Monday 20 October 2014

Exposing CBW research: a view from Aberdeen, 1967

Transcribed from image (pp.2-3) of magazine 
Thanks to Lena (the hyena) for making this available on-line  

CHEMICAL and  BIOLOGICAL WARFARE RESEARCH in BRITAIN and the U.S.
by DAN.
In the U.S.A. the Army Chemical Corps, dating from World War 1, felt in 1959 that it was threatened by the development of nuclear weapons, and to prevent its own extinction embarked on a publicity campaign (“Operation Blue Skies”), the theme of which was “War without Death” Its budget rose from 35 million dollars in 1959 to 57 millions in 1961, and 158 millions in 1964. This expenditure does not include 75 millions which were needed to build the research centre which covers 1300 acres at Fort Detrick, near Fredrick, Maryland. Only about 15% of its findings are ever published, but these concern such bacterial diseases as anthrax, glanders, dysentery, brucellosis, plague and tularaemia; rickettsial diseases (Q fever and Rocky Mountain fever); viral diseases (dengue, several types of encephalitis, psittacosis and yellow fever); a fungal disease (coccidiodomycosis); and botulism toxin. There is also work on plant diseases, such as a rice blast fungus which as repeatedly damaged Asian rice crops.
There is active liaison between Detrick and the U.S. Public Health Service [Public Health Administration],.including the transfer of funds. This is additional money not shown as going towards military research, which is taken from the Health Service and used for military purposes.
On 1st September 1959 a young technician came down with pneumonic plague, but recovered. A technician infected with the disease at Porton Down in England [1962] was not so lucky.)
How are the weapons tested? – Seventh Day Adventists, a religious sect who survive in the army as non-combatants, volunteer as guinea-pigs and “occasional experiments have been performed on prisoners”. Field tests of chemical and biological weapons are performed at Dugway Proving Ground, an area in Utah which covers 1500 square miles on the fringe of the Great Salt Lake. 900 people are employed there and these ‘experiments’ are performed on animals. The U.S. and Britain have an arrangement whereby 12 British officers attend a course in the latest developments in chemical, biological and radiological weapons every June at Dugway. Lessons learnt there are passed on to the British Army’s own chemical warfare school at Winterbourne Gunner, Wiltshire, where unit instructors are taught. Such training is not widely practised in the Army but Rhine Army exercises include defensive measures against that kind of attack.
Other U.S. installations  include:-  Pine Bluff arsenal, Arkansas, which employs 1400 people, producing biological and toxic-chemical munitions and munitions for ‘riot-control’; Edgewood Arsenal where production also takes place; Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Denver, Colorado, where nerve gas, mustard gas, ‘incapacitants’, and anti-crop weapons are produced; and an installation at Newport, Indiana, where a plant has been working day and night since 1960, producing Sarin, a lethal nerve gas, and loading it into rockets, landmines and artillery shells. The current annual lists the following chemical agents as standardised for use:- Sarin (GB), a nerve gas which can kill in the tiniest quantities; VX which is similar to GB but evaporates more slowly; a blister agent (HD) which is a ‘Purified’ form of mustard gas; an incapacitant (BZ) which creates hallucinations and giddiness; a vomiting agent (DM), which causes sneezing, coughing, vomiting and severe headache; two tear gases (CS and CM), the latter of which also causes burning, itching and blisters. All three (DM, CS and CM) have been used in Vietnam.
This might be a suitable point to refer back to the causes of pneumonic plague in England and the U.S.A., since plague has become a serious hazard in Vietnam. Is it being deliberately spread by the Americans, and if so, how is it done? Plague can be transmitted in two ways: by the bite of fleas which have fed on infected rats, and by droplet infection from one person to another (this being the cause of the rapid spread of pneumonic plague during the Black Death. A technique for producing and disseminating a potent aerosol containing the bacteria would thus be “ideal”. This would involve testing the survival of the bacteria in aerosols, studying the effects of climatic factors on survival, infectivity and virulence, and developing methods of maintaining these ‘desirable’ properties for as long as possible.
The knowledge and techniques required to accomplish this entire programme are reflected in the hundreds of papers which have been published from Porton. Much of it can be interpreted as preparation for offensive biological warfare. Much of it can equally be explained as prudent defensive research. Biological research can be defensive in a different way from nuclear programmes. Whereas the latter has ‘defensive’ properties only in so far as it may be a ‘deterrent’, the former can be used to develop vaccines etc. which might really help people faced with biological attack. Nevertheless there still seems to be a lot of work on offensive weapons. A second difference between nuclear and biological warfare research is that [while]  the existence (and cost) of the British nuclear deterrent is well known, the extent of our [sic] research into methods of offensive biological warfare is still shrouded in uncertainty. There is no good reason for this “Conspiracy of Silence”. The public should know what is being done in their name. Does Britain have biological weapons, and does the Government believe in a biological ‘deterrent’?
I welcome the revision being made of the pamphlet “Conspiracy of Silence” by members of the ad hoc Porton action group and hope that the proposed demonstration in May will receive a lot of support.

