1914 - 1918 WWI Centenary Leicester 2014 - 2018
Radical Leicester in the First World War
Resistance, Opposition and Non Co-operation
Sidney Collins (second from the left) at the Home Office Scheme Dartmoor, with fellow members of the Church
of Christ
Image courtesy of Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland
For more information about Leicester in WWI see
www.storyofleicester.info/cityheritage/atwar/worldwari/
Sue Mackrell
1
The Leicester Chronicle of Saturday July 4th 1914 reported ‘VICTIMS OF PLOT -..The
Assassination of His Imperial and Royal Highness the Archduke Francis Ferdinand.’1
But while the tone of the article conveyed outrage at the murder of a Crowned Head of
Europe, it did not suggest that the event was likely to have significant impact on Britain.
Of more immediate concern was the situation in Ireland, where it seemed the crisis was
escalating into increased levels of conflict. On 23rd July, however, Austria-Hungary’s
ultimatum to Serbia exacerbated tensions in Europe and it became clear that a network of
treaties was making war increasingly likely. But opposition was strong; there were large antiwar demonstrations across Europe, and in Britain 100,000 people demonstrated for peace.
Keir Hardie told crowds in Trafalgar Square, ‘You have no quarrel with Germany.’ 2
It was by no means a certainty that Britain should be involved in the conflict. Government
ministers were divided, with many members of the Liberal government believing that Britain
could, and should, keep out of the war unless directly attacked. The growing Labour Party
also opposed the war. Ramsay MacDonald, its first leader, and MP for Leicester, was
outspoken in his opposition. National figures such as Philip Snowden and George Lansbury
joined the party leaders in their anti-war stance.
Independent Labour Party councillors on Leicester town council also shared Ramsay
MacDonald’s views. They had been elected because of their activism in a range of socialist
and working class organisations including trade unionism, the Trades Council, the Cooperative movement and Adult Schools. Some had been active in opposing the Boer War, and
several were members of nonconformist churches who opposed the war on religious as well
as political and ethical grounds.
Amos Sheriff was among those who, in the years leading up to the war, had been active in the
industrial conflicts generated by the rapid industrialisation of the boot and shoe industry in
Leicester. In 1905 he had been one of the leaders of the ‘Unemployed March,’ when 450
local men marched to London to protest about unemployment and the treatment of
unemployed men under the Poor Law. The summer of 1911 had been one of national crisis,
with strikes by railwaymen, firemen, dockers and miners. The government had put up a
massive show of force against marches, demonstrations and pickets. Two striking
railwaymen had been shot dead by the army in Llanelli and on Winston Churchill’s orders,
troops were sent to guard stations all over the country including the Midland station on
London Road in Leicester. There were more than nine strikes in local boot and shoe factories
between 1912 –13. On 4th July 1914 the Leicester Daily Mercury reported that 8,000 men
1
2
The Leicester Chronicle, July 4th 1914
Paxman, Jeremy, Britain’s Great War, BBC1, 27/1/2014.
2
were on strike at Woolwich Arsenal. A general strike seemed to be a real possibility and
many saw Britain’s involvement in a European war to be an opportunity for the government
to quell dissidence and generate a unified sense of patriotism and nationalism.
On 2nd August 1914 news reached London that Kaiser Wilhelm II was demanding the right to
move his army through Belgium in order to launch an attack on France. Belgium appealed to
Britain as a guarantor of her neutrality. The British Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, gave the
Kaiser an ultimatum; if he did not withdraw his troops by 11am on 4th August then Britain
would declare war on Germany. Also on 2nd August the Leicester Independent Labour Party
organised two anti-war rallies in the market place, one in the morning and a second in the
evening. Amos Sheriff addressed the crowd:
I think the calmness of Leicester shows that the preaching of the Independent Labour
Party has had some effect. If the war happens, we can expect that tens of thousands of
strong men will be torn from their homes and families never to return. Just suppose
that the big guns ......were firing on Leicester, tearing up our buildings. You might say
it was not here, but it is somewhere, and it means as much to the natives of those
places. War belongs to the devil and everyone who supports it must claim the devil as
a parent.
Whatever is done on the Continent, England must keep clear of the bloody work.
England has not got over the Boer war - there is a memorial to the dead in every town
and hundreds (of) millions of debt has yet to be paid. Yet there are vagabonds about
who were stirring up another war. Where were the political leaders that day? They
were away and only the common people who met at street corners were left to urge
Britain to keep the peace. Reason and commonsense will have to be exercised when
death and destruction have done their work. Why not use it now? 3
The Independent Labour Party, while affiliated to the Labour party regarded it as too
moderate in its attempts to achieve social reform. George Banton, who had been a prime
mover in the development of the Labour party in Leicester, had moved to the ILP and was, in
August 1914, its Leader on the Town Council. As well as being a delegate to the Trades
Council and influential in the Co-operative movement, he was also a lay preacher at the Free
Christian Church, Harrow Road. He had opened the rally by warning the crowd:
The present juncture is the most critical in the life of this country. This meeting is
being held in order that the citizens of Leicester could give expression to their
opinions as to whether or not they were in favour of war. The countries of Europe are
getting ready to fly at each other's throats. Austria has never distinguished itself in
3
All quotations from the ILP Leicester rally of 2 September 1914 are from : http://nednewitt.com/19141918/Index.htm
3
good government, or literature or art or on the bloody battlefield. Yet it is this country
that is provoking a war. Whatever might be Austria's reason for war, I ask you: is the
Archduke's body worth more than the body of a common soldier? No, yet there will
be thousands and thousands of lives lost and seas of human blood spilled as a result of
that murder. Would a war give rest to the Archduke's soul? No! Would it condone the
crime?
But that is not all. It is not a matter of simply Austria or Serbia. There are parties in
Europe who are greedy (to) increase their empires. Russia, ever to be distrusted, has
always been an oppressor of the people and it would be hypocritical of her to come
forward and say that she is protecting the rights of the people of Serbia. It was in no
chivalrous spirit that Russia was coming forward. Russia has an alliance with France
and Great Britain. Austria, Germany and Italy also have an understanding.
We are here as common people, as the rank and file, it is said of us that:
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs but to do and die.
We are here to protest against Britain taking part in the war. As common people we
will join with the Social Democrats of Germany and the Socialists of France and cry
out against war. Britain is being asked to help Russia. We are being asked to help a
country who has crushed her own people and means to stamp out those things which
make for the liberty of the people. We are being called upon to take the part of the
bloody tyrant, the Czar, against German democracy. Why should we waste lives for
the sake of such men?
And who are we going to fight against? Against Germany - that advancing and
progressive civilisation! Why should England assist, even by lifting her little finger, in
helping Russia to crush Germany? Germany has long been a source of inspiration to
Englishmen. She has many things to teach us in education, science and art - the things
which give fullness to life. We therefore call upon the working people of Leicester to
protest against Britain being drawn into a war in which she has no interest. Besides
passing a resolution against the war, I would like this meeting to pass another
resolution calling upon the Mayor of Leicester to convene a town's meeting. In this
matter the workers’ interests are also the employers' interests and I have no doubt that
all party feelings can be sunk in the general protest against the war.
His speech was met with loud applause from the crowd.
Councillor Herbert Hallam also spoke at the rally. He represented St Margaret’s ward
which had some of Leicester's worst housing conditions. He had long campaigned for a
4
housing scheme, and had spoken out against exploitative landlords. He now put his efforts
into opposing the war. He told the audience:
We are passing through a crisis in the history of the country, of Europe, of the World,
of civilisation itself. At such a time we must not be controlled by the spirit that
controlled some of them during the South African war. We must stand firm in
demanding peace. It is not the Russian people who are causing the war; it is a clique
of diplomatists. War is not going to make either the workers or capitalists a penny
better off - it would make it worse for everyone. Should England range herself on the
side of Russian diplomatists? No! The time is now ripe for a rearrangement of the
balance of power in Europe. The advancing democracies of England, Germany,
France and Italy should unite in helping to check the reactionary forces of Europe.
Italy has said that she will remain neutral, but England should take up a much stronger
position than that and use her powerful influence to in the direction of peace. For this
reason, I am moving the following resolution:
That this demonstration, representing the organised workers and citizens of Leicester,
views with serious alarm the prospects of a European war, into which every European
Power will be dragged owing to secret alliances and understandings which in their
origin were never sanctioned by the nations, nor are even now communicated to them.
We stand by the efforts of the International Working Class Movement to unite the
workers of the nations concerned in their efforts to prevent their Governments from
entering upon war, as expressed by the International Socialist Bureau.
We protest against any step being taken by the Government of this country to support
Russia, either directly, or in consequence of an understanding with France, as being
not only offensive to the political traditions of the country but disastrous to Europe
and declare that as we have no interest, direct or indirect, in the threatened quarrels
which may result from the action of Austria in Serbia:
The Government of Great Britain should rigidly decline to engage in war, but should
confine itself to efforts to bring about peace as speedily as possible.
The resolution was seconded by Frederick Riley, who had been an Executive on the Hosiery
Union, and was a member of the Trades Council and the Co-operative movement. He was
also an active supporter of the temperance movement and the Adult School. He had been
elected to represent Aylestone in 1905 after campaigning on the right to work. He said:
I wonder why it is that the big religious bodies are not up and doing at this critical
time. It is quite appalling that that the churches were quiet apart from offering up
prayers for peace. God helps those who help themselves. I am convinced that even
now, if all the religious bodies made a strenuous effort to prevent England taking part
5
in the war, they would succeed and I know that they would receive the support of the
labour leaders of this country.
Alfred Hill, Councillor for Wyggeston, also addressed the crowd. He had been branch
president of the National Union of Boot and Shoe workers, president of the Trades Council
and a prominent member of the Peace Society. He was also a Primitive Methodist preacher.
He said:
I rise to support the motion. I am very proud that on the occasion of the South African
war, the forces of Labour protested against it. I trust that at this time we will not be
the only body to sound the chords of peace. I want the workers to know that you have
nothing to gain by the war, but everything to lose. The whole world should be one
great brotherhood and the nations of the world should refuse to lift a hand against
their brother man. Workers should refuse to take a step that would lead to death and
destruction, unless they felt that step they were taking should assist the class to which
they belonged. It is when the workers of the world realise that spirit of brotherhood
then war will be impossible.
An eye witness recalled:
No orator thrilled the crowd as Alfred Hill did. He spoke with a fervour and passion
that told of the fierce earnestness of his soul, against the black hellish horror through
which the nations of the world have since passed. He spoke for peace, as a man
inspired, and no jingo raised his voice for war on that memorable day. In the war that
followed, he never wavered in his stand for peace and although it meant a certain
amount of unpopularity and brought on his shoulders a certain amount of abuse, he
came through as a man who could stand for great religious and political principles. 4
Councillor J.S. Salt, who had been a founding member of the National Union of Boot and
Shoe workers also voiced concerns about the lack of transparency in political dealings – he
commented on the causes of the volatile situation in Europe:
This was not the outcome of the Serbian assassination. It was the outcome of the
intrigues and machinations covering twenty years. Who are the people who are
sealing the destinies of the European peoples? They are not workers, but the people
who pull the money strings. The lesson was that the terms of the treaties should be
laid on the table of the House of Commons, politicians should be watched and foreign
ministers controlled.
4
www.nednewitt.com/whoswho/H.html - Leicester Pioneer, 27th June 1924
6
Also on the platform was Edna Penny, a committed anti-war activist from Sheffield ILP. She
saw the war as a distraction from the fight to improve the lives of working class people, and
said:
It is not the ability of the 'great' which is going to solve our social and international
problems. It is the growing solidarity of people round the world. ...I believe that the
man who is instrumental in getting 18 municipal houses built in which 18 families can
live comfortably at half the rent charged by landlords does more good than all the
prayers that were ever offered. War means poverty and chaos. It also means that
today, thousands of meetings like this have been given over to protesting about the
war instead of discussing working class affairs. We have an alarming growth in
consumption which is a disease of malnutrition, a factor in which was the prevalence
of the adulteration of food.
When I contemplate the coming war, I rejoice that I only have two children (and they
are girls!) Some say that women ought to have bigger families. My reply to them is
this: when a woman was something higher than a dog, she would have more respect
for the children she did bring into this world. Men thought women can work miracles.
How many men have increased the incomes of their wives when additional babies
have come? Very few.... In fact they seemed to think that when a woman has two or
three children, there was less need to look after her, because she was less likely to
leave or be sought by anyone else.
There was laughter from the crowd.
There were many Leicester women who were active in movements for social and political
change. One of those was Alice Hawkins, a founding member of Leicester Independent
Labour Party and a trade unionist. As a working class woman, she believed that without a
vote, women could not influence government policy on improving their lives. In 1907 she
founded the Leicester branch of the militant Women’s Social and Political Union. The
suffragette movement was an angry response to the broken promises and betrayals by the
government to the nearly twenty years of peaceful campaigning by the National Union of
Women’s Suffrage Society. In the following seven years she was arrested and jailed a total
of five times, with terms of imprisonment in Leicester and Holloway jails. In the years
leading up to the war suffragettes had been a very visible presence in the town, breaking
windows, pouring liquids in post boxes, and burning ‘no vote, no golf ,’ into the turf on
Leicester Golf Course. Dorothy Pethick, the Leicester secretary, had organised an all night
party on 2nd April 1911 at the WSPU shop at 14 Bowling Green Street, as part of a national
‘No vote, no census’ action where women spent the census night away from home. Signs
advertising the campaign proclaimed ‘If women don't count, neither shall they be counted.’
The suffragettes offered a model of ingenious, subversive and courageous tactics with which
to challenge establishment views.
7
Emmeline Pankhurst, speaking at De Montfort Hall on 30th October 1914, suspended
militant activities and urged support for the war. Kitty Marion, a radical suffragette who had
been force fed over 200 times while in prison, was organiser of Leicester WSPU when war
broke out. She recalled, ‘I was on danger duty in Leicester, ready to send another reminder
to the government when a telegram arrived from headquarters, to stop all activity.’5 She
disagreed with the policy of ending militancy, and because she had been born in Germany,
the Government took the opportunity to deport her to the United States when war broke out.
Some who had been involved in the suffragette movement took a pacifist stance, including
Emmeline Pankhurst’s daughters, Sylvia and Adele. Others, like Lilian Lenton, a Leicester
born activist who had been repeatedly imprisoned and force fed, chose to channel their efforts
into caring for war casualties; she joined the Scottish Women’s Hospital in Serbia.
Another speaker at the Leicester ILP rally, William Green, expressed the betrayal felt by
many who had been working towards a better future:
In the Adult School movement, there is a body of men who have been striving for
international peace. This day, their twenty years of work has been thrown back in
their face. It has to be recognised that if the crisis continues, you will not have any
choice about going to war.....you will be fetched. This afternoon I was speaking to a
German who has just received his marching orders.......If other countries want to go
on with this confounded rotten business, let them. But let Britain refuse to take part.
The Adult Schools educated and influenced many working class men who had little formal
education; most had left school at twelve. Local co-operatively run factories also ran
programmes of education for its workers. Leicester Working Men’s Institute had been
founded in 1862; it eventually became Vaughan College. Like the Adult School it upheld
principles of equality and internationalism and in 1903 became the Workers’ Educational
Association. By 1914 the two organisations were in active partnership, and offering places to
women students. Charles Monk, who had himself left school at twelve, said in an interview
in 1983 that the Adult School ‘Gave you the chance to express yourself.’ He spoke of how
most people believed what they read in the papers, but he had learned to question it, saying,
‘the Adult School more than anything made me think, not accept things blindly.’ 6
Leicester Secular Society also has a long history in challenging authority and is the oldest of
its kind worldwide. Its central principle is that of free thinking. Josiah Gimson one of the
founders in 1851, identified a freethinker as: ‘A man who thinks freely, fearless as to the
conclusion to which his freethinking may lead him, and I hope that those of us who are
Secularists are free thinkers first and secularists afterwards, Secularism being the goal to
5
Jenkins, Jess, Burning Question, The Struggle for Women’s Suffrage in Leicester, Friends of the Record Office
for Leicestershire and Rutland Occasional Papers, Leicestershire County Council 2012 , p.173
6
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 35
8
which free-thought has led us.’ 7 It was thanks to Leicester secularists that the term
‘Conscientious objector’ was first used in English law, in 1898. Many opposed the
compulsory smallpox vaccination on the grounds it had not been proven to be either safe or
effective, and a local man, Charles Eagle was one of those who refused to allow his children
to be vaccinated. He served two prison sentences before exemption was allowed in such
cases.
Anti-war activism in Leicester was evident well before 1914. Josiah Gimson was also a
member of the Leicester Working Men’s Peace Association and in 1879 he gave an address
entitled ‘War and how to avoid it,’ describing the situations of nations fighting as ‘One of the
most barbarous features of the age.’8 The Secular Hall was the only venue in Leicester where
Emily Hobhouse and John Robertson were allowed a platform to speak out against the Boer
War. In 1901 Hobhouse published in The Guardian an excoriating account of the squalor and
starvation suffered by Boer women and children in the ‘refugee camps,’ which were, in
reality, concentration camps. John Robertson’s shocking photographs of emaciated, near–
death children also challenged the populist imperialist view of the Boer War. 9 The Leicester
Society for the Promotion of Peace, and the Leicester Passive Resisters’ League were both set
up during the Boer War. When conscription was threatened, an anti-conscription league was
also initiated, but conscription was not introduced at that time.
