This is the final blog post in the series by our fantastic volunteer Tom Davie, which looks into the post-war lives of Conscientious Objectors. Thanks, Tom, these have been brilliantly informative and interesting.
Charles Flynn was the son of a stonemason and, at the outbreak of World War 1, was living in Cromwell Street, Gateshead and working as Commercial Clerk with the CWS. When he declared his objection to war and refused to fight when conscripted in 1916 he was 34 years old. At his tribunal he declared his reasons as being, a member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), socialism and being a trade unionist.
Charles’ commitment to such ideals was ripe from an early age and by the age of 19 years he was Secretary of the North East Socialist Federation and by the age of 22 years in 1904 attending a socialist conference in Amsterdam. His pacifist views were consistent with his future commitment to opposing World War 1 as he had already spoken out in meetings and gatherings against the Second Boer War of 1899 – 1902.
However his passion for workers’ rights is for me the key characteristic of this man. In 1915 he was an Official for the Amalgamated Union of Cooperative Workers and actively and successfully campaigned for a 40 hour week for clerks and a 44 hour week for manual workers. A colleague described him at the time in a backhanded compliment as, “…the most hated man in the Co-op movement and his name feared and respected throughout the Northern Division.”
By 1921 he had been elected to the National Union of Distributive and Allied Workers as Northern Divisional Officer and between 1918 and 1938 a Delegate to the TUC. In 1924 he stood for Parliament as the Labour candidate in Hexham, Northumberland but was defeated by the sitting MP Douglas Clifton Brown (Viscount Ruffside). In 1928 he stood in the Sheffield Hallam by-election for Labour but was defeated by the Conservative candidate, Louis William Smith. In 1933 he was the prospective candidate for Rossendale in Lancashire but withdrew for, ‘family reasons’. This was Charles’ last venture into national parliamentary elections.
His political service was consistent throughout the turbulent times of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1926 he was a leader of the Northumberland and Durham Joint Strike Committee. Later at the outbreak of World War 2 Lord Woolton, Minister of Food, allotted him to a role within the National Committee of Food; giving him special responsibility for the coordination of home production and import of cereal crops.
More responsibility and honour came to him when he was elected as Alderman of Gateshead in 1945 and Mayor of the town in 1949. As a Justice of the Peace he appears to have been a fair man; a week after his inauguration as Mayor he is recorded by the Gateshead Post as presiding over the local court and dismissing the case against Edward J Conway who had pleaded guilty to the charge of being drunk and disorderly.
Charles was an advocate of education for all and sat as Vice Chairman on Gateshead Council’s Education Committee; he was also on the Council of King’s College, University of Durham (now Newcastle University) and a Governor of Barnard Castle School. In his inaugural Mayoral speech quoted in the Gateshead Post on 27 May 1949 he said, “…in regards to education the Council should not let up their efforts to accommodate all those people who had to be catered for.” His service was rewarded in 1948 with the receipt of an OBE for, ‘’public service to Gateshead’.
Charles Flynn, the family man, lived an active life; politically, educationally, socially, and recreationally. As a young man he was a footballer and cross country runner. He was latterly in life a Freemason and in the Who’s Who of Durham for 1949 described his interests as motoring and fishing. He died on 8 May 1957 in Low Fell, Gateshead after a full service to the communities that he lived in.
Image provided and published with the permission of Gateshead Library
Tom Davie, 2018
Turbulent Times 1918-28 