Published in Megaton,  magazine of Aberdeen YCND, 1967
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Notes
Sources not available to “DAN” (or anyone) in 1967 include:
Hammond PM, Carter G. From Biological Warfare to Healthcare: Porton Down, 1940-2000. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002: the official Porton history.
B. Balmer, 'The Drift of Biological Weapons Policy in the UK 1945-65’ in The Journal of Strategic Studies Vol.20 No.4 (December 1997) pp.115-145.
B. Balmer, 'Biological Weapons: The Threat in Historical Perspective', Medicine, Conflict and Survival, Vol. 18 No. 2 (April-June 2002) pp.120-137.
E.A. Willis, 'Seascape with monkeys and guinea-pigs:Britain's biological weapons research programme, 1948-54', Medicine, Conflict & Survival Vol.19, No.4, 2003, 285-302
    and numerous files now declassified in the National Archives.

Main gate at Porton, 1965:
Scientists (or Special Branch men?) observe demonstrators.

A  letter in the Lancet of 30 January 1954 referred to a report in the issue dated 3 October 1953 of a resolution on microbial warfare unanimously passed at the Sixth International Congress for Microbiology in Rome, in September 1953. He (or she?) took the journal to task for having failed to print the resolution in full. It was an appeal to all governments who had not done so to adhere to and ratify the Geneva Protocol of 1925. Another letter appeared at the time of a government press release (carried in the same issue), expressing the hope that medically qualified persons involved in BW would have the ‘tact to remove their names from the Medical Register as such activity is quite contrary to the ethics of the Hippocratic Oath’.   
- Lathe GH. Microbial warfare [letter]. Lancet 1954 i: 265; 
   Day TD, Bacterial warfare. Lancet 1954 i: 629, 632.

Thursday 16 October 2014

Ealing’s Alternative First World War Heroes: Part 2

Reports of death somewhat premature (by 60-odd years)?

Oscar Gristwood [not Greenwood] Ricketts of 73 Mayfield Avenue, West Ealing




(Uncertain from the Boulton caption whether OGR is bottom left or top right here, at the Dyce camp. 
The former perhaps looks like a bank clerk but the latter is probably meant.)

Family background
The 1911 Census gives a snapshot of the Ricketts family when Oscar was a 16-year-old schoolboy, with his widowed mother as its head; she was also evidently in charge of the family business, helped by her 21-year-old son as Manager.  They were living in the High Street in Petworth, Sussex, the birth-place of all the children listed. One sister was in employment, at 19, in a job that would have required more than basic education, so she had probably stayed in school after the minimum leaving age, as Oscar did. Another, however, was not earning at 22, possibly suggesting the family was not badly off.

First name(s)  Relationship to household head  Marital condition  Gender Age Birth place Occupation
[Last name: all Ricketts]
Elizabeth Ann    Head    Widow  Female 52 Bucks Upton Coal Dealer and Railway Carting Agent
Rosa Elizabeth     Daughter           Single    Female 22           Sussex Petworth              -
Eric Charles           Son      Single    Male      21           Sussex Petworth             Coal Dealers Manager
Violet Mary          Daughter  Single             Female 19  Sussex Petworth Sorting Clerk and Telegraphist
Oscar Gristwood              Son       Single    Male      16           Sussex Petworth              School
Ella Prudence       Daughter           -              Female 13           1898       Sussex Petworth              School

The “National importance” of coal may have saved older brother Eric from call-up.

