Explosives, the world's standard/Courtesy of Grace’s Guide, http://tinyurl.com/osoowrj

Irony is clearly something that came easily to the nineteenth century chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel who invented ‘superior blasting powder’ along with a safety fuse and detonator. He gave his name to the Nobel Dynamite Trust. The wartime history of this conglomerate shows that politicians were willing to avoid the letter of ‘Trading with the Enemy’ legislation and grant permissions and licences when it came to exchanges of wealth and influence.

The Nobel Dynamite Trust was created in 1886 in order to overcome fierce competition between dealers in dynamite, encouraged by Alfred Nobel who was a shareholder and adviser to fifteen companies. It was one of the world’s first multinational business ventures: a holding company comprised of three British and four German explosives companies. The largest, Nobel’s Explosives Company Ltd, with a head office at Nobel House, 195 West George Street, Glasgow, became a contractor to the British Government in 1907. The Trust loaned these companies capital to advance their businesses and distributed a percentage of the profits that such investments made back to the shareholders of the Trust.

The British and German companies sold explosives all over the world. This arrangement ensured that German shareholders profited from the death of German soldiers and British shareholders profited from the death of British troops for the first two years of the war, especially as share prices and dividends rose during the entire conflict.

The Board of Directors, with 14 members in all, had five individuals representing British companies and four representing German businesses. The remaining five were shareholders. The Trading with the Enemy Act of September 1914 caused some problems for the Trust. This piece of legislation, passed through the British Parliament, made it illegal for any citizen of the Empire to conduct business with anyone of an ‘enemy character.’ However, this law, although clear in its aims, did not cause as much trouble for the Trust as one might suppose.

Drawing by William Roberts of a group of British soldiers caught in an explosion as they make their way along a duckboard/© IWM (Art.IWM ART 1170)

The separation of the British and German interests within the Trust took a long time to actually come about. Although the German members of the board resigned from the Trust in September 1914 (creating one British and one German trust) financial wrangling about exchanging shares and final settlements prolonged the company’s activity for another 22 months.

A memorandum written by British representatives of the Trust to the Secretary of State on 13th May 1915 shows the Government was aware that British shareholders were profiting from British deaths. The Trust’s correspondent realised that ‘patriotic’ business men benefitting from the slaughter of their countrymen could become a public relations disaster. ‘Good businessmen are doubtless much alarmed as to what might be said if the public realised that this was the state of affairs,’ he continued.

The process of winding up the Trust’s affairs was headed by the Undersecretary of State for the Home Office and was mediated by Dutch, Norwegian and British legal firms. The negotiations were rather intense as both sides were afraid of their national governments’ interference. A number of companies and countries were named in the exchange correspondence, as the two sides were intertwined in deals worth millions of pounds sterling. Problems arose when the British shareholders realised that they might lose control of a North American company engaged in important government contracts – Canadian Explosives Ltd. The British owned 30 percent but they had to buy out the Germans who owned 20 percent. The Trust’s North American ‘friends’ paid the British debt to the Germans and the North American friends were to be reimbursed at the end of the war.

The two sides debated the exchange of ‘cash’ (as opposed to bank securities) and the question of interest. There is evidence that the British and the German chairmen of the two Trusts were communicating directly in 1915 and were discussing the possibility of a direct meeting ‘licensed’ by the government in a neutral country. It appears that the actual share certificates were exchanged physically as part of the deal. Meanwhile, peace activists such as Sylvia Pankhurst and other would be delegates of the Women’s Peace Congress at The Hague were prevented from travelling. All (official and confirmed) financial differences in the exchange of shares were to be settled after the war, with interest from the start of the war.