Controversy over the war caused splits in some Free Churches, including the Baptist Church
on Clarendon Road. Some saw it as their patriotic duty to support the war, while others
regarded all war as a travesty of their deepest held convictions, and killing as a contradiction
of their fundamental beliefs. Members of the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers, who
had been meeting in Leicester since the mid 17th century, had historically espoused non
violence. 10 In their Peace Testimony of 1660, they had sought to reassure Charles II of their
loyalty to the restoration of the English monarchy and their renunciation of all ‘fighting with
outward weapons whatsoever’11
11am on 4th August came and went, with no response from the Kaiser, and Britain declared
war on Germany. Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, issued his famous
warning, ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe and we shall not see them lit again in our
time.’12
7
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 32
8
ibid p. 34
9
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2011/may/19/guardian190-south-africaconcentration-camps, accessed 30 December 2015
10
https://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/QuakersPagesfromsmvolumeXXVIII-5.pdf
11
http://www.qhpress.org/quakerpages/qwhp/dec1660.htm
12
http://www.pukaarnews.com/ww1-commemorations-in-leicestershire/11702/
9
When on 5th August 1914 the Parliamentary Labour party voted to support the Government’s
request for war credits of £100,000,000, Ramsay MacDonald immediately resigned his
chairmanship. A number of Liberal Government ministers also resigned because of their
opposition to the war, including Charles Trevelyan, who had been Parliamentary Secretary to
the Board of Education, John Burns, who had been president of the Board of Trade, and John
Morley who was Lord President of the Council. Ramsay MacDonald continued to argue for a
negotiated peace deal rather than total victory and he set out his views in a manifesto to the
local papers:
If this war is not to be the beginning instead of the end of wars, it is necessary, now,
to get a settled public opinion as to the conditions of peace; these must be determined,
not by the military men, nor by the diplomatists, but by the people.
He went on:
As to the moral flamboyancies of those who tell us that this will be the last war, it is
all moonshine, it is far more likely that this war is the beginning of a new despotism
in Europe. 13
He ridiculed those who said that the war would be ‘over by Christmas.’
Leicester was caught up in the patriotic fervour which swept the country. The Leicestershire
Regiment was recalled from training and seen off to war by cheering crowds. Some schools
were closed as the premises were taken over for military purposes, and children gathered to
watch the arrival of the Leicestershire Yeomanry. Reservists were called up, but it was clear
from the start that many more men were needed. Recruiting posters appeared on hoardings
and billboards around the town and advertisements exhorting men to “do their duty” were
placed in local newspapers. Kitchener needed 100,000 men for his New Army.
A recruiting meeting at De Montfort Hall was packed, with 2,000 people left outside. The
platform was draped with the flags of Britain, France, Russia and Belgium. A collective
rendition of It’s a Long Way to Tipperary brought the audience to its feet, and men flocked to
sign up. In the Market Place a recruitment rally was attended by 15,000 people who were led
by those on the platform in singing patriotic songs. The power of music to stir the emotions
was well understood by the military. 14
In the opening weeks, across the country, 30,000 men enlisted, including 3,545 men from
Leicester. 15 In the confusion of the first few weeks of the war, some local factories had
closed and others went on short time. Germany had been an important market and the future
13
Elliott, Malcolm, Opposition to the First World War: The Fate of Conscientious Objectors in Leicester
https://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/05_7799_vol77_Elliott.pdf
14
Armitage, F. P. Leicester 1914 -1918 The Wartime Story of a Midland Town , 1933, Backus, Leicester, p. 26
15
http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Pacifists/story-21938819-detail/story.html#ixzz3ej0S9Ibm accessed 30
December 2015
10
was uncertain. It is likely that men thrown out of work joined the Colours rather than present
themselves at the Workhouse on Swain Street, where they would be told, in no uncertain
terms where their future lay.
Ramsay MacDonald continued to work towards conciliation. He was committed to
maintaining links with international working class movements, including the German Social
Democrats, some of whom were also opposed to the war. On 10th August, MacDonald held a
meeting with leading Socialists, Pacifists and Liberals with the aim of forming an
organisation which would campaign for more transparency and accountability in foreign
policy decision making. Among them were Charles Trevelyan, John Burns and John Morley.
They were joined by Robert Outhwaite and Arthur Ponsonby, other senior Liberals who
opposed the war, and Norman Angell, who in October 1913 had set up the journal War and
Peace. They argued that the main reason for the conflict was the secret diplomacy of
politicians, including Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary. The Union of Democratic
Control was launched, and Edmund Morel appointed as secretary. He was a campaigning
journalist who had exposed government ‘cover ups,’ corruption and human rights abuse in
Colonial Africa. The UDC was strongly supported by the Independent Labour
Party leadership and Labour Leader, the Party's newspaper, gave Morel regular column
space.
The UDC had three main objectives:
1. That in future to prevent secret diplomacy there should be parliamentary control
over foreign policy
2. There should be negotiations after the War with other democratic European
countries in an attempt to form an organisation to help prevent future conflicts.
3. That at the end of the war the peace terms should neither humiliate the defeated
nation nor artificially rearrange frontiers as this might provide a cause for future wars.
16
By October 1915 the UDC had 61 branches, including a London Federation with twenty
branches. 48 Trades Councils and 51 other organisations were affiliated or linked with it. 17
While maintaining a position of opposition to the war, however, MacDonald expressed his
support for those who were fighting. On September 11th in a letter read at De Montfort Hall
he stated, ‘History will in due time apportion praise and blame, but the young men of the
16
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015, p.44
17
Pearce, Cyril, Comrades in Conscience, The Story of an English Community’ s Opposition to the Great War,
Francis Boutle, London, 2001 p. 126
11
country must, for the moment settle the immediate issue of victory. Let them do it in the spirit
of the brave men who have crowned our country with honour in the times that are gone.’18
The introduction of the Defence of the Realm Act, (DORA) on 8th August 1914, made public
opposition to the war increasingly difficult. There was more than a little ‘self censorship’ in
the press to avoid prosecution. The police regularly raided the offices of anti-war groups and
confiscated what they regarded as ‘subversive’ literature. Anti-war sentiments were vilified
as treacherous and cowardly. On 21st September 1914 Ramsay MacDonald wrote to the
Leicester Daily Post, complaining that a private letter had been leaked to the press and that
his views had been misrepresented in the newspaper:
Sir – I have only just noticed a paragraph in your London Letter of some days ago
commenting imperfectly and unfairly upon a letter which I signed, and which was
sent about a month ago to certain political friends asking if they would support a
movement which would put an end to the policies which made this war inevitable and
which would try to secure a peace that would not repeat the German mistakes of 1870
and leave behind it an unnecessarily great legacy of hate and resentment.
MacDonald went on to explain his position:
Peace, if it is to be anything more than a patched up affair, is to raise anew some of
the questions which have given Europe most trouble, as for instance the position of
Poland. Thousands of men are now flocking to ‘The Colours of Great Britain’ full of
the hope that this is to be the last of the wars, that it is to shatter the power of the
armed priests of the gospel of Force, that from its slaughtering and destitution is to
arise a purified and peaceful Europe. Are the dreams of these men to be laughed at
when, through their sufferings, peace has come? Is the country to deserve them? If
not, peace must be prepared, its politics mapped out and it is just as essential for
national honour and safety that the preparations should now be made as that men
should be trained in arms and hurried to the front.
If we leave all this to the last minute those who see in force the only security and
remedy alone will be ready with their simple plans of cutting and carving, of
punishing and awarding. We shall have every blunder of the last century over again
and every military burden bequeathed to us anew. The canker will then remain in the
heart of Europe. Our sacrifices will have been in vain, and our children will have to
tramp over the same battlefields and repeat the price we ourselves are now paying for
the short sighted follies which have been our inheritance. 19
But his views were deeply unpopular in a country caught up in a fervour of patriotism and
anti-German rhetoric. MacDonald became a figure of hate, ostracised, reviled and regarded
18
Elliott, Malcolm Opposition to the First World War: The Fate of Conscientious Objectors in Leicester
https://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/05_7799_vol77_Elliott.pdf
19
Leicester Daily Post, 21 September 1914
12
as little less than a traitor. On 1st October 1914, The Times published a leading article entitled
‘Helping the Enemy,’ in which it was claimed that ‘no paid agent of Germany had served her
better than MacDonald had done.’20 He was heckled, jeered and physically attacked when he
spoke at public meetings. Hostile crowds sabotaged his speeches, and on more than one
occasion in Leicester, following a meeting in the market place, he had to make a ‘hasty and
ignominious retreat under police escort to a waiting motor car.’ 21
The recruitment drive gained pace. The power of peer pressure in young men was exploited
at recruiting rallies, and in pubs and music halls. Appeals made to ‘masculine pride’ were
potent in a society where to be ’manly’ involved physical strength, bravery and patriotism. It
was their duty, men were told, to protect women. Vesta Tilley, a music hall celebrity of the
time performed at the Palace Theatre, singing ‘Jolly good luck to the girl who loves a
soldier.’ A moral panic in the press about ‘khaki fever’ perhaps persuaded some men of the
advantages of a uniform. Posters asked, ‘Women of Leicester - Is your best boy wearing
khaki?’ Women were encouraged to act as unofficial recruiters, cajoling and shaming men
into joining up. If they couldn’t fight themselves, the popular newspapers and national
propaganda told them, the next best thing was to persuade reluctant men. Humiliation was a
powerful tool. Women in the White Feather movement handed white feathers to any man
who looked to be of military age, regardless of their circumstances. Alice Hannah, recorded
by the Leicester Oral History project at the age of 82, remembered:
I was still at school, twelve, I think. There used to be recruiting officers on different
corners, recruiting and asking the men to join up, and as it went on they tried to force
them because the ladies were going about handing the men white feathers, making
believe they were cowards. And of course they had to do, then. 22
Belgian refugees began to arrive in Leicester in September 1914, and the Leicester Daily
Mercury of the 21st of that month published an article headed ‘OUTRAGES IN BELGIUM.’
While there were undoubtedly atrocities, the details were sensationalised as part of the
propaganda effort. In a shockingly graphic piece, which was published nationwide, it was
claimed, in a letter from a British nurse, that German soldiers had killed patients and raped
nurses in a Belgian hospital. But on 29th September the Leicester Daily Mercury, in an article
headed ‘BOGUS ATROCITY CASE – ACCUSED REMANDED,’ reported: ‘At Dumfries
today Kate Hume, aged 17, a clerk, who is under arrest on a charge of uttering a forged letter
which purported to be written by her sister Nurse Grace Hume, was brought before the Hon.
Sheriff.’ The stories, whatever their truth, were successful in generating a national sense of
outrage and an obligation that Great Britain should take a moral stance to protect the ‘little
20
http://spartacus-educational.com/PRmacdonald.htm
21
Beazley, Ben, Four Years Remembered Leicester During the Great War, Breedon Books Derby 1999, p. 31
22
East Midlands Oral History Archive, EMOHA, 768, LO/132/083, A. Hannah.
13
country.’ Appeals were made to men to protect not only Belgian women, but their own
mothers, sisters, sweethearts, and wives from the ‘barbaric hun.’
Charles Monk, recorded in 1989, described the personal impact of the propaganda:
I was brought up in a very good nonconformist home. My mother said I wasn’t to
fight boys at school. It’s wrong, she said. You could perhaps win, but it would be
because you were the best fighter, not because you’re in the right. And it’s the wrong
way of solving these things. Yet in spite of all that atmosphere that I was brought up
with, when they’d got all this propaganda...I was turned eighteen and I went and
enlisted. If only we could make our class think more. I remember hearing Philip
Snowden say ‘One of our troubles is this: our class do with our thinking what the rich
do with their washing – they put it out for somebody else to do.’ And there’s a large
element of truth in that today. 23
Many young men, despite opposing the war, felt the pressure to participate in some way. The
Quakers offered a practical solution. Within a few days of war being declared they set up The
Friends’ Ambulance Unit. Philip Baker appealed for volunteers in The Friend, the Quaker
publication, of August 21st. A Leicester man, Arthur Gravely, who had spent many years as a
member of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade, became a training officer. Early in September
about sixty young men attended the first training camp at the Quaker Headquarters at
Jordans, in Buckinghamshire. Among the first recruits was Corder Catchpool. He was born at
5 Saxe-Coburg Street, which was in 1919 anglicised to become Saxby Street. His family was
Quaker, and as a child he would have joined them in worship at the Friends Meeting house,
then in nearby Prebend Street.
Initially neither the military nor the Red Cross were willing to work with a group of what
they regarded as ‘amateur pacifists,’ but lack of military medical support for the troops
forced their hand when the Belgian Army collapsed in October 1914. A group of 43 men, led
by Philip Baker and including Corder Catchpool, left for Belgium. Their initiation into the
war was gruelling. On the channel crossing to Dunkirk, they came across a boat which had
been torpedoed. They rescued the survivors and took them back to Dover. They returned
immediately to Dunkirk and as soon as they arrived they were requested to work as dressers.
They spent three weeks in the military evacuation sheds, looking after several thousand
wounded soldiers until they could be evacuated to hospital ships. 24 A collection of letters
written by Catchpool during the war was first published as On Two Fronts in 1918. In an
early letter he described his experience:
(There were) two huge goods sheds, semi-dark, every inch of floor space - quais, rails,
everywhere covered with the flimsy French stretchers, so that in places you had to
23
East Midlands Oral History Archive, EMOHA, 694, LO/061/012, C. Monk.
24
http://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/252
14
step on them to get about – and on each stretcher, a wounded man – desperately
wounded, nearly every one. The air heavy with the stink of putrid flesh, and thick
with groans and cries....consider this man..with bits of bone floating in a pool of pus
that fills up with great hole in his flesh, laughing bitterly when I turn away to vomit,
overcome by the stench of sepsis. ..we work on through the night...the priests touch
more than we.....men are dying on all sides.
At dawn they loaded the hospital ships. As well as those casualties on stretchers, more
arrived on vans. Catchpool wrote:
I shall never forget the sight of a blinded German, last man to leave the truck. The
French NCO shouted at him to get out, and he sprang up, staggering towards the open
door and that drop of several feet on to the stones, arms sweeping the air in front, and
I just saved him from falling.25
His daughter, Annette Wallis, who lives in Leicester, described how his skills as a translator
were invaluable as he spoke French fluently. As well as driving ambulances and caring for
mainly French and Belgian soldiers in hospitals, he also cared for Belgian civilians who were
starving and sick. He was later awarded a Mons Ribbon in recognition of his work with the
FAU in 1914. He wrote:
It is an honour to be able to succour the wounded and suffering, and in so far as the
ribbon symbolises that (which for me to some extent it does,) it is precious and I
value it. But I hold it a greater honour to have been called to witness for the cause of
Peace and for that I shall wear no ribbon. 26
In Leicester, recruitment levels had fallen sharply after the initial wave of enthusiasm. In
September and October appeals were made for 10,000 men, but only 5,000 men responded to
the call.27 Ramsay MacDonald’s links to Leicester were well documented in the press, and
Ben Beazley, who wrote Leicester During the Great War, published in 1999, was not
sympathetic to his reputation. He wrote, ‘Many Leicester volunteers on their arrival at the
Front were vilified by other men in the trenches when it was discovered whence they came.’28
But there would have been many men in Leicester and across the country who resisted
joining up. A natural abhorrence at the prospect of killing another human being may have
combined with a reluctance to leave families to cope on a paltry service allowance, and
possibly be left to struggle on a widow’s pension. In Leicester, men had the opportunity to
25
Catchpool, T. Corder, On Two Fronts, First published 1918 by Headley Brothers Publishers Ltd.
26
ibid .p.175
27
http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Pacifists/story-21938819-detail/story.html#ixzz3plLMQajJ , accessed 30
December 2015
28
Beazley, Ben, Leicester During the Great War, Derby, Breedon Books, 1999, p.16
15
support their families and ‘do their bit’ by applying for war work. For some, for the first time
in their lives, they were able to earn good money. Wages for factory hands were poor, and
before the war slumps in demand had meant that in both the boot and shoe and hosiery
industries, workers were regularly put on short time or dismissed. War contracts to supply
boots and uniforms for the army had come through by early September, and local factories
were put on full time. Workers were offered war bonuses in return for twelve hour shifts.
Before the war, ‘taking the King’s Shilling’ had been regarded as a last resort for many
unemployed men. Thomas Redfern, recorded on Leicester oral archives, recalled, ‘Army pay
for an infantry man was a shilling a day, 3/6 went back to wife, plus a small grant, a pittance
to help her carry on.’29 Many young unmarried men were also making a vital contribution to
the household economy, helping to support elderly relatives and younger siblings in what
were often very large families. It was becoming clear that many families of those in the
Regular Army, the reservists and the volunteers who had enlisted were left struggling
financially as the meagre army allowances were delayed by the massive amount of
bureaucracy necessary to set up the system.
Nationally, recruitment had also fallen, and it was clear that the number of men volunteering
was highly unlikely to meet Kitchener’s demands. There was discussion of conscription
being introduced, although few at this point believed that it would actually be put in place. In
the autumn of 1914 at the suggestion of his wife, Lilla, Fenner Brockway, editor of the
strongly anti-war ILP newspaper Labour Leader, invited those who were not prepared to take
part in military service to contact him. Three hundred men responded and the ‘No
Conscription Fellowship’ was set up in November 1914. Most of the administrative work was
done by Lilla Brockway. Its Statement of Faith declared it an organisation of men ‘who will
refuse from conscientious motives to bear arms, because they consider human life to be
sacred and cannot therefore assume the responsibility of inflicting death.’ Membership
rapidly grew to 10,000; initially they were all men, but as they were arrested for resisting
conscription, women would take on key roles.
