Arthur Morley Jones was 31 in 1916, (d.o.b. 14th May 1885) and married (since April 27th 1915). The first Military Service Act of early 1916, under which Alfred Evans and Oscar Ricketts were conscripted, applied only to single men aged between 18 and 40. A few months later conscription was extended to married men, many of whom had “attested” their willingness to serve when called upon, in accordance with government exhortations and no doubt often in the hope that the eventuality would not arise. The right to claim exemption on various grounds, conscience being the sixth of these, ‘F’, remained, and the system for dealing with such claims had developed its own bureaucracy.
Arthur Morley Jones, however was “Not attested” when he appeared
before the Local Tribunal in Hanwell to claim exemption (Central Military
Service Tribunal and Middlesex Appeal Tribunal: Minutes and Papers, Case Number: MS113. National Archives http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/).
Although his conscientious objection was recognised, like Evans
and Ricketts he was granted exemption from combatant service only, and like
them he appealed, unsuccessfully, against this decision, claiming “absolute”
exemption. He signed his ‘notice of appeal’ form on 5th July 1916,
when the Battle of the Somme, in its earliest days, was requiring fresh
cannon-fodder at an unprecedented rate.
The scandal of the death sentences (commuted to 10 years’ hard
labour) on COs was barely over, and its victims were being shipped back to
further ordeals in prisons and work camps. As well as having lived in the same
part of West London as two of those “Frenchmen”, Morley Jones was evidently a
work colleague of one of them, Oscar Ricketts; both were employed by the London
County & Westminster Bank, 21 Lombard St., E.C. In view of similarities
between their statements it is interesting to speculate whether they had
discussed the matter of conscription and what to do if it came, perhaps
encouraging or influencing each other – or both may have been helped in this
regard by the No-Conscription Fellowship of which Oscar is said to have been a
member, as Jones may have been.
Notice
of Appeal. (2) Grounds on which appeal
made:
As I believe that the whole system of
military service is contrary to the spirit & teaching of my master Jesus
Christ, the partial exemption granted by the Hanwell tribunal is inadequate. I
therefore ask the appeal tribunal to extend the exemption to include military
service and all work connected with it.
[I should esteem it a favour if the appeal
could be heard as late in the evening as possible so that my absence from the
Bank may cause a minimum of inconvenience.]
(Signed) A Morley Jones July 5th 1916
Reasons
for the decision of the Local Tribunal
Tribunal satisfied that applicant has a conscientious objection to
Combatant Service, and so exempted him
from such Service .
Signed by Chairman, 10th July 1916.
For Appeal tribunal: Appeal
dismissed 18 July 1916
The tribunals
by this date are asking for more information from applicants than earlier in
the year, so that we learn from the Local application (21st June
1916; non-combatant service granted 3rd July) not only Morley Jones’ birthday and date of
marriage as above, but the fact that he had worked for the same Bank since he
left school, starting on 2nd May 1904.
Applicants are
now being warned that “it is not sufficient to show that opinions are held
against war. There must be proof of genuine
conscientious conviction.” (Heavy underlining in original). To establish
this they have to supply numbered answers
relating to ten points (19 including subdivisions) asking about willingness to
do alternative service, membership of anti-war religions and groups etc. and
ending with 10 (b): [If unwilling to undertake any work of national importance]
“How you reconcile your enjoying the privileges of British citizenship with
this refusal.” Fortunately there were N-CF
classes on dealing with this sort of thing. It may even have helped to
articulate and disseminate opposition to the war as well as becoming a valued
resource for researchers 100 years later.
Some of Morley Jones’ Replies are as follows:
2. Combatants
and non-combatants are all part of the same military machine whose aim is to
kill and wound, I cannot therefore distinguish between them.
5. (a) [Have
held these opinions] As long as I have been old enough to hold any opinions at all.
(b) ... I have
never regarded the question as debatable from a Christian standpoint and have
no recollection of having discussed it.
6. (a) I am a member of the Baptist Church.
(b) Until the present
war I took it as a matter of course that it was [a tenet of this body that no member
must engage in any military service whatsoever].
9. (a) My work at the Bank leaves me very little spare time,
otherwise I should not be unwilling to do anything I could to help my country
in any non-military way.
(c) I hope that all
the work I do is for the good of the community.
(d) I will stand by
my convictions whatever the consequences may be.
In an accompanying letter dated 29th June he pointed
out the difficulty of attending the hearing at short notice, and explained he
would be unable to attend the related
Advisory Committee to which Mr Alfred Hill (Heath Lodge) had invited him that
day for the next, reinforcing the point about long hours at the bank:
No doubt you will quite understand the position of banks
at this time of year – tomorrow I shall
not leave the office till about midnight, and it would probably be about 10
o’clock before I could get away on Monday... [Asking if the case
could be postponed for a week] when I could leave the office in time
to be at the tribunal by 8.30 without too much difficulty.
Note from Military Representative (there was one on each
tribunal)
This is a claim on the ground of conscientious objection,
which I must leave to the tribunal.
(Signed) James Morley, 1st July 1916.
(Presumably the fact that his surname and Jones’ middle name
are the same is coincidental).
The Appeal
hearing was scheduled for 18th July at 2.30 in Guildhall. Two days
letter the notice of its decision (“dismissed”) was sent to Jones, and to the
Local Tribunal n Hanwell. The
same day (20th July) AMJ completed in duplicate the notice of
last-resort appeal to the Central Tribunal, restating his absolutist position:
1. As I believe that all war is contrary to the spirit &
teaching of my master Jesus Christ,. I can under no circumstances become a
member of the “Non-Combatant Corps.”. In the words of a letter sent by the
Friends’ Service Committee to the Prime Minister, my “objection covers any form
of military service, combatant or
non-combatant , and also any form of civil alternative under a scheme whereby
the Government seeks to facilitate national organisation for the prosecution of
war.”
2. That I am spending
my whole time on work which is admitted by te City of London tribunal to be of
national importance, and there is no other work in the doing of which I could be
of such effective service to my country at the present time.
Across the
bottom right-hand corner of the form, diagonally, handwritten:
I do not recommend leave
[to appeal]. If any force is to be given to our direction that there must be
Sacrifice of some Kind – then this man has really no appeal whatever.
Should be required to serve in the Non-Comb. Corps. [Signed] H.Nield, 24
vii 1916.
*AMJ is not listed on a spreadsheet from an early version of this database – except possibly as “Jones, M.” – an Absentee whose arrest was “reported 5.9.16”, no source given). This Jones is placed in Hanwell Urban District but under county “Middlesex (Oxon.?)” – a confusion of Hanwell with Harwell, perhaps? Among the Middlesex Tribunal records only AMJ’s case seems to match; those for "Oxon." (Oxfordshire) have not survived.
Almost all Tribunal records were destroyed, the exceptions being those of the Middlesex Appeals Tribunal, and in Scotland* Lothian and Peebles (as a sample set) and the Isle of Lewis (by chance).
May 2015: The IWM version of records from the Pearce database shows that Alfred Morley Jones had a brother, Sydney Langford Jones, who also lived in Hanwell and was a CO - more on this to follow.
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