From Oscar’s description of himself as something of a loner ("hermit-like existence") from the age of 17, it is likely that he was in lodgings in West Ealing in 1916, commuting to his work in the City bank, rather than that the family had moved. He was living only a few streets away from the 1911 home of fellow CO and “Frenchman” Albert Evans (in a very similar terraced house), and also not far from the latter’s wartime address is Southall. They appear in the same segment of the famous Dyce photo (whichever of the possible ‘Oscars’ is our man) on the cover of Boulton’s book – by the author's caption, Evans is bottom left:


Middlesex Military Appeals Tribunal records available (free) from the National Archives include:
·         Case Number: M561. Oscar G Ricketts of 73 Mayfield Avenue, West Ealing . Occupation: Bank Clerk . Grounds of Appeal: F: On the ground of a conscientious objection to the undertaking of combatant service. ...            [His objection was of course not only to ‘combatant’ service but the form did not allow for that.]       
    • Collection: Records created or inherited by the Ministry of Health and successors, Local Government Boards and related bodies
    • Date range:1915 - 1922
    • Reference: MH 47/66/66
    • Subjects: Banking | Conscientious objection
and
Central Military Service Tribunal and Middlesex Appeal Tribunal : Minutes and Papers. Middlesex Appeal Tribunal. Case Number: M561. Oscar G Ricketts of 73 Mayfield Avenue, West Ealing . Occupation: No occupation [“recently resigned from the London County & Westminster Bank” (21 Lombard St. E.C.)]  Grounds of Appeal: F: On the ground of a conscientious objection to the undertaking of combatant service. ...
    • Collection: Records created or inherited by the Ministry of Health and successors, Local Government Boards and related bodies
    • Date range:1915 - 1922
    • Reference: MH 47/11/42
    • Subjects: Conscientious objection
 Like most, if not all, COs, Oscar had “Not attested”, meaning that he had not complied with the government’s urging that men indicate their willingness to serve in the forces when called upon.
His statement to the Appeals Tribunal shows a high level of literacy, articulacy and determination in arguing his case on the grounds of evidently deeply held Christian pacifist beliefs, which he says he has long held, independently of any organisation or denomination:
War involves a surrender of the Christian ideal and a denial of human brotherhood. It is an evil for the destruction of which the world is longing; but freedom from the scourge of war will only be brought about through the  faithfulness of individuals to their inmost convictions [...]
He did, however join the No-Conscription Fellowship (N-CF), according to Pearce (see below)

Chronology according to Pearce (when database had reached 8122 entries):

Military Service Tribunal Ealing 29.2.16 - claimed Absolute Exemption - refused; 
Middlesex Appeal 20.3.16 - granted Exemption from Combatant Service.   
Thought to be in Harwich Redoubt military prison 18.5.16; 
Sent from Harwich and Felixstowe on 8th May, where already sentenced to 28 days, kept in irons, on bread and water.      
On 10th May 1916 Mr William Byles,  MP, “asked the Under-Secretary for War whether he is aware that Oscar Gristwood Ricketts, a conscientious objector to military service, was arrested, charged at Brentford Police Court, fined two guineas, and handed over to the military authorities, and that in conveying him to Felixstowe they exposed him to the shame of being handcuffed in the public streets and railways; whether he is now in the Harwich circular redoubt, confined to a cell, and his only food dry biscuits and water; whether this young man has resigned a good post in a city bank and offered himself for any work of national importance that is consistent with his religious and moral convictions; and whether he proposes to take any action in the matter?  [He didn’t]

Court Martial at Hounslow (?) and then 
(25.4.16) to Felixstowe and Harwich to serve 28 days in redoubt; 
June 1916 in France awaiting sentence; 10.6.16 death commuted to 10 years      .
Winchester Civil Prison;            
 Home Office Scheme Oct.1916 Dyce Camp (photo.88); 
Dartmoor (18.10.17)

Sources for Pearce data given as including: The Friend 12.5.16; Jack Foister Liddle CO/032; Sanctuary Autograph Book WYB8/2/1; Liddle CO/038, 061; Tribunal 18.5.16; NCF Souvenir History p.47 [list of those sentenced to death]; Tribunal 29.6.16.   
     