Canon Donaldson, Minister of St Mark’s Church in Leicester was also an outspoken critic of
the war. He was a Christian Socialist and had been a leader of the Unemployed March in
1905. His parish was one of the most deprived in Leicester and he saw at first hand how
young disadvantaged men were enthralled by the prospect of a few months’ adventure and
the opportunity to be a ‘hero.’ Many, however, were rejected on health grounds as they were
underweight and unfit, and childhood malnutrition had contributed to the long term effects of
rickets, disease and poor dental health. In November 1914, Donaldson declared ‘War betrays
the innocent, crushes the weak, violates purity, destroys and devastates fair and noble cities
and wrecks their habitations.’ He pleaded that ‘the heroism and courage evoked cannot
compensate for the terrible sins of war,’ and he declared his conviction that, ‘the real sin of
the church is not that she allows war, but that she tolerates the state of things that leads to
29
East Midlands Oral Archives, EMOHA, 698, LO/065/016, T. Redfern.
16
war.’30 An inter-denominational Christian pacifist association, The Fellowship of
Reconciliation, was set up as a result of a conference in Cambridge in December 1914,
initially with about 130 members. Reverend Beddow, Minister of Wycliffe Congregational
Church, chaired the Leicester branch.
Casualties continued to grow and by Christmas 1914, 100,000 British families were grieving
for loved ones lost in the conflict. 31 On the Western Front the British Expeditionary Force
had suffered 90% casualties. 32 Replacements were desperately needed. On Friday 29th
January 1915, 900 men from the 4th Battalion Leicestershire Territorial Reserve left Leicester
for the Western Front. It was the last of the large contingents to leave. The army was facing a
crisis as too few men were recruiting to replace the losses, and it was of particular concern in
Leicester. In March 1915 Alderman Tollington declared at a Council meeting that, ‘There is
great consternation that recruiting in Leicester is below the national average.’ He deplored
‘the scanty response of Leicester men to the recruiting appeals’ and quoted the statistics to
prove his point At Newcastle, 18.5 % of the population have joined the colours, at Nottingham 18.5,
at Swansea 10.5, at Wakefield 7.6, at Hull 7.1, at Manchester 6.7, at Sheffield 6.7, at
Leeds 5.5, at Derby 5.2, at Bradford 4.1, at Oldham 4.0, at Leicester 2.6. 33
Many had become sceptical about the patriotic speeches and the military spectacles. News of
deaths were published weekly in the Leicester Mercury, with photographs of the deceased,
along with lists of casualties. Twice weekly convoys of wounded men arrived at the Midland
Station on London Road, to be taken to the 5th Northern General Hospital, on the site of what
is now the University of Leicester. Convalescent servicemen were a familiar sight in the
town, distinctive in their ‘Hospital Blue’ uniforms. Some were being pushed in invalid
carriages, some had crutches, others were heavily bandaged. Alice Hannah recalled:
At first I thought it was exciting....(and then).. those that first came back on leave, it
was terrible, they’d do anything not to have to go back again, (There was a soldier,)
he wanted to have his fingers cut off, you know the trigger finger so he wouldn’t have
to go back, but he did, (and) he said it was awful in the trenches, men’s bodies that
had been blown up.34
Another contributor to the oral archive remembered:
30
Elliott, Malcolm Opposition to the First World War: The Fate of Conscientious Objectors in Leicester
https://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/05_7799_vol77_Elliott.pdf
31
Snow, Dan, Voices of the Great War BBC Radio 4, 25 December 2014.
32
Macdonald, Lyn 1915, The Death of Innocence, Penguin, 1993, page vii.
33
Beazley, Ben, Leicester During the Great War, Derby, Breedon Books, 1999 p. 40
34
EMOHA Alice Hannah http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15407coll1/id/72/rec/1
17
Sam Smalley came home from the office once and said, “We’ve volunteered,” and my
mother looked at him and she said, “You’ve what?” He’d joined the Yeomanry. His
pal died at Ypres, in the May battle. My brother found out that when they were
coming over the bridge, the bridge blew up with a bomb and the soldiers were just
coming over, and he was one of them, his pal like, and he went back over and threw
his big overcoat over him. He said you couldn’t recognise his face or anything, but he
recognised him from something else he was wearing. 35
By 21st January 1915, Corder Catchpool was questioning his role in the Friends Ambulance
Unit. He wrote:
I turn away, sick at heart, and go to bed and think that (the soldiers,) with all the
sublimity of their sacrifice, are dupes; we, dupes; all the world dupes of the handful of
charlatans who make wars, exploiting, trading upon those nether traits of human
nature. “Your country needs you,” cry armament manufacturers, Junkers, Chauvinists,
well knowing that at that cry millions of hearts that beat true and honest will begin
the beat proudly and courageously with millions of men who go out to slay their
brothers.36
He was not alone in his views. Harry Patch, who did not speak of the war until he was over
one hundred years old, remembered:
You used to look between the fire and apertures and all you could see was a couple of
stray dogs out there, fighting over a biscuit that they’d found. They were fighting for
their lives. And the thought came to me – well, there they are, two animals out there
fighting over a dog biscuit, the same as we get to live. They were fighting for their
lives. I said, ‘We are two civilised nations - British and German - and what were we
doing? We were in a lousy, dirty trench fighting for our lives? For what? For
eighteen pence a flipping day. 37
He recalled that some of those in the trenches actively avoided killing. He described a friend
and comrade in the trenches: ‘I never knew Bob to use that [Lewis] gun to kill. If he used that
gun at all, it was about two feet off the ground and he would wound them in the legs. He
wouldn’t kill them if he could help it.’38
He also described his own aversion to killing:
35
EMOHA Mrs Souter http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/cdm/ref/collection/p15407coll1/id/51
36
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 80
37
38
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/last_tommy_gallery_03.shtml
ibid
18
(A German soldier) came to me with a rifle and a fixed bayonet. He had no
ammunition, otherwise he could have shot us. He came towards us. I had to bring him
down. First of all, I shot him in the right shoulder. He dropped the rifle and the
bayonet. He came on. His idea, I suppose, was to kick the gun if he could into the
mud, so making it useless. But anyway, he came on and for our own safety, I had to
bring him down. I couldn’t kill him. He was a man I didn’t know. I didn’t know his
language. I couldn’t talk to him. I shot him above the ankle, above the knee. He said
something to me in German. God knows what it was. But for him the war was over. 39
Frank Hayes, from Hinckley, also recalled that his father, Harry, who was in the
Leicestershire Yeomanry, described how he and other men in the trenches would aim
upwards, to avoid hitting the German soldiers, or would aim at their legs. 40
Ramsay MacDonald, although he had resigned the party leadership, remained MP for
Leicester. On 1st March 1915 he addressed his constituents at Westcotes;
I have no love of war; but let there be no misunderstanding about the position, once
war was declared and our brothers went out obedient to the call of duty they had got
to be supported. If you had seen the men as I have seen them, going into the trenches
and laying down their lives, you would have felt that the moment the declaration of
war was made, controversies about its origin had to be put into the background. 41
Corder Catchpool also had a great deal of respect for soldiers and in his letters home he
described how he was proud to wear khaki. He understood the visceral thrill of firing a
weapon: ‘Once I stood by the “soixante-quinze” that was firing on the enemy. The officer in
charge invited me to pull the cord, and it was only the second impulse of thought that stayed
the first impulse of interest and excitement.’42 He wrote about having to tend German soldiers
‘by stealth,’ but he also came across great compassion in the army medical staff:
I was delighted the other day to see how very kindly one of the nurses was treating a
wounded German, and I asked her if she liked nursing them. The reply should be
shouted over Europe. It will certainly remain with fragrance in my mind. The pretty
French shrug, and “Il est blesse; que voulez-vous?” 43
39
40
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/last_tommy_gallery_03.shtml
Conversation with Frank Hayes 20 December 2015
41
Elliott, Malcolm, Opposition to the First World War:The Fate of Conscientious Objectors in Leicester
http://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/05_7799_vol77_Elliott.pdf
42
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015, p.79
43
‘He is wounded. What would you like me to do? ‘Catchpool, T. Corder, On Two Fronts First published 1918
by Headley Brothers Publishers Ltd. p. 36
19
He described his experiences on the Western Front:
30th April 1915, at the 2nd Battle Ypres
At night we were creeping silently out to the postes de secours just behind the
trenches, with our smaller cars, where the shells crashed startlingly, and the bombes
eclairantes threw up black shadows, like moonlight, drawing the bullets.... The lanes
were blocked by piles of earth thrown up by shells exploding in the ditch, or pits dug
by them exploding on the pave. One dodged the holes and tore away the earth with
hands and feet, and bumped on bottom gear over the debris to the accompaniment of
groans within. Fires raged everywhere, glaring in the sky at night. Soldiers lined the
hedges. Dusty men, wounded, tired out men, straggled and tottered back from the
lines. Barbed wire sprung up everywhere. Regiments wandered about lost. Meadows
suddenly became packed with horses; villages swarmed with troops, guns, material;
then suddenly emptied, because something had happened and one realised the purpose
of those sinister fireballs. Under the hot sun by day, the growing moon by night, the
soldiers marched up, dusty, tired, Canadians, Tommies, Zoaves, Poilus, all filing
silently across the fields, dustily along the roads, towards the hell that raged ahead,
asking one, in a whisper, how far it was to the trenches, from which probably they
would never return. It was hell. That was the word on everyone’s lips, in one’s own
mind .....
Then they started shelling the ambulance itself. The garden was pocked with holes,
the room we live in strewn with debris the kitchen car was riddled, but we went on
working, no vital part being touched, except for the Oxo boiler, which was holed, and
which we could only half fill now. ..A considerable number of German wounded
came into the ambulance one night. I talked to them, one I asked about the supply of
provisions in his native land (after tasting a bit of his “Kriegsbrot,” which I found not
at all bad.) He said he had been away from home so many months without news that
he had no idea of the state of things. Another elderly man attracted my attention by
his pleasant, pensive face. I told him that I was sick and tired of the war. “I think we
are all tired of it,” was his reply with a wistful smile. As I handed a cigarette to
another he shot me a look of surprise, and cried to his companion, “See, the English
do not hate us.” “Do you hate the English?” we asked. “No, I think the Kaiser and the
King and the Czar ought to fight out their quarrels by themselves and leave us poor
men alone.” The French doctors and the brancardiers were kind to them, poor,
terribly mangled human suffering bodies, all the hate going out if it were ever really
there – who could help loving them, or at least pitying them? 44
The FAU set up their administrative headquarters nearby, at Malo les Bains. There was a
virulent typhoid epidemic that winter, which led to the establishment of the first of four
hospitals, the Queen Alexandra, at Dunkirk. A programme of civilian relief was set up, and
44
Catchpool, T. Corder, On Two Fronts First published 1918 by Headley Brothers Publishers Ltd. p.79
20
the ambulance convoys operated in both military and civilian hospitals. In 1915 they
introduced ambulance trains, and by early 1916 they also had two hospital ships.
While most Quakers held to their peace testimony, about one third of the young men enlisted
in the army in WW1. It was regarded as a matter for individual conscience, and some saw it
as a just war in which they were willing to serve. The Quakers supported them in whatever
decision they took, but in 1915 at their yearly meeting they agreed to a statement which
implicitly advocated a refusal to fight:
Christ demands of us that we adhere, without swerving, to the methods of love, and
therefore, if a seeming conflict should arise between the claims of His service, it is to
Christ that our supreme loyalty must be given, whatever the consequences. We should
however remember that whatever is our highest loyalty to God and humanity is at the
same time the highest loyalty that we can render to our nation. 45
Because of their historic legacy of pacifism on religious grounds, the Government were
prepared to make Quakers a ‘special case’ and allow them exemption from combatant duties.
In the Leicester Mercury of 31st May 1916, a parliamentary debate was reported in which
Colonel Yates, a military representative, spoke against allowing conscientious objectors to
perform non-combatant services. He made an exception of Quakers, however, whom ‘they all
recognised to be conscientious objectors.’ He went on ‘but those men who were not Quakers
had no right to shirk their duty to their country, and he hoped when the next Registration Bill
was proposed they would take care that every one of these men should be disfranchised’ 46
This divisive proposal was abhorrent to Quakers; while recognising the right of the relatively
small number of Quakers, the larger number of Conscientious Objectors who came from
other religious and political positions would be refused exemption. The strategy failed
because many Quakers were also socialists and members of the No Conscription Fellowship
and they were determined ‘to unite ourselves to the fullest extent with all conscientious
objectors.’ 47
Despite the millions of men who had volunteered, massive losses on the Western Front meant
that more and more men were needed to replace casualties. It was also becoming clear that
this was to be a war of attrition which would last for a very long time, and conscription was
becoming more likely. The No Conscription Fellowship in its manifesto, published in the
Spring of 1915, stated:
We have been brought to this standpoint by many ways. Some of us have reached it
through the Christian faith… Others have found it by association with international
movements; we believe in the solidarity of the human race, and we cannot betray the
45
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 29
46
Elliott, Malcolm, Opposition to the First World War: The Fate of Conscientious Objectors in Leicester
https://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/05_7799_vol77_Elliott.pdf
47
ibid
21
ties of brotherhood which bind us to one another through the nations of the world. All
of us...believe in the value and sacredness of human personality, and are prepared to
sacrifice as much in the cause of the world’s peace as our fellows are sacrificing in the
cause of the nation’s war.48
Membership by this time had become so large it was necessary to open an office in London,
where Clifford Allen took over the administration. He had become a socialist at Cambridge
University and later worked as a manager on the first Labour Party newspaper, the Daily
Citizen.
Ramsay MacDonald continued to be vilified in the local and national press. In the Hinckley
Times and Bosworth Herald the regular contributor to the weekly ‘Lines from Leicester’
feature was particularly vitriolic. On 10th April 1915, MacDonald was depicted in a cartoon
as a statue in German uniform with a Pickelhauber helmet, and smoking a meerschaum pipe.
The caption was, ‘Herr Macdonaldstein - Design for statue to take the place of “The Duke” in
Leicester Market Place.’
The article read:
Macdonaldstein not only maligns his countrymen on every possible occasion by
accusing them, directly or indirectly, of duplicity, falsehood, treachery, cruelty and
every other crime in the national decalogue, but he also goes out of his way to palliate
the obvious misdeeds of the enemy, and to compound his felonies by promises of
comfort and support after the war is over. He is a very artful dodger in all this because
he pretends all the time to be a British patriot. Thus, by running with the hare and
hunting with the hounds he expects to be at the right side at the finish, whatever the
outcome of the war. 49
It went on:
The free and independent, if not over intelligent electors of The Borough, are
beginning to write to the papers demanding that action be taken to enforce Ramsay
von Macdonaldstein’s retirement from the misrepresentation of Leicester in the House
of Commons and in the eyes of the world. I know life-long Radicals who have had
occasion, since the war broke out, to feel ashamed of admitting they are Leicester
men. One chap, who went to France to secure a contract for the supply of goods to the
French army, told me that he should never forget the look of contempt with which the
Frenchman received his announcement that he hailed from Leicester. It made him
squirm.
In the same month the Daily Express led a campaign against the UDC. It printed ‘Wanted’
posters of Edmund Morel, Ramsay MacDonald and Norman Angell. Edmund Morel was
48
49
http://digital.nls.uk/great-war/schools/downloads/conscientious-objectors-case-study.pdf
Hinckley Times and Bosworth Herald, 10 April 1915
22
particularly targeted because of his activities in writing pamphlets and leaflets. Under
headings such as: 'Who is E. D. Morel? And Who Pays for his Pro-German Union?’ it
suggested that the UDC was working for the German government. The Daily Express also
listed details of future UDC meetings and encouraged its readers to go and break-up them
up.50
In July 1915 the Government took the first steps towards conscription; all men between the
ages of 15 and 65 who were not already in the military were required to register.
Arrangements were set up to organise the recording of information. In Leicester 540
volunteer enumerators were appointed, and plans for premises all over town to be designated
as Recruiting and Attestation centres were put in place. It was a massive administrative task.
Even children helped in the collection of data and locally Medway Street School pupils and
teachers sorted the forms at the assembly rooms. All men considered to be fit for the army
were to ‘attest’ their willingness to serve. Those who wished to join the Colours could do so
immediately, while others could continue in their employment until required. Those who
attested were divided into 46 groups according to age, marital status and employment.
Assurances were given that married men would not be called upon until all available single
men had been called up. But it was clear from the outset that there were never going to be
enough single men to fill the quota. In mid November 1915 Ramsay MacDonald, speaking at
Mantle Road School, warned his audience that Lord Derby had originally asked for 30,000
men a week with the rider that failure would bring about conscription. In his opinion, he said,
this was a smokescreen and the government would not be satisfied until every man had
enlisted. 51
The NCF established a network of branches across the country, including Leicester, to fight
against the threatened military service bill. A resolution was passed at the end of their
convention in November 1915. As pressure to enlist was at its height and conscription was
imminent, the NCF stated its commitment to support all Conscientious Objectors:
We the delegates and members of the No Conscription Fellowship, assembled in
National Conference, fully conscious of the attempt that may be made to impose
conscription on this country, recognising that such a system must destroy the sanctity
of life, betray the free conditions of our country, and hinder its social and industrial
emancipation, though realising the grave consequences to ourselves that may follow
our decision, hereby solemnly and sincerely reaffirm our intention to resist
conscription, whatever the penalties may be. 52
50
http://spartacus-educational.com/TUmorel.htm accessed 30 December 2015
51
Beazley, Ben, Leicester During the Great War, Derby, Breedon Books, 1999, p. 95
52
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 46
23
The Leicester branch met at the Cafe Vegetaria at 2 Cheapside, near the market place.
