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:
“We want, and must have, a national policy, as to slavery, which deals with it as being wrong.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“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)
“Frequently also some fair-weather finery ripped off a vessel by a storm near the coast was nailed up against an outhouse. I saw fastened to a shed near the lighthouse a long new sign with the words “ANGLO SAXON” on it in large gilt letters, as if it were a useless part which the ship could afford to lose, or which the sailors had discharged at the same time with the pilot. But it interested somewhat as if it had been a part of the Argo, clipped off in passing through the Symplegades.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“How red the rose that is the soldier’s wound,
The wounds of many soldiers, the wounds of all
The soldiers that have fallen, red in blood,
The soldier of time grown deathless in great size.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)