The database (Pearce Register of British COs) has more than doubled in size since the version consulted for this post, reaching 17,335 by 11th October 2014 and growing, and is promised to become interactively available on-line among the Imperial War Museum’s Lives of the First World War – exactly when remains to be seen, they didn’t make it for COs day on 15th May and time is running out for the subsequent estimate of “later this year”. So it is not clear at the time of writing whether the details for Oscar have been amended, expanded or updated. At 8,122 entries its last word on him was that “Ricketts committed suicide before war ended. NCF Souvenir History has him from High Street, Petworth, Sussex.” The latter is correct (Census record above), the former assertion – its source has not been pinpointed – turns out to be open to question.
A search for the date of death around the time specified, in order to find out whether, as seemed likely, the “suicide” might be related to his treatment and hardships as a CO, failed to turn up any match at all; nor did any death record for any version of his name with a birth date of 1895, plus or minus the standard two years show up in British or World records (on Find my Past).   

But birth-years are notoriously inexact on many BMD records, and the death of an Oscar Gristwood Ricketts did eventually show up – in Brighton, in 1981. He’s supposed to have been born in 1898 not 1895, but in the right quarter of the year. 

So unless we think there were two of them with the same uncommon combination of first, middle, and last names, born about 3 years apart, one of whose birth record, and the other of whose death record has disappeared, and both associated with the same county, it looks very much as though OGR did not take his own life in his mid-twenties as one more damaged, despairing victim of the war, but was one of its survivors as well as one of its most resolute opponents, and lived to the not inconsiderable age of 86.   


Wednesday 15 October 2014

Timeline for WW1 COs

 Main source for dates is David Boulton, Objection Overruled (Francis Boutle, 2014)
1915                
summer            ILP pamphlet: The Peril of Conscription 
October          Stop Conscription meetings across country (ILP)           
1916                
January 6th       Military Service Bill first reading
January 27th     Military Service Bill became law: men aged 18-40, single, liable for call-up
February           War Office Form W 3236 sent to those liable     
March 2nd         Date for lodging exemption claim          (poster)
March 9th          1st issue of The Tribunal (N-CF)
April 8th - 9th    2nd N-CF National Convention:  Pledge by 2,000 to resist
April                 N-CF branch members fined/imprisoned re anti-recruiting leaflets
May 7th - 8th     CO prisoners taken to France with NCC 
May 17th           8 N-CF Nat Comm. members charged re leaflet 'Repeal the (DoR) Act'    
May 25th           Military Service (General Compulsion) Act: married men now liable          
June 2nd           COs' courts martial at Boulogne begun  
June 15th          Parade ground sentences:         35 'guilty of disobedience'
June 24th          A W Evans' court martial (later than others due to illness)           
June 28th          PM statement:   COs being shipped back
August              Dyce work camp set up
September, early           Death of Walter Roberts in Dyce camp  
October, end     Dyce camp closed       
1917                
April                 Military Service (Review of Exemptions) Act      
April 6th            N-CF message to Provisional Govt. in Russia: "our comrades"   
March               Several work settlements closed down  
May 17th           Meeting of nearly 900 at Dartmoor work centre (for ‘real’ work with civil rights)     
June 3rd           Leeds conference welcoming Russian Revolution          
June 15th          N-CF Nat Com confirms refusal to sponsor or organise work strikes by COs       
July                  Act making certain categories of aliens subject to conscription  
December 12th  Death of Arthur Butler in Preston; doctor exonerated by inquest jury       
December         Govt. "concessions" to COs having served >12 months: excluding labour, diet   
December         German peace offer     
1918                
early                 Newcastle, Maidstone, Wandsworth, Winchester, Carlisle, Canterbury, Hull –                                            Hunger strikes by COs:
January             Powers to cancel occupational exemptions       
January 16th     Death of Arthur Horton in Shrewsbury (pneumonia); doctor exonerated by inquest jury
February           Hunger strike at Newcastle over "incompetence and inhumanity" of prison doctor
February 4th      Death of H W Firth at Dartmoor 
February 9th      Prosecution of Bertrand Russell and Joan Beauchamp re letter in The Tribunal    
February, mid    Police raid on N-CF premises; copies of paper seized   
Guy Aldred
April                 Upper age limit 51, provision for further cancellation of exemptions etc.                                                          Proposal to extend conscription to Ireland, withdrawn
April 30th          Lords debate re ‘work of national value’ for COs
October               Work strike by 20 COs in Wandsworth (Guy Aldred)      
Similar actions in Leicester, Leeds, Pentonville, Liverpool, Newcastle, Preston    
November 11th  Armistice: COs remained in prison         
December 12th  Aldred and other strikers in Wandsworth moved to basement cells    
 (cat-and-mouse release after a week's hunger strike)      
1919                
            Several 'unofficial' [not N-CF supported] work strikes by COs throughout year.   
February           New governor at Wandsworth tries to impose iron discipline; open rebellion continues                              Parliamentary enquiry, eventually
April                 Releases of COs begin with "2-year men"          
April 29th          FSC lists "20-monthers" awaiting release; 24 get out of Pentonville and Wandsworth
May Day           Call for general prison strike (J H Hudson, Manchester)  
May                  CMs continue: sentences of hard labour
June                 Joint  Board for Assistance of COs and Their Dependants formed         
1920                
January             Joan Beauchamp sentenced to 21 days as publisher of The Tribunal; serves 8 days.
January 8th       Last issue of The Tribunal         
May 20th           Announcement of orders for release of all conscripts     
1921                
August 31st      Official end of war: Military Service Acts lapse. 