Horace Twilley was its first secretary; he was a Conscientious Objector and Socialist. The
youngest brother of the suffragist and poet Gertrude Richardson, he came from a radical
working class family. Membership of the Fellowship of Reconciliation was also increasing
rapidly. By November 1915 over 1500 members were attending 55 branches in the UK,
including those meeting at Wycliffe Congregational Church.
Conscription was moving ever closer. The government issued a statement on 12th November
that, ‘If recruiting figures are not met by 30th November then compulsory measures will be
taken. No marriage contracted since the compilation of the Register will be recognised as
changing the status of a previously single man.’ 53 In late 1915 volunteering rates went up in
Leicester and elsewhere. The message was ‘volunteer or be conscripted.’ By attesting their
willingness to serve at some time in the future, perhaps many hoped to postpone their
conscription and defer military service. 54 Some, like Bert Orton, a Leicester secularist, joined
the Royal Army Medical Corps. to avoid being in a combatant unit. In January 1916 the
Military Service Act was passed, despite the enormous campaign which had been waged
against it, with over a million leaflets distributed, and many deputations to the House of
Commons. Exemptions were allowed for those whose work was essential to the war effort,
those whose absence would bring exceptional hardship to dependents, and those who were
medically unfit for service. Teachers and clergymen were also exempted. As a concession to
the vigorous opposition to the Bill by Quaker and ILP MPs, a ‘Conscience Clause’ allowed
exemption for those with a ‘conscientious objection’ to active participation in the war.
Protests against its introduction continued and in April 1916 over 200,000 people
demonstrated in Trafalgar Square.
The NCF published a ‘Repeal the Act’ leaflet which stated
Conscription …involves the subordination of civil liberties to military dictation; it
imperils the freedom of individual conscience and establishes in our midst…
militarism. …We cannot assist in warfare. War … will only be made impossible when
men who so believe remain steadfast to their convictions. Conscience …has been
placed at the mercy of tribunals… we cannot accept any exemption that would
compel those who hate war to kill by proxy or set them to tasks which would help in
the furtherance of war.55
Eight of the authors of the leaflet, including Fenner Brockway and Clifford Allen, were
charged and convicted under the Defence of the Realm Act. Printing and distributing the
53
Beazley, Ben, Leicester During the Great War, Derby, Breedon Books, p.93
54
Pearce, Cyril, Comrades in Conscience, The Story of an English Community’ s Opposition to the Great War,
Francis Boutle, London, 2001, p.116
55
http://www.ppu.org.uk/nomoreNews/worksheets/ws3/worksheet03sources.html, accessed 30 December
2015
24
leaflet was judged to be working to obstruct the government’s attempts to impose
conscription and was deemed illegal. Five refused to pay the £100 fine and were imprisoned.
Ramsay MacDonald continued to speak out against the government’s handling of the war. At
the 1916 annual May Day rally of Leicester Trades Council in the Market Place he raised
the issue of the financial cost of the war, pointing out that compared with two years
previously the sovereign was now worth 11s 2d – half its previous value. If the war continued
for a further 18 months, he said, the National Debt would be in the region of £4billion, a sum
which those present and their children’s generation would have to pay. He was heckled and
physically threatened. Fighting broke out, and he apologised to the police for the behaviour
of opposition parties in the crowd. 56
As conscription came into effect all single men between 18 and 41 had to attest their
willingness to be called up if and when necessary. There were far more applications for
exemption than expected because all eligible men were compelled to enlist or be treated as a
war time deserter. This included all those who were already exempted by the act, and even
those who had tried to enlist but had been rejected. In June conscription was extended to
married men between 18 and 41. Local Military Tribunals were set up for every District
Council. Leicester’s were held at the Town Hall twice a week, with up to sixty cases being
heard in a day. Most of those appearing before the Tribunals were those who sought
exemption because of essential work, and they were often supported by their employers who
were desperate not to lose skilled workers. Local factories were keeping the military supplied
with boots, uniforms and munitions. Clickers, sole cutters, lasting machine and screwing
machine operators in the boot and shoe trade were given reserved occupations status and the
right to wear the ‘War Work’ badge. But many applicants were given only temporary
exemption of fourteen days, or sometimes a month, to give their employers time to make
‘other arrangements.’ Agricultural workers were usually exempted as it was recognised that
production of food was a key factor in the war effort, and farmers pleaded that no more
agricultural workers could be spared for the front as food shortages caused by German
blockades of shipping were worsening.
The Tribunals were supposed to reflect local public opinion and to include at least one
representative of ‘Labour,’ for example from a Trade Union, or Trades Council but this
wasn’t always the case. Rather than ‘fair minded citizens,’ the Tribunals were more likely to
be made up of ‘elderly local businessmen, former civil servants, policemen, clergymen and
the owners of large shops, all members of the middle classes.’57
Ned Newitt, a Leicester historian, commented:
56
Beazley, Ben, Leicester During the Geat War, Breedon Books, Derby, 1999 p.26
57
Moorehead, C. Troublesome People – Enemies of War 1916 – 1986 (1987) p.31, quoted in Pearce, Cyril,
Comrades in Conscience, The Story of an English Community’s Opposition to the Great War, Francis Boutle,
London, 2001 p, 139
25
My grandfather, Edward James Newitt ...served on the tribunals (in Southend)
through the First World War. ..He was gung ho for the war, (a) great jingoist. I know
he was very enthusiastic about sending as many people to the Front as possible no
matter how ill they were or how motivated they were to go. 58
Decisions made by tribunals were often arbitrary and inconsistent and seemed to have
depended on personal views and social contacts. At Hinckley, Captain Bedingfield, the local
Tribunal’s Military representative, took a consistently hard line. A ‘clicker’ in the shoe trade
who said he supported each of his grandparents with 2/6d a week and had a wife who was
almost blind, was told ‘there must be hundreds of thousands of men in the army whose case
was as hard, but all had to put up with some little hardship in these days.’ He was given
fourteen days to ‘make arrangements.’ In contrast Frank Kelly, a Leicester businessman was
allowed to do Work of National Importance in a local boot factory, as his wife was disabled.
Farriers were exempt, and a ‘stableman and second horseman’ employed by Captain
Forrester, Master of the Quorn Hunt was given exemption on the grounds that his services
were necessary to preserve the hunt as a business ‘because it had a direct influence on the
breeding of light horses’ and anything which retarded this ‘would jeopardise the supply
needed for the army.’59 The need for more men to replace the huge numbers of casualties
was gaining in pace, and employers and employees alike were shocked by the announcement
that from 25th September 1916 boot and shoe repairing and manufacturing would no longer
be a reserved occupation for any single or married man under 25.
Those who opposed conscription because of religious, political or ethical reasons were given
short shrift. Accounts of the tribunals of the majority of conscientious objectors almost
always end with the words ‘Appeal dismissed’ or ‘Defendant handed over to the military
authorities.’ A military representative sat on the tribunal and in the very rare cases where
absolute exemptions were granted on grounds of conscience they were usually appealed by
the military and overturned by the County appeal tribunal. 60
There was very little guidance offered to tribunals. Walter Long, President of the Local
Government Board advised them to ‘recognise only genuine religious or moral convictions.’
Consequently there were wide variations on interpretation. While Quakers were mostly
regarded as ‘genuine’ COs, there were questions raised over the validity of any other cases.
Socialist COs were particularly suspect as some did not oppose all war. They would agree to
fight in what they regarded as a ‘just war’ but they did not regard the current war as ‘just.’
There was also widespread confusion about the exact terms of the ‘conscience clause.’ It was
ambiguous, and it could have been interpreted as meaning that absolute exemption from
58
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World
War One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 50
59
Elliott, Malcolm, Opposition to the First World War: The Fate of Conscientious Objectors in Leicester
https://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/05_7799_vol77_Elliott.pdf
60
ibid
26
military service could be granted to ‘all kinds of claimants including conscientious objectors
or, alternatively, to all kinds of claimants except conscientious objectors.’ 61
In theory the aim of the tribunals was to impartially judge appeals for exemption from
military service. In practice some were intent on bullying, intimidating or shaming applicants
into giving up their pacifist stance. It was a daunting prospect, even for those used to
speaking at political or religious meetings. Amos Mann conducted the defence of many local
men. He was the President of the Leicester Anchor Boot and Shoe Production Society, an
active and influential workers’ co-operative, and he was also a member of the Church of
Christ. Together with the local organiser of the ILP for Leicester and Leicestershire, Walter
Borrett, he helped hundreds of men in tribunals, including the Payne brothers from
Lutterworth and the Poole brothers from Desford, who were all religious objectors. 62 While
the age of conscription was 18, the average age of COs was late 20’s, perhaps because older
‘young men’ were likely to have more confidence, and be more established in political or
religious beliefs. They were also more likely to be married and have children and not want to
risk their family’s future by fighting in a war they opposed.
For many men, their religious and socialist ideals were not necessarily separate. COs often
emphasised religion as the moving force behind their pacifism because those making
judgements were less likely to sympathise with political motivation. But the lack of solid
support by the Free Churches meant that many individuals were left to stand up to the
military authorities on their own. Although there were many in the Churches who opposed
Britain’s involvement in the war, once it had been declared most supported the military
action. Conscientious Objectors were left with the difficulty of proving religious doctrine,
especially if they belonged to churches with a divided response. Simply citing religious
conviction or ‘my conscience’ was not enough. Religious objectors had to prove long term
regular attendance at a place of worship, and the support of ministers. For many that support
was not forthcoming and some felt so let down by their churches that they never returned.
Peter Davies was a conscientious objector from Cheshire. His granddaughter, Mary
Walmsley, now living at Houghton on the Hill, near Leicester, recalled,
All I know is what my mother told me that as a young man he had become confirmed
in the Church of England and then he was arrested in 1916 and taken to the police
station at Great Sankey which was opposite the church, and he was jeered by a crowd
of people which included the local vicar and apparently he never forgave the church
for this because he believed that “thou shalt not kill.” 63
61
Pearce, Cyril, Comrades in Conscience, The Story of an English Community’ s Opposition to the Great War,
Francis Boutle, London, 2001, p.138
62
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 62
63
Elliott, Malcolm Opposition to the First World War:The Fate of Conscientious Objectors in Leicester
https://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/05_7799_vol77_Elliott.pdf
27
The largest group of COs in Leicester were Christadelphians; there were nineteen. Because of
their church’s united stance the authorities recognised their position. While not pacifists, they
would not participate in affairs of the world, and would not be involved in politics, or social
or environmental movements. 64 In some religious movements there were irreconcilable
schisms where ministers supported the war, while some members opposed it. Edward
Starling was a CO and a member of the Unitarian community who met at Leicester’s Great
Meeting House on Bond Street. While the majority of Unitarians supported the war, those
who were opposed established the Unitarian Christian Peace Fellowship in 1916, stating their
belief that ‘War and the preparation for war is unreconcilable with the teaching and spirit of
Jesus.’ 65
The Church of Christ had traditionally been a pacifist movement; they had been outspoken in
opposing the Boer War. But at the outbreak of the First World War their position changed.
Lloyd George was a member of the Church of Christ, and as Secretary of State for War, he
summed up the intense hostility that many in Parliament felt for ‘...these absolutists. With
that kind of man,’ he fulminated, ‘I, personally, have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever... I
shall only consider the best means of making the path of that class as hard as possible.’ 66 In
April 1916, seven young Leicester men belonging to the Church of Christ sought total
exemption on grounds of conscience. They were supported by Amos Mann, who had been a
member of the church for forty years and was on the governing executive of the Mother
Church in Leicester, on Crafton Street. He maintained that when he was a young man, if a
member joined the forces, he would have been dealt with by the Church. He said: ‘Almost
every preacher and teacher amongst us has declared war to be contrary to the teaching of
Christ, and . . . many of our churches have even separated young men from their fellowship
for joining the military forces.’67
Mann’s defence of Christian pacifism was challenged by Henry Langton, who was secretary
of the District Committee. He said that the position of most members of the Church of Christ
was ‘More rightly interpreted by his Worship the Mayor, Alderman North, whom we are
honoured in having as one of our esteemed leaders.’ Langton used as an example the 125
local men from the Church who had enlisted. Amos Mann responded by saying that ‘War
was absolutely wrong.... The teaching of Christ said not merely “Love one another,” but
“Love your enemies.” This made it impossible for anyone who was imbued with that
teaching conscientiously to engage in any military service.’ The appeal by the seven men was
refused. 68
64
www.christadelphianresearch.com/conscientiousobjection.htm accessed 30 December 2015
65
http://www.faithandfreedom.org.uk/pdfs/1ST%20WORLD%20WAR001.pdf accessed 30 December 2015
66
http://www.ppu.org.uk/cosnew/cos08.html accessed 30 December 2015
67
Elliott, Malcolm, Opposition to the First World War:The Fate of Conscientious Objectors in Leicester
https://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/05_7799_vol77_Elliott.pdf p. 74
68
ibid
28
Sidney Collins, a warehouseman from 36a Evington Road, and a member of the Church of
Christ, had to face Alderman North himself, as Chair of the Recruiting Committee at his
tribunal. 69He described his experience in a recording, saying, ‘I always remember the
military representative was a bully. He said to me ‘You’re for the Germans.’ I said ‘Me? I’m
not sir, I’m refusing to go to war.’ He was told, ‘We’ve listened to your statements. Your
case is dismissed. Next, please,’ and he was handed over to the military. He recalled: ‘There
were crowds of people waiting outside. Some were friendly, some were hostile. In fact if the
hostile had had their way they’d have slain us. I can hear them now, “Cowards, traitors,
bravo, stick it lads, brava, traitors.” ‘ 70
Of those who opposed the war on ethical or ideological grounds some were trade unionists,
others were socialists, members of the Independent Labour Party, the Union of Democratic
Control, the Secular Society, the Adult School or the Co-operative movement. Shared
principles included support of democracy and civil rights, internationalism, and the solidarity
of working people across the world. They opposed nationalist and imperial wars.
Once they received their call up papers they had to appear before a tribunal to state their
reasons for refusing to fight. Some waited to be ‘fetched’ and were arrested by a civilian
police officer. They appeared at a magistrate’s court on a charge of desertion, were fined
£2.00, to be taken from army pay, and handed over to the military. They would then be taken
under guard to an army barracks to await a Court Martial; the local barracks was at Glen
Parva, Wigston. Any act of defiance, such as refusing to put a uniform on, sign army papers,
agree to a medical or go on parade would result in punishment.
The local Tribunals had the power to either accept or reject a request for exemption on the
grounds of conscientious objection. Most were rejected and the CO would be ordered to join
a combatant unit. He could, however, appeal, which meant that the case went to the County
Tribunal, held in Leicester. In theory it was possible for further appeal, to the Central
Tribunal in London, but only with the County Tribunal’s agreement. Once in the army the
CO had to make the decision as to whether he would accept his position and manage as best
he could, or refuse to obey orders and risk being shot for cowardice.
If a Tribunal accepted an appeal for exemption on grounds of conscience they could allow the
CO ‘Exemption from Combatant Service’ (ECS.) In most cases the CO was ordered to join
the Non-Combatant Corps. For Quakers, and for others who requested it, it was possible that
the Tribunal would agree to them joining the Friends Ambulance Unit, or, very occasionally,
the Royal Army Medical Corps. Those who were ordered to join the NCC also had to make a
decision as to whether they would comply. It was a military unit, which meant wearing a
uniform and obeying military orders. Their duties included working on transport, in stores or
on road or railway maintenance. They were, however, exempted from carrying weapons or
69
Sidney Collins is pictured on the front cover.
70
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015 , p.54
29
taking part in battles. Three thousand or more men accepted service in the NCC and
conformed to the regulations. Most of those were religious COs.
Some COs refused to obey orders, for example, to handle munitions or build rifle ranges, and
were punished. The Commanding Officer of the unit could inflict punishment of up to 28
days’ detention, confinement to barracks, deductions from pay and Field Punishments nos.1
and 2. Field Punishment no.1 involved the offender being attached to a fixed object for up to
two hours a day for a period up to three months, sometimes within range of enemy shell-fire.
In Field Punishment no. 2 the object to which the offender was tied was not fixed. It was
intentionally a very public punishment. For what were regarded as more serious offences the
CO would be referred for a District Court Martial at which sentences of more than 28 days’
imprisonment could be applied. At the first Court Martial the sentence was usually 112 days’
imprisonment with hard labour. At subsequent ones it could be up to two years.
