The National Federation of Discharged and Demobilized Sailors and Soldiers (NFDDSS) was a British veterans organisation.
The organisation was founded in January 1917 by various London-based veterans groups opposed to the Review of Exceptions Act, which made it possible for people invalided out of the armed forces to be re-conscripted. It adopted the slogans "Every man once before any man twice" and "Justice before charity".
Although the Federation initially invited senior military figures to its meetings, they refused. The leadership was assumed by the left-wing Liberal Party MPs James Hogge and William Pringle, who fought for improved pensions and representation on relevant government committees. Frederick Lister later took over the presidency. The Federation's politics were thus broadly liberal, although there was a wide diversity of opinion.
In 1919, the Woolwich branch organised a march on Parliament Square, which was baton charged by police. Other branches worked closely with the trade union movement, and some set up soup kitchens.
F.B. Hughes, a member of the NFDDSS, stood on behalf of the group at the Liverpool Abercromby by-election, 1917, against Edward Stanley of the Conservative Party but was unsuccessful, taking only a quarter of the votes cast. This intervention persuaded the Earl of Derby to found Comrades of the Great War as a right-wing alternative veterans group. The NFDDSS then sponsored a considerable number of candidates at the 1918 UK general election, some jointly with the rival National Association of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers (NADSS) in what was termed the "Silver Badge Party", although none were successful.
In 1920, the Federation invited NADSS, Comrades of the Great War and the Officers' Association to a meeting to discuss a potential merger, and this was achieved in 1921, establishing the Royal British Legion.
Famous quotes containing the words national, federation, discharged, sailors and/or soldiers:
“If the national security is involved, anything goes. There are no rules. There are people so lacking in roots about what is proper and what is improper that they don’t know there’s anything wrong in breaking into the headquarters of the opposition party.”
—Helen Gahagan Douglas (1900–1980)
“Women realize that we are living in an ungoverned world. At heart we are all pacifists. We should love to talk it over with the war-makers, but they would not understand. Words are so inadequate, and we realize that the hatred must kill itself; so we give our men gladly, unselfishly, proudly, patriotically, since the world chooses to settle its disputes in the old barbarous way.”
—General Federation Of Women’s Clubs (GFWC)
“New York is a sucked orange. All conversation is at an end, when we have discharged ourselves of a dozen personalities, domestic or imported, which make up our American existence.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“So far as inland discovery was concerned, the adventurous spirit of the English was that of sailors who land but for a day, and their enterprise the enterprise of traders.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... children do not take war seriously as war. War is soldiers and soldiers have not to be war but they have to be soldiers. Which is a nice thing.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)