COs =  Conscientious Objectors
N-CF  No-Conscription Fellowship
NCC  Non-Combatant Corps
ILP  Independent Labour Party
FSC  Friends Service Committee (Quakers)

Applications for exemption could be made to Tribunals under the following headings:
a. On the ground that it was in the national interest that the man should, instead of being employed in military service, be engaged in work in which he was habitually engaged;
b. On the ground that it was in the national interest that the man should, instead of being employed in military service, be engaged in work in which he wished to be engaged;
c. That the man was being educated or trained for any work, on the ground that it was expedient in the national interest that, instead of being employed in military service, he should continue to be so educated or trained;
d. On the ground that serious hardship would ensue, if the man were called up for Army service, owing to his exceptional financial or business obligations or domestic position;
e. On the ground of ill-health or infirmity;
f. On the ground of a conscientious objection to the undertaking of combatant service; and
g. On the ground that the principal and usual occupation of the man was one of those included in the list of occupations certified by Government Departments and that it was expedient in the national interest that he should continued in such occupation.

A group of COs with supporters

See many subsequent posts for lots more about First World War COs.

Monday 6 October 2014

Ealing’s Alternative First World War Heroes: Part 1

Two who refused to kill and were prepared to pay with their lives...
The sudden transference of COs [Conscientious Objectors] to France in May, 1916, marked the crest of the wave in the efforts of the military authorities to ‘break’ the [no-conscription] movement. Riding rough shod over the promises of the highest civil authorities that objectors would not be taken out of the country, they transferred to France from Landguard Fort, Harwich, from Richmond Castle, Yorks and from Seaford some fifty men, thirty five of whom received the death sentence.