If a Tribunal accepted a CO’s appeal for exemption on grounds of conscience, they could,
alternatively, give him a ‘Conditional Exemption from Combatant Service.’ In that case a CO
was offered Work of National Importance (WNI) which would be approved and monitored
by the Tribunal. Some COs refused to accept work on the grounds it was assisting the war
effort or taking the place of other men who would be sent to fight. If the local Tribunal could
not find the CO work, then his case would be passed on to the Government’s ‘Pelham
Committee,’ who would allocate appropriate work and monitor his progress. It was not
always easy to find employers willing to accept COs; A.J. Hill, a ‘motorman’ from Leicester
was offered work on Brighton trams but Brighton was reluctant to accept him because of ‘the
political views of the inhabitants of Leicester.’71
Many men worked on the land and in food production, while others worked in factories or
hospitals. The Pelham Committee did not want them to appear to be having a soft option,
and Pelham himself stated that his Committee was 'in agreement with the view that men
should be placed in situations that demand some definite sacrifice from them and it is their
practice to place men at some distance from their homes.’ 72
By the summer of 1916 the numbers of COs in prison, around 6,000, caused questions to be
raised in the press and parliament.73 Until May of that year sentences had been served in
military prisons, but there had been brutal treatment of prisoners, notoriously in Birkenhead,
where the Commanding Officer claimed that conscientious objections could be ‘beaten out’
of his ‘new recruits.’ 74 ‘Army Order X’ was introduced at the end of that month and
sentences were then served in civil prisons. It was also brought to public notice in May 1916
71
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 119
72
73
http://lewishamfww.wikidot.com/pelham-committee accessed 30 December 2015
http://www.ppu.org.uk/cosnew/cos14.html accessed 30 December 2015
74
Pearce, Cyril, Comrades in Conscience, The Story of an English Community’ s Opposition to the Great War,
Francis Boutle, London, 2001, p.152
30
that the Central Tribunal had decided that, on re-examination of their cases, 4,378 prisoners
were ‘genuine’ objectors after all, and should not have been in prison. 75
From July 1916 imprisoned COs were offered the opportunity of release from prison on the
condition they entered the ‘Home Office Scheme.’ In the Work Centres and Work Camps set
up by the government, the COs would be engaged in physically gruelling work, but would
live communally and wear civilian clothes. The Scheme divided the anti-war movement.
Some felt that a compromise with the state would weaken resistance to conscription, while
others felt that it was acceptable to work provided it did not further the war effort. The first
Home Office Scheme for Work of National Importance was set up at Dyce near Aberdeen.
John Hickman, a Leicester Congregationalist, was sent there. For ten hours every day except
Sunday the men worked at stone breaking. They transported rocks in wheelbarrows from
mines to crushing machines, and then to the road where they were used for repairs. The men
were malnourished and housed in dilapidated tents rejected by the army as unusable.
Following the death of one of the workers, Ramsay MacDonald visited the camp. In the
House of Commons he described what he found:
It had been raining, raining, raining for days. The roads from the station to the village
were simply huge, swaying, masses of mud. In the tents there was mud...There they
are, with barrows and shovels, trying to do navvies’ work. ..They could not do it.
There is confusion. There is no order. They were soft of muscle, their hands were
blistered, their backs were sore. ..My point is that this was not national work. It was
not useful work.....These men simply felt they were being punished, and that they
were asked to do this because the state wished to punish them. It is sheer folly, it is
waste. If you are going to punish these men, punish them honestly. 76
MP’s were not impressed. ‘We can ill afford in this country, said one, to coddle and
canoodle these people.’ 77There was little sympathy for them, and comparisons were made
with the ongoing Battle of the Somme, where there were to be more than 400,000 casualties
between July and October. In December 1916 a new Code of Rules was agreed with detailed
guidelines about treatment of COs. A work centre was set up in Dartmoor Prison, and another
at Wakefield Prison. Locks were removed from the cell doors, and the COs were allowed to
congregate. Fenner Brockway described the opposition in the NCF between the Absolutists
who rejected the Scheme outright, and the Alternativists:
There was a difference of opinion in our members as to whether alternative service
should be accepted or not. Some took the view that, in wartime, one ought to be ready
to serve society in non-military ways. Others took the view that if one did any service
75
76
77
http://www.ppu.org.uk/cosnew/cos14.html accessed 30 December 2015
ibid
ibid
31
under the Military Conscription Act, and that service was service for the government,
one was in effect serving the war. And there was that division of opinion. 78
The brothers Leonard and Roland Payne, from Lutterworth, were serving sentences in
Durham Jail when they were called to the Central Tribunal in London and offered Work of
National Importance under the Home Office Scheme. Leonard wrote in a letter home: ‘If this
work is against our conscience, or if it prove to be helping the Military we shall still be at
liberty to give it up and come back to prison to finish our sentence.’79 Some did leave the
Schemes, and voluntarily returned to prison and the cycle of court-martials. On release from prison
at the end of a sentence, the CO would be returned to the Army. If he refused an order, he
would be sent for another court martial, and the whole cycle would be repeated.The CO
Information bureau estimated that 6,261 men were arrested for resisting the Military Service
Acts. Of these, 5,973 COs were court martialled, 4,191 of them once, 655 twice, 521 three times,
319 four times, 50 five times, and 3 six times. 80
Local men who endured this regime included brothers Edgar and Ronald Eagle, of Caythorpe
Cottage, Hobson Road, Leicester. They were both Secularists and members of the NCF and
UDC. There was a long family tradition of secularism and radicalism; their father Charles
Eagle had been imprisoned for refusing to have the boys vaccinated against smallpox. Edgar
Eagle had been ordered to join the NCC Northern 3 Unit in June 1916, where he was given
28 days’ Field Punishment no 2 for disobeying orders. In a second Court Martial at Catterick
on 11 April 1917 he was given two years’ hard labour at Wormwood Scrubs. After three
months, however, he was sent to Dartmoor Home Office Scheme. Ronald Eagle spent 56
days in detention in Stafford Barracks for refusing to turn out on parade. After serving time at
Wormwood Scrubs he was also transferred to Dartmoor. Charles Hassell, a tram conductor
from 74 New Park Street was also a Secularist and member of the NCF and ILP. He, too, was
given Field Punishment no. 2 at Glen Parva. At Richmond Castle Court Martial he was given
112 days in Durham Prison but was transferred to the Home Office Scheme after three
months and sent to Warwick, Dartmoor and Knutsford.
In May 1916 Corder Catchpool resigned from the FAU after conscription had been
introduced. He felt that the FAU was working too closely with the army and was indirectly
supporting the war effort rather than simply relieving the suffering of the wounded. He
returned home to work at Woodbrooke Quaker College in Worcestershire, chairing a group
studying International Relations and Reconstruction. He refused to enlist in the
78
http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/podcasts/voices-of-the-first-world-war/podcast-37-conscientious-objection
accessed 30 December 2015
79
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015. p.64
80
Pearce, Cyril, Comrades in Conscience, The Story of an English Community’ s Opposition to the Great War,
Francis Boutle, London, 2001 p. 152
32
Worcestershire Regiment, and along with six other men from Woodbrooke, he was arrested
in June 1917, and sent to a series of army barracks around the country. He was then court
martialled and sentenced to 112 days’ hard labour in Wormwood Scrubs. On 10th May 1917
he was released, court martialled again and given two years’ hard labour, commuted to one
year ‘In recognition of services to ambulance work.’ This sentence was later reduced to six
months and he was released from Exeter prison on 12th October 1917. Six days later he was
court-martialled for the third time and given six months’ hard labour in Ipswich prison. He
was released again and at his fourth court martial, in October 1918 he was given two years’
hard labour, later reduced to 18 months, in Ipswich prison.
Men appearing before the tribunals were asked to state their objections to fighting.
Corder Catchpool said:
In explanation of my presence before this Court I wish to offer a brief statement of
my faith, and of the duty it has laid upon me. I look upon the whole of life as a
sacrament of service, demanding loyalty to the highest ideal. For me, this ideal is the
life of Jesus Christ. In the light of his teaching I regard no man as my enemy and am
convinced of the wrongfulness of all war. If I am met with gas, bombs and bayonets, I
will not poison and kill in return. I believe there is a heroism other than that which
involves the infliction of pain and death: a surer protection for those I love than the
slaughter of those whom someone else loves. 81
Alan Shoults, from Blaby, was ordered to join the NCC, but he refused, saying, ‘I am a
conscientious objector under the Military Service Act. They have refused to exempt me and it
now remains for me to prove by my body that I will not take part in military service.’ Asked
if he would object to assisting a wounded soldier he replied, ‘Yes, under military law.’ It was
not, he argued, a situation like that of the Gospel story of the Samaritan. ‘It is a question of
patching up a wounded man and sending him back to the front, and I will not do that.’ John
Flanagan, a Bradford member of the ILP and a trade unionist, refused to fight because of his
socialist beliefs. The record of the tribunal is missing but Ann Blair, his granddaughter who
now lives in Leicester, recalls the family story that when he was asked if he was scared to
fight, he replied that he had been fighting all his life but that he refused to kill his fellow
working man. 82
As more men resisted conscription, the work of the NCF increased exponentially. Detailed
records were kept of every CO, including the grounds of his objection, his appearance before
tribunals, civil courts, courts martial, and which prison or Home Office settlement they were
in. Following the imprisonment of Clifford Allen, Catherine Marshall, a former leader of the
National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society, became acting Secretary. She had organised
81
Catchpool, T. Corder, On Two Fronts First published 1918 by Headley Brothers Publishers Ltd. p.151
82
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015. p. 82
33
an international peace congress of women at The Hague in 1915, which led to the
development of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. It is suggested
that the role and influence of women’s opposition to the war has almost certainly been
underestimated. 83There was certainly a branch in Leicester of the Women’s Peace Crusade,
which had been started by Glasgow ILP in 1916. Members of the Crusade travelled through
towns and cities campaigning for a negotiated peace. When it came to Leicester in 1917,
3,000 people listened to the women speakers. The meeting had been organised by Mrs
Beddow, wife of the Minister of Wycliffe Congregational Church.84
Catherine Marshall focused her immense skills and talent to running the NCF. She
commented that she had calculated that, ‘so frequently had she flouted the law to aid COs,
she was liable for 2,000 years in prison.’ She was so efficient at record-keeping that the War
Office would telephone her to find out in which camp particular COs were confined. 85 An
astute political lobbyist, she briefed MPs and drafted questions to Ministers. Ramsay
MacDonald consistently argued for decent treatment of conscientious objectors during the
debates in the Commons. T. Edmund Harvey and Arnold Rowntree, both Quaker MPs were
also actively involved in speaking out in support of COs.
Members of the NCF maintained contact with COs to monitor the conditions in which they
were kept, visiting camps, barracks and prisons across the country. A key aim of the
organisation was to draw the attention of the public to what was happening to COs and the
ill-treatment many were subjected to. They picketed prisons where treatment of COs was
particularly brutal, and published leaflets and pamphlets to publicise their findings. From
March 1916 they produced a weekly newspaper called The Tribunal, which the government
made great efforts to suppress. The first printers were raided and their printing machinery
destroyed, but the NCF had a secret press which continued to publish the paper, and
distribution networks were set up all over the country. The UDC, too, published numerous
pamphlets, articles and books, including, in 1916, E.D.Morel’s Truth and the War. Philip
Snowden, in the introduction wrote, ‘Truth,' it has been said, 'is the first casualty of war.’ 86
The local and national press inflamed public opinion against COs or ‘conchies’ as they were
labelled. They were called cowards, shirkers, traitors and degenerates. In contrast to the
vitriol targeted at COs and pacifists by civilians who hadn’t experienced the war, Corder
Catchpool’s relationships with the soldiers set to guard the COs in army barracks was very
positive. He wrote:
83
See - Liddington, Jill, The Long Road to Greenham: Feminism and anti-militarism in Britain since 1820 ,
Virago, 1989
84
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 44
85
http://www.ppu.org.uk/Opposing World War One.pdf p. 5
86
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/search.html E.D.Morel Truth and the War accessed 30 December
2015
34
Foul-mouthed, as practically everyone in the army is, they have as kind heart at
bottom as you could wish. Most of them have been out to the front and wounded once
or twice. I have great talks with those who know the places where I have been. Not
one has any delusions left about the war, such as one meets everywhere from civilians
at home, every man of them wants the end, and doesn’t care a toss how it is arrived
at.87
It is thought that there were at least 250 men in Leicester and Leicestershire who refused to
fight, and there were many more, both men and women, who assisted them. 88 Those involved
with pacifist organisations were mutually supportive in the face of public opposition and
police and security surveillance; homes and offices were frequently raided in order to search
for evidence which would enable arrest under the Defence of the Realm Act.
It seems there was a network of local individuals and organisations opposing the war. In
Leicester Horace Twilley, who was a Congregationalist and member of the Independent
Labour Party, worked closely with Walter Borrett, General Secretary of the Leicester ILP.
Rowland Barrett, a Coventry journalist, was a socialist and Congregationalist who was
corresponding with Borrett. In a letter of 18th January 1916 he praised the work of Reverend
Beddow, chair of the Leicester Fellowship of Reconciliation. Barrett was also writing to Mrs
Joan MacRae Goddard, whose husband was the proprietor of Cafe Vegetaria. 89 The NCF
also worked closely with the Friends' Service Committee and the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. In 1916 Edith Ellis, who came from a well known Quaker family, some of
whom lived in Leicester, took over as secretary of the Friends’ Service Council on the
imprisonment of its previous secretary. She was influential as its national communicator and
spokesperson. She personally subscribed to the more extreme view among pacifists with
regard to participation in the war effort, and ‘not only insisted that true conscientious
objectors should refuse any form of alternative to military service and accept imprisonment
as the logical result of their stand but also rejected any attempts to mitigate the sufferings of
those, non-Quaker as well as Quaker, who had been imprisoned.’90
The minutes of Leicester Quakers record a joint meeting with the Fellowship of
Reconciliation on February 20th 1916 at which those ‘who came within the scope of the
87
Catchpool, T. Corder On Two Fronts First published 1918 by Headley Brothers Publishers Ltd. p.119
88
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 48
89
MSS.83/3/APP/32);9 Feb 1915
http://dscalm.warwick.ac.uk/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqCm
d=Document.tcl&dsqItem=Open%20a%20printable%20version%20of%20the%20full%20catalogue%20%28B
AR%29.pdf accessed 30 December 2015
90
Elliott, Malcolm Opposition to the First World War: The Fate of Conscientious Objectors in Leicester
https://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/05_7799_vol77_Elliott.pdf
35
military service act took the principal part in the conference’ 91 In March 1916 there was
much concern over the case of Edward Severn, a Blaby Quaker and teacher, who had applied
for exemption. It was initially granted, ‘but on the following day it was learned that
exemption had been refused apparently on the assumption that our Friend would appeal and
that exemption would be granted by the Higher Tribunal.’ Letters of protest were sent to the
Blaby Tribunal, and the MPs T. Edmund Harvey and Arnold Rowntree were asked for their
support. Severn told the Blaby Tribunal that he was prepared to join the Friends Ambulance
Unit adding that his ‘conscience was the highest Tribunal.’ He was refused exemption. 92
Twelve Leicester men are known to have joined the Friends Ambulance Unit. Among them
were Norman Black, of The Elms, Stoneygate, who, like Corder Catchpool, spoke French,
which made him a great asset as a translator. S.W. Bradshaw of Evington Drive also spoke a
little French, and Harry Fenton of Desborough had worked as a cook in France. The FAU
expanded as the war progressed. There were two sections: the Foreign Service, which
operated in France, and the Home Service, which ran four hospitals in England. Two were in
Quaker premises – one in part of the Rowntree factory in York, and the other in a Cadbury
house in Birmingham. The other two were in London. They also had an office in London, a
clothing department, and ran training camps, mostly at Jordans Quaker Centre in
Buckinghamshire. 93
When conscription was introduced most FAU members applied for exemption from military
service. They were granted conditional exemption and told to do ‘alternative service’ by
continuing to work in the FAU. But the Unit had been forced into working more closely with
the Military. Corder Catchpool felt that his pacifist convictions were being unacceptably
compromised, and that he had no option but to leave the Unit.
In his second court martial he explained his reasons:
On the outbreak of war there was great need for ambulance workers. I could not join
the army even for this service; but I immediately left my profession and qualified for
Red Cross work. After a few weeks’ training I offered myself for voluntary service on
the battlefield, with a little Ambulance unit organised by a few young Quakers, the
religious body to which I have belonged since childhood. We went out to the Ypres
sector when the fate of Flanders still hung in the balance. I little expected ever to
return, and asked only for the privilege of serving for a few weeks at least, in saving
life. I went out longing to relieve the suffering caused by war, to show sympathy with
men who had obeyed a call of duty different from my own, and to share the dangers
91
Elliott, Malcolm Opposition to the First World War: The Fate of Conscientious Objectors in Leicester
https://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/05_7799_vol77_Elliott.pdf
92
ibid
93
http://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/252
36
and hardships to which they were exposed. For nineteen months I was spared to
continue the work at the front. Meanwhile, however, the medical service had become
completely organised. Voluntary units were either dispensed with, or practically
absorbed into the regular armies. The wounded no longer lacked help, the RAMC
being often closed to application. Men displaced by the services taken over by the
Unit, of which I had become Adjutant, were often drafted into the firing line, and
complained bitterly that I and my colleagues had sent them there.
I was baffled more and more by the consciousness that, under military control, the
primary object of our work was the refitting of men to take their place again in the
trenches. Conscription followed, and it seemed to me that for one called to serve in
the cause of peace, the position was becoming impossible. At home, men who stood
for the same ideals as myself were being reviled as cowards and shirkers, and forced
into the army against their principles. When some of them were sent to France and
became liable to the death penalty, I hesitated no longer. It seemed to me more honest
and more manly to take my stand with them, make public profession of my faith, and
accept the consequences.
