Will
Dyson,
the ninth of eleven children, was born in Australia in 1880.
Will's father, George
Dyson was a miner
in the Australian and was active in the local Socialist Party. So
were his older brothers, and two of them, Ted and Ambrose, contributed
articles and drawings for a socialist paper called The
Champion.
Will Dyson was taught to draw by his brothers and in 1900 he began
having cartoons published in the Sydney
Bulletin.
During the next few years he became a regular contributor to the Sydney
Bulletin,
with conservative politicians being the main target for his satire.
He developed a reputation as a talented cartoonist and in 1904 he
was offered a job as a staff artist for the Adelaide
Critic.
In 1909 Dyson moved to London and immediately
found work with the Weekly
Dispatch.
This was a time of great political excitement in Britain with the
Liberal government challenging the powers
of the House
of Lords
and the Women's Social and Political Union
using militant methods to win the vote.
It was also
a time of industrial conflict with a large number
of strikes. As a socialist, Will Dyson supported the attempts
by the trade unions to increase their members wages. In December 1910
Dyson contributed cartoons to The
World, a strike sheet produced by London printers.
In January 1911 this strike sheet was renamed the Daily
Herald.
The first issue of 13,000 copies sold out. Over the next few weeks
sales continued to increase.
When the strike ended in April the printers stopped publishing their
newspaper. However, the striking printers had shown that there was
a market for a left-wing newspaper and several leaders of the labour
movement, including George Lansbury
and Ben Tillett, joined together to raise
the necessary funds. The Daily
Herald
reappeared on 15th April, 1912, and Will Dyson
was recruited as the newspaper's cartoonist. His editor, Charles Lapworth,
gave him a full page and complete freedom on how to fill it.
Dyson's cartoons created a sensation. He was acclaimed by one critic
as the best cartoonist seen in Britain since James
Gillray. Sometimes they were so powerful that the editor decided
to let it take over the whole of the front page.
The Daily
Herald fully
supported the actions of the women fighting for the vote. Dyson agreed
with this policy. In his native Australia, women had the vote since
1893. Dyson felt very strongly about this issue and produced a series
of cartoons attacking the way the government was treating the suffragettes.
Whereas
newspapers usually condemned strikers, the Daily
Herald encouraged workers to take industrial action. As one
critic pointed out, Dyson's cartoons
"featured boldly drawn figures representing clear symbols of
the noble, wronged worker verses brutal, evil employers." Some
Labour politicians believed that Dyson was going too far with some
of his cartoons. George Lansbury, a Christian
Socialist, complained when Dyson portrayed capitalist as devils.
Others were worried when his drawings began to attack the Labour
Party for not being radical enough. Ramsay
MacDonald, the leader of the party, was a particular target of
Dyson's scorn.
Will Dyson, Ramsay
MacDonald, (Daily Herald,
1913)
Will
Dyson
was extremely popular with the public and even conservative newspapers
tried to recruit him.
When the First World War was declared in July
1914, the Daily
Herald
denounced it as the product of capitalism and militarism. Dyson also
detested war but thought that he had a duty to defend those people
in Belgium and France being attacked by the Germans. Dyson joined
the army and despite being wounded twice, he produced a large number
of drawings of Australian soldiers in battle.
As soon as the war was finished Dyson
returned to the Daily
Herald. His first cartoon in the newspaper showed David
Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, standing by a badly wounded
soldier shouting: "You've won, you've won, my brave and incomparable
fellow - vote for me." In the 1918 General
Election Will
Dyson not only used his cartoons to help the Labour
Party, he also drew and designed several of their posters.
On 12th March, 1919, Dyson's wife Ruby died, a victim of the influenza
pandemic that swept the world after the war. Dyson was devastated
and suffered a mental breakdown. He was unable to work for some time
but returned in May and produced his most famous cartoon, Peace
and Future Cannon Fodder, where he predicted that the Versailles
Treaty would lead to a Second
World War.
After the war Dyson became disillusioned with the Daily
Herald. In an attempt to attract advertising the paper became
more moderate in its political views. In July 1921 Dyson left the
newspaper. Dyson had some of his cartoons published in other newspapers
but he was seen by most editors as far too radical.
In 1925 he decided to return to Australia. He was employed by the
Melbourne Punch but now in his
forties, his cartoons lacked the passion of his pre-war work. Will
Dyson
died on 21st January, 1938.
(1)
David Low found it difficult to adjust to life
in London when he arrived in 1919. Will Dyson was one of first friends
he made in England.
I
had just left the warmth of a wide circle of friends in Australia
to come to this desert island. The contrast was painful. "It
will take you ten years to learn the English," said Will Dyson,
the Australian cartoonist, whom we found crouching over a sinking
fire in a large dark studio, nursing a great grief at the death of
his wife.
Will, despite his sadness, was a great comfort in the cheerless winter
of 1919-20. From his early Bulletin days I had been his great admirer
as one of the master caricaturist-cartoonists. Will Dyson had broken
up the pattern with his striking Socialist cartoons in the Herald
from about 1910 onward, and had led the field during the First World
War with his large war cartoons in which the monumental and the satirical
had been powerfully blended.
(2)
Margaret Cole, like Will Dyson, contributed
to the Daily Herald during the First
World War.
Dyson
was a brilliant biting Australian cartoonist, whose sharp pencil attacked
alike financiers, profiteering employers, "safe" Labour
and Trade Union leaders, and German military men, with a bitterness
unknown in British caricature since Gillray.
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