The first rumours of the intended move came from Harwich, where the Eastern N.C.C. was stationed and where a party of the earliest arrested COs was in irons at Landguard Fort. A Quaker Chaplain was hurried down as soon as possible, but before his wire was delivered saying that the men were gone, information was received that the N.C.C. and its C.O. prisoners were on their way to Southampton. This warning was conveyed by a letter thrown out of the train by one of the ordinary N.C.C. men while passing through a London suburb.
Efforts were promptly made to reach the party at Southampton, where they were delayed by the discovery of an outbreak of measles in the corps; but before this could be accomplished and before personal representations to Mr. Asquith led to the sending of a telegram ordering their retention in this country, the prisoners had been separated from the rest of the men and shipped to Le Havre—sure evidence that the Army authorities intended making an "example" of them.`- http://www.ppu.org.uk/cosnew/cos12.html
As previously posted, two of these men, in the Harwich group were :
Alfred William Evans of 26 Endsleigh Road, Southall
and
Oscar G Ricketts of 73 Mayfield Avenue, West Ealing
The story continues:
They were told that they would be 'under active service conditions', and if they refused to obey orders they would be shot [...]
The sentences were read out in public, in front of thousands of soldiers in formation [...] commuted in each case (after a dramatic pause in the reading) to penal servitude for 10 years. They were shipped back to Britain, this time to civilian imprisonment [...]Two hundred men were placed [in Dyce Work Camp near Aberdeen, where Ricketts and Evans are identified in an iconic photograph] to work at quarrying stone, and they endured harsh conditions, leaky tents, little sanitation, not much to eat, and no treatment for illness. A young CO called Walter Roberts died, and after that the camp was closed.
- The STORY OF THE HARWICH 'FRENCHMEN' at http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/cos/st_co_wwone3s2.html

Alfred Evans is among the better known COs of the First World War, having evidently recounted his experiences in some detail. He is mentioned several times by name in the above account, as follows:
·         Alfred Evans, an apprentice piano tuner, was another Harwich detainee. He was the son of a committed trade union man - and connection with a trade union was a risky thing in those days. He was at first willing to join the RAMC, and was granted a non-combatant certificate on that basis. When he reported to his local recruiting office, 'the lieutenant asked for my certificate and promptly tore it up: I was going to be put in the NCC, he said. I flatly refused, and he called the guard - two men and a corporal with fixed bayonets - and I was taken to Hounslow Barracks.'
·         Moved to Boulogne, the 17 were handcuffed with their hands behind their backs in a timber cage roughly 12 feet square, with one toilet bucket between them. After protests such extreme treatment was stopped, but conditions still weren't good. After a month Alfred went down with dysentery. Too weak to move, he couldn't go to the aid of a wounded man whom a medical orderly had let fall. The orderly hauled his patient up, pointed at Alfred and said, 'There's the bloody man who wouldn't help a wounded soldier'.
·         All 50 'Frenchmen' were brought together at Henriville military camp in June for court-martialling. Just before the trials, a captain told Alfred that his papers were marked 'Death': was he going to continue to resist? Alfred said, 'Yes. Men are dying in agony in the trenches for the things that they believe in and I wouldn't be less than them.' To Alfred's astonishment, 'he stepped back and saluted me, then shook my hand.' 
·         [After comutation of sentence and return] Alfred agreed to be assigned to manual labour under the Home Office Scheme [and after Dyce closed] was sent to a waterworks in South Wales. 'It was a slave-driving job and they put professional slave drivers over us.' Alfred soon found out that the managers were creaming off much of the government's labour grant into their own pockets. He called 'our boys' together; the COs went on strike and were promptly sent back to prison.
·         After 1919 [when COs were finally released] Alfred had difficulty getting work. 'I was drummed out of London.'     Out of London, however, he had better luck than most of his fellow COs: 'There was a shortage of piano tuners, you see. It was purely economic: they wanted a tuner and so I got a job.' 
                                                                                             Picture: Alfred at Dyce
In We Will Not Fight:  the untold story of World War One’s conscientious objectors, (London, Aurum, 2008),  Will Ellsworth-Jones describes him as driven by socialism rather than by his religion, reported to be Roman Catholic (rather unusually for a CO), and adds further information, also referring to his own account. He was willing to join the RAMC (Royal Army Medical Corps) because “prepared to take risks of war without inflicting death on other people.” Reportedly in the recruiting office, Ealing Broadway, a lieutenant tore up his exemption certificate – rather pointlessly since he had not been granted absolute exemption and so was liable to service in the Non-Combatant Corps (NCC). Evans refused to sign on for the NCC, insisting that he could not, on principle, take the military oath. He was escorted to Hounslow Barracks by soldiers with fixed bayonets, and “the Army gained a problem”. (p.120) On being ordered to peel potatoes he “wasn’t going to do it as military order”,  and so was sent as a prisoner to Harwich.