I could have obtained exemption by continuing ambulance work, had I felt it right to
do so; I was begged to secure it by undertaking some “alternative service” recognised
as “important” in organisation for war. But I am enlisted in the highest service I
know, the formation of a world fellowship of men prepared to die rather than take part
in war; and the foundations of such a fellowship, which is already spreading from
country to country, cannot rest upon compromise. 94
The dangers faced by COs had become clear in May 1916 when, despite assurances that they
would not be taken out of the country, fifty men were transferred to France from prisons at
Landguard Fort, Harwich, Richmond Castle and Seaford. Under military law, in France,
they were liable to the death sentence. The first rumours of the intended move came from
Harwich, where the Eastern NCC was stationed. A group of the earliest CO’s to go through
the system were being held at Landguard Fort. The military acted swiftly, and news reached
the NCC via a letter thrown out of the train as the men passed through London en route to
Southampton.
Personal representations to Asquith, the Prime Minister, led to a telegram ordering that they
should not leave the country, but it arrived too late – the men had already been shipped to Le
Havre - it was clear that the Army authorities intended making an ‘example’of them. 95
Thirty five men received the death sentence. Howard Marten was among them. He recalled,
We were forever being threatened with the death sentence. Over and over again we’d
be marched up and read out a notice: some man being sentenced to death through
94
Catchpool, T. Corder ,On Two Fronts First published 1918 by Headley Brothers Publishers Ltd. pp 151/2
95
http://www.ppu.org.uk/cosnew/cos12.html
37
disobedience at the Front…. It was all done with the idea of intimidating us. But we
wouldn’t have taken that line unless we were prepared to face that situation….
Finally we had the second court martial…. Eventually we were taken out to the
parade ground. There was a big concourse of men lined up in an immense square.
Under escort we were taken out, one by one, to the middle of the square. I was the
first of them…. Then the officer in charge …read out the various crimes – refusing to
obey a lawful command …and so on. Then: ‘The sentence of the court is to suffer by
being shot.’
There was a suitable pause, and I thought, ‘Well, that’s that.’ Then he said,
‘Confirmed by the Commander in Chief,’ Field Marshall Haig, which double-sealed
it. There was another long pause – ‘But subsequently commuted to penal servitude for
ten years.’ And that was that. …” 96
Another seven COs who were taken to a different area were given lesser prison sentences.
The intense and persistent lobbying by the NCC and their sympathisers had been successful.
But many COs in the Non Combatant corps continued to suffer brutal treatment when they
refused orders. Horace Twilley was sentenced to 28 days’ Field Punishment. He was put in
irons, and described how he was ‘Hauled around for an hour, by one soldier after
another,…scores of soldiers (were) laughing at the fun.’ He recalled, ‘(The) Corporal told
me he hoped to be one of the shooting party when my time came.’97
J.B. Saunders was another who suffered at the hands of the authorities. He was arrested as a
deserter for failing to answer his call-up papers, and was imprisoned for three months at
Portobello and Barlinnie. He was court martialled in France and again in Egypt where he was
sentenced to six months’ hard labour. Shortly after he was released, he wrote to his wife:
14 September 1917
I will not submit to conscription…I will never give in. …
…I have been in chains and handcuffs, crucified to a tree full in this broiling sun
nearly every morning and evening, for five months bread and water and
solitary confinement…. Seven times I went down with dysentery, and seven times I
managed to get on my feet and face the music. …
This tropical sun and chaining up nearly drove me mad. …I …was doing seven days
Field Punishment No.1 chained up in the sun. Many times I thought I should hang in
96
http://peaceandjustice.org.uk/conscientious-objection-in-the-first-world-war/
97
ibid
38
the sun and die. I pleaded with the sentry to shoot me… I’ll die fifty times rather than
endorse the wicked thing….
They can have my body, my mind I will destroy rather than allow the military cult to
take it.98
All COs had to come to terms with what they would accept, what they could endure, and the
consequences of their actions. Individual COs had to find a way to live according to their
conscience, and, for religious COs, their Christian beliefs and the teachings of their church.
For some of those who accepted Work of National Importance, this brought them into
conflict with the authorities. Walter Marson, a 19 year old CO from 8 Glenfield Avenue, was
a case in point. He initially agreed to continue his work of market gardening. However,
because of his views as a Seventh Day Adventist, he refused to work on the Sabbath, and as a
result he was sent to Wormwood Scrubs and Winchester Prison. He refused to participate in
the Home Office Scheme. Seventh Day Adventists were ‘conscientious co-operators’ rather
than absolute objectors; they believed in obeying civil authority as long as those laws did not
conflict with the laws of God, which included observance of the Sabbath. 99
Some Christadelphians, while refusing to participate in combat, accepted work in munitions
factories. They would not submit to military law, but they were not pacifists and believed that
there would be a time when they would be called by God to fight for Christ. 100 Leicester
Christadelphian John Tomkinson was sent to work at the munitions depot of Austin Motors
and F.W. Fiddler also agreed to do munitions work. Local COs who accepted WNI were
mostly given employment that used their skills. The tribunals aimed to place men at least
twenty miles away from home, and skilled boot and shoe workers were sometimes sent to
work in Northampton factories. Several worked in market gardening, and they were able to
continue their work. Food production and distribution was essential; some men were sent to
work in agriculture, others in bakeries. When the Leicester Tribunal was told that the Co-op
wanted to retain a local milkman, P.J. Robinson, he was told to find work twenty miles away.
J. Garrett, an electric tram driver was given employment as a tractor driver, but it is not
known what happened to A.J. Hill, the ’motorman’ after the Brighton Corporation expressed
doubts about employing him because of Leicester’s reputation for pacifism. Frederick Black,
a local painter and decorator, was given work painting ships in South Shields and Newcastle.
Health issues also played a part in what was offered to COs. C.E. Bartlett, another Leicester
Seventh Day Adventist, was also given permission to continue to work in market gardening,
but he was later discharged on health grounds. John Richard Luck, a twenty year old of 260
98
http://peaceandjustice.org.uk/conscientious-objection-in-the-first-world-war/
99
All references to individual CO cases from Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance
Leicester and Leicestershire in World War One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 118 - 121
100
http://www.christadelphianresearch.com/gladstoneandpolitics.htm accessed 30 December 2015
39
Gwendolen Road, described as a ‘Quaker attender and Church of Christ’ was discharged as
unfit, and Douglas Ashby was regarded as ‘low category’ because of ill health. He was sent
to work in Army service supply offices but was later recalled by his previous employer to
continue working in a bank. W.B. Bridges the principal of a training college was given
clerical work in Rugby ‘as (he) has health issues.’ Harry Lockton was given work locally, at
Leicester Royal Infirmary, also due to ill health.
A few COs were allowed to continue in their existing employment – W.E. Skinner, a goods
guard on the railways who was a Christadelphian, had a ‘railway indispensability certificate’
so was allowed to stay in his job. Frederick Michael Parker, the owner of an engineering
works/iron foundry was allowed to continue running his company and J S Richards, the head
waiter of the Wyvern Hotel, who ‘refused to release men to fight,’ remained in his job.
However, Timothy Chapman, a grocery manager at the Co op ‘refused all offers.’ The
outcome of his case is unknown.
Corder Catchpool respected the decisions of others, but personally he refused to comply with
Work of National Importance. He wrote:
Alternative service almost inevitably means sending someone else to do what one
will not do one’s self. Even if there is no conscientious objection on the part of the
person displaced, there is something revolting to one’s sense of what is just and
honourable. Men displaced from the ambulance trains taken over by the FAU resented
what seemed to them an unfair proceeding. It is the same in accepting alternative
service at home, except that one does not come face to face with the individual
displaced, and may be unconscious of his reproaches. The argument in favour of
vegetarianism which appeals to me most strongly is that meat eating condemns a
fellow human being to work one would absolutely refuse to undertake one’s self,
because of its degrading influence. The fact that the butcher has no objection to
slaughtering does not affect the matter. A similar sort of argument applies here,
except that the slaughtering of men gives it much greater weight. 101
He argued that the original act allowed for absolute exemption, which should have meant that
COs would be free to challenge the war and work towards a peaceful solution:
The law clearly provides ‘absolute’ exemption for genuine cases. A special clause
was added into the second clause of the Act to clear up any ambiguity that might have
existed in the first.
No sooner had the Act passed than the Tribunals, with connivance of the government,
began to make the conscience clauses a dead letter. The country has become so
mesmerised that hardly a protest is made at the gradual filching of civil liberties. But I
believe the spirits of men who have suffered and died to win them in the past must be
101
Catchpool, T. Corder , On Two Fronts First published 1918 by Headley Brothers Publishers Ltd, p.155
40
stirred with indignation today. The Absolutists are in part fighting their battle over
again, and safeguarding the liberties so dearly won.
He continued:
... There is one condition of “alternative service” which I personally could never
comply with – viz: the promise to undertake no peace work. This seems to me the
chief duty of the CO at a time like the present, as opportunity opens – and his first
concern should be to secure freedom for such opportunity.
I remember it was George Fox, after one of his arrests (I believe it was for refusing to
join the army) was proceeding to London on horseback in (the) charge of an army
captain. Passing near his native place, the captain offered GF entire liberty for a
fortnight, on the one proviso that he would not proclaim his views. As they lay at the
inn George spent the night in prayer on the matter – It is hardly necessary to add that
next morning he rode on the London and to Gaol. 102
He argued that spiritual conviction should be acknowledged and respected:
...when the whole nation, men, women and even children, are bending every thought
and effort into preparation for war, it becomes of vast importance that some minds at
least should stand completely aside and prepare for peace – send out spiritual peace
influence, just as others were sending out war influence. It seems to me that the
practical value of a few thousand men, in a war of millions, could make no
appreciable effect but that their spiritual influence might be out of all proportion to
their numbers.
That the Government realised this, and that their determination to enforce some form
of alternative service with a pro-war bias, was an effort, whether conscious or
unconscious, to break a spiritual influence of which they were really afraid. This is
not a thought that will appeal widely; but with Quakers it should carry weight. If we
believe that militarism is an evil spirit, that can never be exorcised by militarism, but
only by the spirit of good, we shall realise the importance of keeping our spiritual
forces at their best. Whether calculated or not, the tendency of alternative service has
been to split up the forces opposing militarism as a whole, and weaken them in
individuals. 103
In prison those who carried out a campaign of disobedience refused to submit to authority
and would not work for the government, for example in stitching mail bags. Of their own free
will they carried out tasks necessary to hygiene and dignity, but they would not obey orders.
Their aim was to be sent for another court martial where they could argue again their case for
absolutism and try to persuade the tribunal to give them the right to relieve suffering in ways
102
103
Catchpool, T. Corder , On Two Fronts First published 1918 by Headley Brothers Publishers Ltd, p.156
ibid p.154
41
that did not further the war movement, and to work towards a peaceful solution to the
conflict. They were severely punished. Many were confined to stone cells without any
heating, and given only bread and water. They were not allowed books, or letters, or visitors,
or the opportunity to exercise. Many suffered badly and never fully recovered, either
physically or mentally.
The men tried to keep up morale in every way they could, including singing from their cell
windows, to cheer their fellow-prisoners as well as themselves. They were supported by the
NCF, and by local supporters. Thomas Redfern, on Leicester Oral Archives, described how
he would join in the singing outside Welford Road gaol on Sundays; his brother in law had
been a pacifist. 104 The Lines From Leicester in the Hinckley Times and Bosworth Herald
illustrates the hostility and antagonism the singers faced:
Macdonaldites, and other earth worms, assemble near the jail, every Sunday evening,
for the purpose of singing psalms, hymns and songs of praise in order to cheer up the
conscientious objectors, who happen, for the time being, to be incarcerated.
Last Sunday, as is their wont, they gathered near the frowning wall of the King’s
Hotel, hoisted the red flag and sang pugnacious hymns about the fight for freedom,
and stand up for truth and justice, and trample tyrants down and all the rest of the
inspiring doggerel appropriate to the occasion. The spectators were irreverent, not to
say ribald. Far from being overwhelmed by the solemnity of the occasion, some of
them – flippant blasphemers and the like – started a more or less musical counterirritant in the shape of “God save the King,” “Rule Britannia” etc.
That is where the trouble began. What was the use of the earth-worms carrolling
“Fight the good fight” if the message were drowned beneath the waves that Britannia
was being vociferously exhorted to rule? These considerations led one of the more
valiant conscientious objectors of the choir to expostulate with the crowd. The
argument was taken up by a man with strongly patriotic feelings, and then the fun
began.
The patriot expressed, in flowing terms, his personal opinion of the Conchy, and of
the Conchy’s ancestry, upbringing, cleanliness, courage, personal appearance,
character, and destiny in the next world. The Conchy retaliated; for even an earth
worm will turn, if too strenuously trodden on. From the patriot came a particularly
stinging rejoinder, and then the miracle happened.
The Conchy promptly gave to the patriot what the Moira colliers call “a puck in the
gob.” It was a beauty.... The patriot countered a second punch with his left, and he
paid the Conchy’s first peace offering with interest, with his right, and a very pretty
mill was in progress.
104
EMOHA 768, LO Thomas Redfern http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/cdm/ref/collection/p15407coll1/id/20
42
My own opinion is that the Conchy would have won, if only on points, but at this
most interesting stage of the combat, some interfering person who preferred music to
pugilistics, fetched the police, and the Conchy was compelled by force majeure to
desist from carrying out his promise to kill and eat the patriot, and a dozen more like
him.
I’ve a deal more respect for Conchies after seeing that little bout. I’m sure if the
military authorities will only urge him in the proper way he will jump for a rifle and
set out to give the Germans Hell. 105
Many COs in prison defied the silence imposed on them by using Morse Code to tap on the
pipes; cell numbers were used as ‘telephone numbers.’ But Fenner Brockway recalled: ‘A
point came when many of us felt that it was undignified and humiliating …and decided
openly to resist, For ten glorious days sixty of us ran our own hall, speaking openly on the
exercise ground, took arms, played games, singing in cells, but other inmates could hear so
five leaders were isolated and transferred to other prisons.’ 106 Brockway was sentenced to
eight months’ solitary confinement, and three months’ bread and water.
In many prisons the COs secretly produced tiny ‘newspapers,’ using toilet paper, and pencil
leads and ink which had been smuggled in. There were a number of prison journals including
The Walton Leader, edited by Fenner Brockway, and the Canterbury Clinker, which
included articles, cartoons, jokes, poetry and mock advertisements.
In exasperation at the time and energy expended in managing the COs, the government tried
what became known as ‘the Wakefield experiment.’ 120 absolutists, including Horace
Twilley, were sent to Wakefield Prison, where they were offered comfortable housing and
treatment – as long as they were ‘quiet and obedient.’ The first arrivals were even offered
sedatives, which they refused to take. The ‘experiment’ lasted only three weeks. The men
refused to cooperate, and large numbers of prison officers were drafted in. Nearly all the men
were put in solitary confinement, and three days later they were sent back in small groups to
other prisons. The men did not want an easy life, as Corder Catchpool explained:
Realising that I may be shut away again from the world and from active forms of
service for months, or even years, in the appalling silence of a prison cell, I have a
wistful desire at least not to go there feeling that we conscientious objectors are
misunderstood. We often long for a call to some work of danger and hardships like
those that our brave soldiers are facing with sublime self sacrifice in the trenches. But
should no such chance be offered us, will you not respect a man who keeps steadily
on in what he believes to be the line of duty, rather than turn aside merely to remove
unjust suspicion, or demonstrate that he, too, can dare and suffer?
I find that it sometimes helps to explain the spirit of our case if I tell people that, on
the outbreak of war, I went to the front for voluntary ambulance work and served for
105
Hinckley Times and Bosworth Herald, 27 April 1918
106
http://www.ppu.org.uk/people/fenner.html accessed 30 December 2015
43
nineteen months in the danger zone in Flanders. I mention it now solely for that
purpose; for it would have been far harder for me to have stayed at home, and I know
that it was harder for many of my friends whose duty led them to remain. When we
are called shirkers – men who refuse to serve their country – my thoughts sometimes
go back to an occasion many years ago, at a Quaker school in the North of England,
when I, and others who are in prison today, thrilled as our Headmaster put before us
ideals of service and citizenship in the great world we were about to enter. Though
faltering often, we have striven to keep those ideals before us, and their realisation is
still the purpose of our effort. If taunted that we have not enlisted for three years or
the duration of the war, we can only reply that we have enlisted for life. And if it is
said that our path of service is at least safe, I suggest that it is not necessarily easier
thereby for a young man to follow.
Two and a half centuries ago our Quaker ancestors were filling the dungeons of this
land, dying, often of exhaustion, in prison before they reached the age of thirty, giving
their young lives in the cause of religious freedom. Much for which they suffered has
perished in the story of war, and the world has hardly realised its loss.
We are suffering imprisonment today, and are prepared to suffer death, as they did,
not only to salvage those shipwrecked liberties, but to help in shaping a new world
from which the dark clouds of war shall have rolled away forever, and in which this
precious heritage of the past may be handed down, an invisible possession, to
generations yet unborn.
I feel that is in the nature of a victory, and the fact that the men came round with
congratulations is a sign that they felt so too. One doesn’t usually congratulate a man
on ‘six months’ hard’ – it was relatively (lenient) to what they had been expecting for
our fate... I confess to having had little times of eagerness at the thought of bare
possibilities of more active service even this winter - French trenches and postes de
secours with a carte blanche to go just where.. ambulance help, comforts for
wounded, spiritual ministrations were needed. Now it remains but a dream to be
dreamed, in a little cell, not lived under the clouds or sun, and stars at night, amidst
the mud and blood and guns. But my one desire is to serve the cause. 107
He had earlier reaffirmed his commitment to opposing war:
I firmly believed that complete military victory was out of the question; that public
opinion would end the war, and that as a matter of fact I should be doing more to
actually save life by returning to take up Peace work, than by continuing in
Ambulance work.
