‘We Are White Hot Rebels’ The Life and Times of Musicians Frank Merrick and Hope Squire during the Last Years of WW1

Abstract This article describes a collaborative, committed and passionate partnership in both music and politics through an analysis of a selection of wartime letters, written between 1917 and 1919, between the Manchester-based pianist and composer Hope Squire Merrick (1878–1935) and her imprisoned husband: pianist, composer and conscientious objector, Frank Merrick (1886–1981). The letters provide insight into the complex background to music making in Manchester during the First World War. Much writing about musicians focuses on their role as musicians; this article, however, seeks to broaden that focus and explore the social and political context that form an important background to the careers of Frank Merrick and Hope Squire. Such was the extent to which their political and ethical views set them apart from those of the contemporary status quo that Frank referred to them both as ‘white hot rebels’ (Mentioned in a letter Frank Merrick to Hope Squire, 26 June 1918. University of Bristol Archives (BUA) DM2103/F/5/2/12. See below. The term ‘white hot’ was conventionally used to describe something highly intensive; it does not carry any racist implications). Drawing on sources found principally in the University of Bristol Archives (BUA) and the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), this article not only offers a focused examination of the wartime career of two Manchester musicians but illustrates how those careers were tested by both Squire’s and Merrick’s refusal to compromise their ethical and political stance against war. The letters also reveal the centrality of music and making music to their lives and how that was made manifest during Merrick’s years in prison (Correspondence between Frank and Hope is held in Bristol University Archives (hereafter BUA). The letters were deposited in Archives after the death of Professor Frank Merrick in 1981).