In France, at “Cinder City” outside Le Havre, he was apparently the focus of special attention, involving persuasion, threats, and priests, to try to make him change his mind, but did encounter one sympathetic sergeant of guard, “a grand lad who did us proud”, even organising a party. (p.143) Evans’ court-martial was held after the others (late June) because he was so ill, having been in hospital with dysentery, but he received the  same sentence:  “To be shot”, commuted to 10 years penal servitude.
According to the same book (p.250), Evans maintained his CO stance in the Second World War, refused to participate in fire-watching duty when ordered, and served two months in Bedford jail.  The author somewhat judgmentally alludes to him as seeming to have been “rigid” with “little time for anyone else’s point of view”, and claims that although his parents supported him throughout his First WW ordeal, they didn’t endorse his stance in the Second.
In late 2014 at least part of his family is happy to celebrate his memory:
25 November: Experiences and Beliefs of Alfred Evans, World War 1 CO threatened with Execution – Malcolm Pittock (his nephew).
Organised by Bolton Quakers and all welcome.

Ealing background
The 1911 Census records the  Evans household as living at 85 Darwin Road, Ealing, with Alfred William     as a 15-year-old Grocer's Errand Boy, born in Fulham. Other family members were:
(Last name: all Evans)
First name(s)
Relationship to household head
Marital condition
Gender
Age
Birth place
Occupation
William Thomas
Head
Married
Male
37
London Chelsea
Coach Painter
Maud Emma
Wife
Married
Female
38
London Chelsea
-
Alfred William
Son
Single
Male
15
London Fulham
Grocer's Errand Boy
Richard Lionel
Son
-
Male
9
Chiswick
School
Albert John
Son
-
Male
8
London Fulham
School
Joseph Arthur
Son
-
Male
4
Ealing
-
[This may not be the whole family; there could easily have been more children born after 1911.]  
         
Middlesex Military Appeals Tribunal records available (free) from the National Archives include:
Case Number: M56. Alfred William Evans of 26 Endsleigh Road, Southall . Occupation: Apprentice to ...Central Military Service Tribunal and Middlesex Appeal Tribunal : Minutes and Papers. Middlesex Appeal Tribunal. Case Number: M56. Alfred William Evans of 26 Endsleigh Road, Southall . Occupation: Apprentice to Pianoforte Tuning . Grounds of Appeal: F: On the ground of a conscientious objection to the undertaking of combatant service. ...
  • Collection: Records created or inherited by the Ministry of Health and successors, Local Government Boards and related bodies
  • Date range:1915 - 1922
  • Reference: MH 47/8/36
  • Subjects: Conscientious objection | Labour
       (Download size approximately 1.5 MB)
The chairman of the Tribunal (presumably the local one) to which Evans applied for exemption is said by Ellsworth-Jones to have been in the same NUR (National Union of Railwaymen) branch as Evans’ father. Tribunals did customarily have a (more or less token) “labour” representative as well as a (much more influential) military one. The above file includes a letter in support of Evans from Southall Trades Council. See transcription on this blog, September 2014.
Chronology according to Pearce (database):
April 1916 gave himself up; (Report of arrest and handing over 18.5.16)        Absentee         Hounslow; Felixstowe - 28 days in Harwich redoubt;
France; Court Martial Boulogne  24.6.16 sentenced to death com. to 10 years; Winchester Civil Prison;
Home Office Scheme [alternative work] Aug.1916 Dyce Camp Aberdeen; Oct.1916 Dyce Camp (photo); Nov.1916 Wakefield; Feb.1917 Penderyn; March 1917 - gave up HOS work on learning that it was a private contract.         
May 1917 Pentonville; Maidstone - released 12.4.19  
Sources for above Including: Labour Leader 18.5.16; No-Conscription Fellowship Souvenir History p.47; IWM taped interview 000489/11; Friends Service Cttee.1916/20;  Writings in Liddle Evans CO/030 Mss. typed reminiscences; Typed transcript of interview.