The war seemed to me to be developing into one of aggression on the part of the
Allies, a belief soon confirmed by “Knock Out,” “Hands Off” and similar utterances,
107
Catchpool, T. Corder, On Two Fronts First published 1918 by Headley Brothers Publishers Ltd. pp 171-174
44
and it was difficult to be associated in any way with armies engaged in such a
purpose. 108
Many of the COs sentenced to several consecutive prison terms reached the limits of their
endurance. The rule of silence and solitary confinement had severe effects on mental health.
Inadequate food, harsh conditions and poor health care also contributed to physical
breakdown. Seventy three men died either in prison or shortly after release. One of those was
William Stanton from 24 Lansdowne Road. Leicester. He was sent to Wormwood Scrubs and
then HOS Dartmoor. He died a few days after his release, and as a result of his death,
questions were asked in House of Commons.
In response to lobbying by the NCF, in late 1917 it was agreed that COs would be released if
they were considered ‘dangerously ill.’ However, weight loss was measured from weight on
admission which may already have reached a critical state from previous prison terms, so
release often came too late. Divisions between the Absolutists who rejected all concessions,
and the Alternativists, who agreed to join the Home Office Schemes, continued to cause some
debate in the NCF. For those who had endured many prison sentences, though, there is no
doubt that the Scheme, though still enforcing a regime of gruelling physical work with little
food or health care, saved the sanity of many men. It allowed them the freedom to talk to
each other, and for many, worship together instead of being subjected to solitary confinement
and imposed silence.
Many men kept autograph books. William Poole from Desford, who was at HOS Wakefield
was one of them; his book is now in the Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and
Rutland. Leicester men who signed the book include Charles Kinton, Fred Flude and William
Harris. Alan Shoults from Blaby and E.A Oliver from Hinckley also contributed. Next to
poems and drawings, the men listed where they had been held - Charles Kinton had been in
Wormwood Scrubs, Wandsworth and HOS Wakefield. Fred Flude had been in Wormwood
Scrubs, HOS Wakefield, Lyndhurst, and Dartmoor. William G. Harris had been in
Wormwood Scrubs, HOS Wakefield, Dartmoor, and Kenilworth. Alan Shoults had been in
Lincoln, HOS Wakefield, and the Brick and Tile Works, Newport. E.A. Oliver had been in
Leicester, HOS Wakefield, and Dartmoor. 109 In Dartmoor two hundred COs were put to
work inside the former prison walls. Others were sent out to work on farms or quarries for
nine hours a day. On the moor the COs were ordered to clear a rectangular patch and built
round it a seven foot high drystone wall. It had no use or purpose, and decades later was still
known as 'Conchies Field'. Of those who were sent to Dartmoor many joined the FOR; it
seems there was a large community there, and many Leicester men mentioned its influence
on them. One of those was Harry Adkins, a Baptist music teacher who lived at 13 Equity
Place in Leicester; he had been previously imprisoned in Welford Road gaol.
108
ibid. p. 153
109
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 68
45
For some who accepted the Home Office Schemes, though, it seems the price was a keen
sense of guilt and a heavy conscience.
Corder Catchpool wrote:
Personal experience of men who have accepted the scheme under duress of prison
conditions or economic pressure, or even through genuine doubt about the absolute
position leads me to believe that in many cases there remains a haunting sense of
having chosen a spiritually “second best.” The refusal of early Christians to offer one
single grain of incense to a pagan god was, I think, somewhat parallel with our
difficulty in admitting the slightest measure of compliance with the Conscription Act.
I am not sure that Christ’s agony in Gethsemane was not essentially a struggle to
refuse “alternative service” to Calvary. 110
In some of the work camps the men were at least usefully occupied. Mary Walmsley, who
now lives at Houghton on the Hill near Leicester, described the experience of her grandfather,
Peter Davies, who was sent to Wales:
They were sent to Llanddeusant as I understand, to help Irish Navvies to construct a
dam on a small mountain lake, Llyn y Fan Fach, which lies under the black mountain
close to the small village of Llandeusant in Camarthenshire. There was quite a big
work camp there, and a number of men, perhaps as many as a hundred or more, I’m
unsure of the figure. They were helping to construct the dam wall and this mountain
dam was later to provide water for one of the Welsh towns, possibly Llanelli. 111
In her grandfather’s autograph book are the names of three men from Leicester – Aubrey and
Reginald Atkins, and George Noble. John Taylor from Loughborough also signed the book.
The Atkins brothers from Wood Hill, Leicester were International Bible Students, a
movement which later became Jehovah’s Witnesses. Although not pacifists, they did not
believe in an allegiance to an earthly power. They had served time in Leicester Prison,
Wormwood Scrubs and Winson Green Prison in Birmingham before being transferred to
Llanddeusant. Reginald’s entry in the autograph book suggests his state of mind:
........man, what is this & who art thou despairing?
God shall forgive thee all but thy despair...
I trust that these words will bring back to you many happy memories of our talks
together .. However dark the future appears to us, and it is very dark, it is a fact in
110
Catchpool, T. Corder, On Two Fronts First published 1918 by Headley Brothers Publishers Ltd.
p.154
111
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World
War One, Leicester CND, 2015, p.73
46
human nature that “hope springs eternal in the human heart.” My sincere and
earnest wish is that whatever you do, do not despair.
Reginald Atkins
26 Wood Hill
Leicester
Llanddeusant Oct. 1917112
The men were fortunate to receive support from the local community. Mary Walmsley said:
Close to the work camp there was a farm called Blaen Sawdd which is still there and
the farmer’s wife spoke to my grandfather. They must have met on many occasions,
and she knew that he had a wife with two small children back in Lancashire and he
was told that if his wife would come and help in the house and on the farm then his
wife and children could come and live in the house. And this is what they did for the
six month period June, July 1917 to December 1917, and school records from Penketh
primary school do show that they were not in school at that time. 113
She also spoke of her grandmother, Helen Davies:
She had been in service prior to her marriage with Peter, but she always said, and this
is what my mother quoted, that she felt she was as good as the people for whom she
worked and she actually was a member of the suffragette movement although I don’t
think she was ever militant, though she was I think politically inclined. I’m sure she
supported Peter in what he did. 114
The impact on the wives and children of COs was rarely as positive. As well as coping with
isolation and social disgrace, there were serious financial implications. Arnold Granger’s
father was Fred Flude. In an interview in 1984 he recalled how was brought up by his
grandmother:
My mother worked at Whitmoors Hosiery Mill on the West Bridge and her hours of
work were 6 in the morning til half past eight then she came home for breakfast..then
returned to the mill at 9 o’clock and worked to 1 o’clock then they had an hour’s
dinner break and then back to the mill at 2 o’clock til 6.30 at night.115
112
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World
War One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 75
113
ibid p. 74
114
ibid p.108
115
ibid, p. 76
47
Jack Abbot’s wife supported him and their two sons by working as a dressmaker when he
went into hiding during the war. A member of Leicester Secular Society, he had joined the
army, but his experiences on the Western Front convinced him he could tolerate being part of
the military, even though he knew he risked being shot as a deserter. The family moved to
London and he hid in an attic throughout the war. Those attempting to evade conscription
were vigorously pursued; on Thursday 14 th September 1916, police and military forces raided
the first house of the Pavilion Music Hall and the second house of the Palace Theatre of
Varieties, both at Belgrave Gate. All the exits were guarded by police and armed soldiers but
women and elderly men were allowed to leave before identity checks were carried out.
Rowland Hill was another local activist who, it is thought, might have gone on the run to
avoid call up. In 1914 he was a clerk for the Friendly Society, president of the Trades Council
and Vice President of the Union of Democratic Control. He became secretary of the ILP in
1917. At his first tribunal as a CO he took with him a petition of 2,553 signatures requesting
that he be granted exemption because of his work in the community. His conscription was
deferred. At the end of the period of deferment he ‘disappeared.’ It may be that the records
have been lost and that he was doing Work of National Importance away from Leicester.
What is known, however, is that he wrote for the Leicester Pioneer, a socialist newspaper,
under the pen name ‘Robert Dale.’
A network of safe houses was established all over the country. In Leicester a small room in
the city centre was used by the Socialist Labour Party to shelter what were known as the
‘Flying Corps.’ They would visit a town, perhaps hold a public meeting then rush off to
evade capture. The place was known, however, to the Leicester Mail, who described it on 9th
June 1916 as ‘A veritable hotbed of sedition and a disgrace to the town. ..That the SLP is a
direct menace to society is proved by the fact that its leaders are at present in prison for
sedition and that its activities were mainly responsible for the serious labour troubles in the
Clyde district.’ 116 By 1917 in Leicester, as in the rest of the country, there were strikes,
disputes and lockouts over pay demands. The cost of living had risen over 100% since the
beginning of the war. Wages had not kept pace, and Trade Union membership had increased
significantly over the war years. Army separation allowances were also woefully inadequate,
and returning servicemen who had been invalided out of the military set up the Discharged
Soldiers and Sailors Association to challenge the paltry level of allowances they were
awarded.
There were mutinies in the French army and in March 1917, Tsar Nicholas II was
overthrown. Socialists in Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the United States and
Italy called for a conference in a neutral country to negotiate an end to the war. MacDonald
wrote in his diary: ‘The great service which the Russian Revolution could render to Europe
would be to bring about an understanding between the German Democracy and that of the
116
Quoted in Challinor, Ray, The Origins of British Bolshevism, First published
Rowman & Littlefield 1977 p.143
48
Allied countries.’ 117 The Leicester May Day celebrations of 1917 ‘were devoted to
welcoming the Russian achievement of democracy, to venting popular dislike of the
hardships and restrictions that war imposed, and to demanding the restoration of civil and
industrial liberties.’ 118
The British government, however, refused to allow British delegates to attend the Stockholm
conference of July 1917. MacDonald warned repeatedly that if the British government and its
allies continued to insist on a military victory, the moderate socialists would lose control
in Russia. In November 1917 Kerensky was overthrown and the Bolsheviks took over. They
made peace with Germany which meant the German army could focus its forces on the
Western Front. Lord Lansdowne, a Tory elder Statesman was vilified as a ‘peace crank’ and
ostracised by his party when in a letter to the Daily Telegraph on November 29 th 1917 he
said that the waste of blood had become so intolerable that there must be a negotiated peace,
otherwise the fruits of victory would not be worth having. 119
Food rationing was introduced early in 1918 in an attempt to quell angry responses and
demonstrations against profiteering and shortages. In May of that year, when there was still
no sign of the war ending, Edith Ellis and two other members of the Friends Service Council
were prosecuted under the Defence of the Realm Act for publishing a pamphlet entitled A
Challenge to Militarism, stating, ‘We feel that the declaration of peace and goodwill is the
duty of all Christians and ought not to be dependent upon the position of any Government
Official.’ She was given a three month prison sentence after refusing to pay a fine of £150. 120
Antagonism towards Ramsay MacDonald had intensified over the war years. At Leicester’s
annual Labour Party May Day meeting in 1918 a crowd of between 6,000 and 7,000 people,
including children, gathered in the market place. A rival meeting had been set up by the War
Aims Committee which set out to sabotage the event. They grouped near the Fish Market,
and a police contingent, some mounted, placed themselves between them and the platform.
MacDonald’s attempts to address the crowd were drowned out by shouting and heckling.
Some of the crowd were singing ‘God Save the King’ and waving Union Flags. A group of
about forty men, some in uniform some in ‘Hospital Blues’ attempted to overturn the
platform, made from two dray carts which had been pushed together. Frederick Riley, the ILP
councillor who had presided over the meeting said he never forgot the spectacle of the faces
of men and women ‘so distorted almost out of recognition by hatred and passion...on that
day.’121
117
http://spartacus-educational.com/PRmacdonald.htm
118
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/leics/vol4/pp201-250#h3-0004, 1914 - 56
119
Turner, E.S. Dear Old Blighty, Faber and Faber, 2013, Chapter 17
120
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 13.
121
http://www.nednewitt.com/whoswho/ Frederick Riley Leicester Pioneer, 22nd February 1918
49
On 6th July 1918 MacDonald was deeply shaken when, in south London, an agitated group of
discharged soldiers disrupted an ILP meeting. Stewards were overpowered by the mob who
in what was described as a ‘riotous scene’ broke chairs and used them as weapons. The
incident was reported in the Daily Mirror as ‘Peace Cranks routed.’122 On 21st July he once
again attempted to address a crowd in Leicester Market Place. He had joined a group set up
by Labour and Trades councils to lobby for an increase in Army Separation Allowance. As
soon as he stood up to speak an opposition group attempted to take the platform by force.
Fighting broke out and the meeting was abandoned.
Corder Catchpool’s fourth court martial was on 26th October 1918, when what was to be the
final Battle of the Somme was at its height. The editor of his letters commented ‘The terrific
drama then playing out on the Western Front filled all his thoughts, and made detention a
difficult time in many ways. He appeared again before the Court Martial on the following
Thursday and realising what a strain (there must have been) upon the military authorities at
such a crisis he was unwilling to press his own case. He therefore made only a brief statement
explaining his reason for so doing, and expressing his longing to be at the front giving what
service he might to the relief of human suffering and touch of human sympathy were it
possible to do so without compromise with a Military Service Act. The impulse to return to
this work of healing, he said, was at times almost irresistible, but “May God steady me and
keep me faithful to a call I have heard above the roar of the guns.”’ When, two days later he
was ‘read out’ again he was wearing for the first time his Mons Ribbon. He was sentenced to
two years,’ later reduced to eighteen months,’ hard labour.123
Courts Martial of COs were continuing even after enlistment had ended, and opposition to
this and to the continuing poor conditions in prisons contributed to an outbreak of prison riots
including one at Leicester. In some prisons COs went on hunger strike in protest at their
continued detention. 130 were forcibly fed through tubes, as the suffragettes had been. Like
them, many were injured by the treatment and had to be temporarily released to recover their
health before being re-arrested in what was called the ‘cat and mouse treatment.’ Others went
on work strikes and were brutally punished.
The Armistice was signed in November 1918, but there was a reluctance to let the COs out of
prison for fear of inflaming an already tense situation. The authorities were nervous of both
civil and military unrest. It was said that, ‘In the event of rioting, for the first time in history
the rioters will be better trained than the police.’124 Demobilisation had been handled badly
and there was much resentment over an initial decision to demob those men who had jobs to
go back to, even if they had only been in military service for a comparatively short time.
122
Daily Mirror 8 July 1918, p. 2. wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Labour_Party accessed 30 October 2014
123
Catchpool, T. Corder On Two Fronts First published 1918 by Headley Brothers Publishers Ltd. , p. 175
124
https://www.le.ac.uk/emoha/community/resources/ww1/Aftermath
50
Those women workers who had been employed ‘for the duration’ to replace men were
summarily despatched back to the home, but there were still too few jobs.
Thomas Redfern described his experience with the Royal Flying Corps in France, in May
1919.
The politicians here were afraid of civil commotion.....The troops were getting a bit
nasty as well. As you know the French had a few mutinies. We had some mutinies
after the war had finished. I was in one, put under close arrest. The rumour had got
around that we were going up into Germany. They wanted to go home, first home got
the jobs. And we refused to go. As we came into the camp the boys were jolly. We’d
had guardsmen sergeant majors, two proper guardsmen sergeant majors. (But) this
was a line sergeant, and he started laying the law down. We were in Leyland lorries,
and they just laughed and jeered at him.
He said, “We’ve got a guard room here.” We said, “You’ll want a bigger one than
that, sergeant major, with some “British” words. And they didn’t know what to do
with us. They sent fifty men to clean the lorry. Well, it had already been cleaned. And
we just refused to go on parade. And that were that. ....we were under close arrest.
They paraded us up the next morning into the.hangar. And there was an officer, a
Redcap. And he’s got the roll. And he lays the King’s regulations down and he starts
the roll.
He calls the first name on the roll. The man jumps up.
“Fall out there.” (He shouts)
Next one, over here. When he’s got about 20, “quick march to the front, left, right,
left, right.” You’re into the lorries. He starts the roll again. And that’s how we were
all moved off. 125
Thomas Redfern, like many, could not find employment on his return home. He was out of
work for a year. In May 1919 the longest-serving COs began to be released, and the last CO
left prison in August. Most found that even if a job was available, no-one wanted to employ
them. They were also prohibited from voting in the Khaki Election of December 1918, when
Lloyd George was returned as Prime Minister. In January 1920 the last of the men were
demobilised from the NCC. Many Leicester men returned to the same slum housing they had
left a few years earlier, and Lloyd George’s promises of “Homes for Heroes” proved
worthless. A contributor to the oral archives recalled that the Prime Minister had claimed that
he would pay for new housing ‘By making Germany pay for all the damage it had done
during the war; but of course Germany was bankrupt, it couldn’t pay for themselves let alone
125
EMOHA 698,LO/065/016 Thomas Redfern
http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/cdm/ref/collection/p15407coll1/id/51
51
anybody else.’126 The UDC's campaign to modify the Treaty of Versailles peace settlement
was largely ineffective, but its accusations of government secrecy were vindicated after the
publication following the Russian revolution of the secret treaties between Britain, France
and Russia which had been agreed before 1914.
After the war the Government issued instructions to the Local Government Boards
responsible for the Tribunals that all records should be destroyed, except for the Middlesex
Appeal records and a similar set for Lothian and Peebles in Scotland, which were to be
retained. A sample of records from the Central Tribunal was also retained and there are a few
records in other places but most were destroyed. Perhaps the inconsistencies and arbitrary
decision making didn’t bear scrutiny.
