unfortunate of their fellow countrymen and women. Importantly, charitable culture also signifies the extent to which the English formed an active diaspora: that is, one denoted both by the geographical range of its adherents, transnational communication between them, and persistent social action. Indeed, transnational integration and the quest for consistently was fostered by the North America St George’s Union, which was founded in the 1870s for the purpose of bringing closer together the St George’s societies of the United States and Canada.

Conclusion

On Friday, 5 November 1915, members of the St George’s Society of Toronto gathered at their regular monthly meeting. Amid discussions of mundane business matters members heard the obituary of one of their more prominent and active members, the past president James Cooper. Cooper had made his way to Canada in 1845, arriving there from Gainsborough in Lincolnshire as a pioneer ‒ and at a time ‘when Canada had hardly emerged from its forest stage’. He rose to be a ‘prominent merchant’, deciding on his retirement ‘to spend his remaining years in the old Land’. Despite his return to England, however, Cooper was still ‘deeply interested in all that pertained to the well-being and progress of the city [of Toronto]’....