Corder Catchpool criticised the way the exemption clauses had been interpreted I believe that England will be honoured in history for having had the courage to
introduce exemptions on conscientious grounds – had she not done so, some
thousands of us would have been shot, a fate which overtook many under the less
liberal regimes of Germany, Russian and Austria. But I believe the order to shoot
would have been repugnant to the British army, and to large sections of our people.
The machinery of the Act, though designed with good intention, often broke down in
working, and owing to this and the inherent difficulties of the situation, much
confusion has resulted. I cannot blame anyone, in circumstances that have been trying
for all; but in view of the generous spirit manifested, and the unpleasant necessity
avoided, by the offer of exemption, it seems hardly consistent with essential justice to
imprison repeatedly, and for what is virtually the same offence, the men who may
properly claim it.
I believe that none of the three civil Tribunals before which I appeared had any doubt
of my sincerity; and I have reason to think that they did not give full weight to the
provisions of the Act which allowed them to grant me absolute exemption. I therefore
ask the Court to refer my case back to them for re-hearing, the more especially as
these Tribunals were set up specifically to investigate those religious and moral
convictions to which the present enquiry can give no consideration...If, however, I
must return to prison, I go forward in quietness and confidence.; for these convictions,
though I may not explain them now, are no mere negatives – rather, a strong positive
faith, in a practical alternative to the way of war, and in the ultimate triumph of the
cause of Peace, for which I witness today. We conscientious objectors are often called
cowards and shirkers; but at least we are not renegades. Loyalty to principle prevents
us from expressing loyalty to country in the same way as the soldier, but I dare to
hope, none the less, that we are still patriots.127
126
https://www.le.ac.uk/emoha/community/resources/ww1/Aftermath
127
Catchpool, T. Corder, On Two Fronts, First published 1918 by Headley Brothers Publishers Ltd. pp 169-71
52
Corder Catchpool was released from prison in April 1919. The harsh conditions he had
endured had severely impaired his health, and he was suffering from what was probably
pneumonia. His daughter, Annette Wallis, recalled that he also had chronic dental problems,
and insomnia. During his time in prison he had learned German, and he went to Germany to
work on relief and repatriation with the Friends War Victims Relief Committee in Berlin. But
he needed time to recover. Annette Wallis recalled ‘My mother was a nurse in Germany. She
also came from a Quaker background. She was detailed to nurse him and romance flourished
and they got married.’ 128
They spent many of the interwar years in Germany, where Annette was born, the third of
three daughters, followed by a son, Neave. In 1933, along with other German Quakers, they
defied a Nazi boycott on Jewish owned shops. The family were arrested and Catchpool was
interrogated at the Gestapo headquarters. They returned to London in 1936 when their term
of service at the Friends International Centre was finished. Catchpool continued to travel
regularly to the continent, acting as an interpreter in peace efforts and also as a relief worker
for Germans in Czechoslovakia and Lithuania. When the war began in 1939, he supported
British conscientious objectors and volunteered for hospital duty. Along with Vera
Brittain,129 a fellow member of the Peace Pledge Union, he set up the Bombing Restriction
Committee in 1942 to call upon both Britain and Germany to stop the mass bombing of cities
and consequent killing of civilians. In 1946 Catchpool returned to Germany as a relief
worker. In 1947, at the invitation of the Friends Relief Service, he and his wife took over the
running of the Quaker Rest Home for ex-prisoners of the Nazis at Bad Pyrmont in Germany.
During 1950 and 1951, they represented the Friends Service Committee in West Berlin. 130
Corder Catchpool died in a climbing accident in the Alps in 1952. He had always loved
mountains, and in the mud of Flanders, in the winter of 1914, he had recalled:
I was in Switzerland when the war broke out. My often sadly obscured vision of God
has lately hesitated much about interpreting any emotion as a ‘call’ but one lovely
evening in August, as we wound down that exquisite bit of line from Fribourg to
Lausanne, when the blue lake and the distant glimpse of Mont Blanc suddenly appear,
I stood out on the platform of the carriage, and it seemed that I was to take up
ambulance work if the way opened.’131
Harry Adkins returned to Leicester in 1919 to take up the post of organist and choirmaster at
Stoneygate Baptist Church, where the minister between 1917 and 1921 was the pacifist Rev.
128
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One, Leicester CND, 2015, p. 81
129
Vera Brittain wrote A Testament of Youth, an account of her experiences as a VAD in the First World War.
130
http://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/234
131
Catchpool, T. Corder, On Two Fronts First published 1918 by Headley Brothers Publishers Ltd. p.59
53
H.Ingli James. A large sign in gold lettering was completed there in 1924, proclaiming,
‘Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.’
Jack Abbott and his family returned to Leicester in the 1920’s. The Secular Society minutes
for 16th September 1946 record:
It is with deepest sorrow that we have to record the death of Jack Abbott (Aug.21st.)
During the many years (30) of his membership of the Society, he served it with
distinction in many ways, including Vice President, Trustee and Secretary. The
Society will miss his clarity of thought and expression. Whilst his many friends will
miss his quiet and gentle manner, which endeared him to them. We tender our deepest
sympathies to his widow. 132
Rowland Hill continued to be active in the Labour movement. After the war he became an
Alderman and was made Lord Mayor of Leicester in 1951. He went on to receive a CBE in
1955. When he died in 1968, there was no mention of the First World War years in his
obituary.
Charles Monk became a pacifist after the war. He recalled:
After the war Woodbine Willie started a No More War campaign, and George
Lansbury did, and I had a badge ‘no more war.’ I felt it was very necessary for people
who had been through the war to be able to say ‘We don’t want this again, it isn’t the
solution,’ and I did all I could in my small limited area to try to persuade people we
ought to be supporting everything that was against war.133
Horace Twilley was also prominent in the No More War movement, and Helen Davies, too,
became involved in the peace movement, Mary Walmsley recalled. ‘Because she went to
Blaen Sawdd she would have been in contact with many people in the peace movement. She
became very involved with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the
Labour party and the co-operative movement.’ She was at one time Chair of the Warrington
WILPF .134 Douglas Ashby became the first secretary of the Leicester FOR. He came from a
very political family and recalled how he had met Ramsay MacDonald, Philip Snowden and
J.H. Thomas. 135 Ramsay MacDonald lost his Leicester seat in the 1918 election, but he
returned to parliament and became the first Labour Prime Minister in 1924,
132
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World
War One, Leicester CND, 2015, p.76
133
ibid p.111
134
ibid p.108
135
EMOHA 692, LO/059/010- Douglas Ashby
http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/cdm/ref/collection/p15407coll1/id/51
54
There may be many more stories of resistance that come to light. The shame associated with
COs carried on down generations. Jean Wilks, the daughter of Sidney Collins, described in an
interview on Radio Leicester:
I was embarrassed to think he had refused to take part in the war.... I remember when
I was young disappearing to my room when we had visitors and the topic came up in
conversation, especially when friends can be quite hurtful to us in things they say.
Now – I feel quite proud really. He took a stand and he never regretted that stand. I
thought the world of my father, I adored him. 136
Many who were related to the COs, who knew them personally or who simply heard their
stories have been influenced by their strength, compassion, integrity and commitment. Corder
Catchpool’s family continue to work towards international peace. His daughter Annette
married Oscar Wallis, a fellow Quaker whose father was also in the FAU. Oscar had been in
the Merchant Navy when war broke out in 1939. In 1940 he was asked to do gunnery
training, which he refused. He suggested that he joined the Friends’ Relief Service but his
Company didn’t want to lose him as he had just become a qualified Ship’s Officer. He was
offered a post on a minesweeper, but he eventually agreed to work on a hospital ship, where
he remained throughout the war.
Alan Betteridge grew up in Leicester and attended Boy Scouts at Stoneygate Baptist church;
he still remembers the impact the Peace on Earth sign had on him. He may well have met
Harry Adkins, and as a CO he refused National Service. Another Leicester man, Kendall
Clark, was also a CO in National Service. His father Roderick was a CO in the First World
War who, in his fifth court martial said:
My ancestors for 250 years on my father’s side have been Quakers; for an even longer
time in my mother’s side they have been New England Puritans. One of my Quaker
ancestors, Nicholas Jose, was imprisoned in Launceston Gaol in 1682 for attending a
Friends Meeting for Worship. With such a heritage how dare I compromise? 137
The dichotomy prevalent for so many years, of the ‘Brave Tommies’ versus the ‘shirkers,’
the ‘cowards’ and the ‘deserters’ now seems shamefully crude and inappropriate. Harry Patch
recalled:
You were in that trench. That was your front line. You had to keep an eye on the
German front line. You daren’t leave. No. I suppose if you left, and some of them did,
they were shot as cowards. That is another thing with shell shock – I never saw
anyone with it, never experienced it – but it seemed you stood at the bottom of the
ladder and you just could not move. Shellshock took all the nervous power out of you.
136
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World
War One, Leicester CND, 2015,. p.54
137
ibid p. 84.
55
An officer would come down and very often shoot them as a coward. That man was
no more a coward than you or I. He just could not move. That’s shell shock. Towards
the end of war they recognised it as an illness. The early part of the war – they didn’t.
If you were there you were shot. And that was it. And there’s a good many men who
were shot for cowardice and they are asking now … that verdict be taken away. They
were not cowards. 138
The memorial ‘Shot at Dawn’ at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, which
was unveiled in 2001, commemorates the 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers who were
shot for desertion or cowardice during the First World War. Many of them were underage and
suffering from what is now recognised as psychological trauma. Most were sentenced after a
short trial at which no opportunity for defence was allowed. 139 Among them were:
Private Ernest Beaumont, 2nd Battalion Leicestershire Regiment, shot for desertion on 24 th
June 1915
and
Private J. Nisbet, 1st Battalion Leicestershire Regiment, shot on 23rd August 1918
In 2006 the British Government issued a pardon for all those men.
To date the number of COs recorded in Leicester is 189, with 61 in Leicestershire. 140 Their
names appear in the list included in Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering
Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World War One, Leicester CND, 2015. Not included are
those men who may have opposed the war but were unfit, in reserved occupations, joined the
RAMC, or had succumbed to pressure to join fighting units.
73 COs died as a result of their treatment in prison and are commemorated on a plaque in the
Peace Pledge Union offices. William Stanton from Leicester is one of those whose name is
recorded.141
The total number of Conscientious Objectors is difficult establish. David Boulton’s
Objection Overruled, 142 was originally commissioned by Bertrand Russell and Fenner
138
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/last_tommy_gallery_03.shtml accessed 30 December
2015
139
See J Putkovski and J. Sykes: Shot at Dawn; Executions in World War 1 by authority of the British Army
Act, London 1992
140
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World
War One, Leicester CND, 2015, p.57
141
http://www.ppu.org.uk/cosnew/cotx13b.html
142
Boulton, David, Dales Historical Monographs republished 2014 p.117.
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Brockway to commemorate the 50th anniversary of conscription in the First World War. It
was republished in 2014. In it he suggests that there were:
16,100 COs coming before tribunals; 200 were give absolute exemption; 1,000 went into, or
had joined before conscription, the Friends Ambulance Service; 3,300 accepted the Non
Combatants Corps. 4,864 took Work of National Importance; 300 took alternative service in
the Quakers War Victim’s Relief Committee or the Royal Army Medical Corps. 175
managed to evade being arrested and 6,261 were absolutists who spent much of the war in
prison. 143
Cyril Pearce who has spent many years researching and publishing work on the COs believes
the overall number is likely to be nearer 20,000 144 He suggests that rather than being a small
and marginalised minority, their influence may have been more widespread than has
generally been acknowledged. The impact of those men on public opinion and on future
governments was to be profound. In 2015 the Imperial War Museum made available online
The Pearce Register of British First World War Conscientious Objectors. Cyril Pearce writes:
The database attempts to cover the whole range of CO experiences. At one extreme
are those who, while refusing to carry arms, were prepared to ‘do their bit’ in Work of
National Importance. Other COs were prepared to do hospital work in the Friends’
Ambulance Unit or the Royal Army Medical Corps. The men who agreed to serve in
the specially created Non-Combatant Corps are there, too. Over 600 of them served in
France behind the lines. The database also includes the cases of the men who refused
all service. Their Courts Martial have been recorded as have their prison sentences or
time in Home Office Work Centres at Wakefield, Dartmoor or Knutsford. Many of
their stories have already been told. Others are less well known. For example, what of
the COs who gave up their objection and joined the army? The stories of nearly two
hundred ‘Soldier COs’ have been recovered and there are probably many more still to
find. Other recovered stories concern the COs who went on the run to Ireland or the
USA and were never captured. 145
It is to be hoped that more information about Leicester COs and their supporters will come to
light over the next few years.
© Sue Mackrell January 2016
143
http://blog.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/tag/pearce-register-of-british-world-war-1-conscientious-objectors/
accessed 30 December 2015
144
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and Leicestershire in World
War One, Leicester CND, 2015, p.57
145
http://blog.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/tag/pearce-register-of-british-world-war-1-conscientious-objectors/
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Abbreviations used in this text:
CO - Conscientious Objector
FAU - Friends Ambulance Unit
FOR - Fellowship of Reconciliation
HOS - Home Office Scheme
ILP - Independent Labour Party
NCC - Non Combatants Corps
NCF - No Conscription Fellowship
RAMC - Royal Army Medical Corps.
UDC - Union of Democratic Control
WNI - Work of National Importance
WSPU - Women’s Social and Political Union
I owe a huge debt of thanks to the Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, particularly to
Penny Walker for reading and commenting on drafts. Without their research, knowledge,
insight, experience and inspiration the development of this work would not have been
possible. Their book, Uncovering Resistance – Leicester and Leicestershire in World War
One was produced with Heritage Lottery Grant Funding. This project has also been funded
by HLF. I hope it will enable the stories of the First World War Conscientious Objectors and
their supporters to be more widely known.
Thanks also to:
- Cyril Pearce for invaluable advice, suggestions and contributions, and for great patience.
in re-reading several drafts
- Jess Jenkins at the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland
- Annette Wallis, daughter of Corder Catchpool
- all those who helped with research, contributed to workshops and shared information and
ideas including Kevin Brown, Karen Ette, John Mockler, Frank and Penny Hayes, Kate Pugh
and Neil Fortey
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- and to David McCormack for discussions, insight, suggestions and proof reading.
We will be developing a City Trail Leaflet which will have links to this document on
http://www.storyofleicester.info/cityheritage/atwar/worldwari/
Bibliography
Leicester Memories in Conflict Collective, Uncovering Resistance Leicester and
Leicestershire in World War One, Leicester CND, is available from ‘Visit Leicester’ at 51
Gallowtree Gate, Leicester, and from all city libraries.
Armitage, F. P. Leicester 1914 -1918 The Wartime Story of a Midland Town, Backus,
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Beazley, Ben, Four Years Remembered Leicester During the Great War, Breedon Books
Derby 1999
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1820, Virago, 1989
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British Army Act, London 1992
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the Great War, Francis Boutle, London, 2001
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TV/Radio programmes
Paxman, Jeremy, Britain’s Great War, BBC1, 27/1/2014.
Snow, Dan, Voices of the Great War BBC Radio 4, 25 December 2014.
Websites – all accessed December 2015
East Midlands Oral History Archive is available on:
https://www.le.ac.uk/emoha/
https://www.le.ac.uk/emoha/community/resources/ww1/
The Pearce Register of World War I Conscientious Objectors is available on:
https://search.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/search/world-records/conscientious-objectorsregister-1914-1918
Other websites used:
http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/leics/vol4
Elliott, Malcolm, Opposition to the First World War: The Fate of Conscientious Objectors in
Leicester https://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/05_7799_vol77_Elliott.pdf
http://digital.nls.uk/great-war/schools/downloads/conscientious-objectors-case-study.pdf
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2011/may/19/guardian190south-africa-concentration-camps
http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/podcasts/voices-of-the-first-world-war/podcast-37conscientious-objection
https://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/QuakersPagesfromsmvolumeXXVIII-5.pdf
http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Pacifists/story-21938819detail/story.html#ixzz3ej0S9Ibm (Leicester Mercury)
http://lewishamfww.wikidot.com/pelham-committee
http://blog.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/tag/pearce-register-of-british-world-war-1conscientious-objectors/
http://www.nednewitt.com/whoswho/ The Who’s Who of Radical Leicester
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onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/.../book/Morel, E. D. (Edmund Dene), Truth and the
War (London: At the National Labour Press, 1916), contributed by Philip Snowden
http://peaceandjustice.org.uk/conscientious-objection-in-the-first-world-war/
http://www.ppu.org.uk/learninfodocs/cos/st_co_wwone1.html
http://www.pukaarnews.com/ww1-commemorations-in-leicestershire/11702/
http://www.quaker.org.uk/quaker-peace-testimony-complete-text
http://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/252
http://www.qhpress.org/quakerpages/qwhp/dec1660.htm
http://spartacus-educational.com/FWW.htm
http://www.storyofleicester.info/cityheritage/atwar/worldwari/leicesterinwwi/
MSS.83/3/APP/32);9 Feb 1915 - (Rowland Barrett)
http://dscalm.warwick.ac.uk/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqD
b=Catalog&dsqCmd=Document.tcl&dsqItem=Open%20a%20printable%20version%20of%2
0the%20full%20catalogue%20%28BAR%29.pdf
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Corder Catchpool, photographed around 1948
Image courtesy of Annette Wallis
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