Looking back to 1916 from COs' Day 2018

For International Conscientious Objectors' Day, 15 May
A day in the implementation of the Military Service Act

as reported in The Scotsman, 10 June 1916, p.8, cols. 6-7

When newspapers had pages full of news...
Amongst the war news reported on the 10th of June in The Scotsman (Edinburgh) there are several reports about reactions and resistance to conscription, introduced nationally in the Military Service Acts of 1916 (January and May). One of these features Dr John MacCallum, mentioned previously in a review of Robert Duncan's Objectors and Resisters and more extensively in a subsequent post.

Transcription: 

ARGYLLSHIRE ASSISTANT MEDICAL OFFICER

_______________

FINED AS AN ABSEBTEE

In Oban Sheriff Court yesterday – before Sheriff Substitute Wallace – John Cameron MacCallum, M.B., Ch.B., Muckairn Manse, Taynuilt, recently Executive Tuberculosis Officer and Assistant Medical Officer for the Country of Argyll, appeared on a charge that, having been deemed to have been enlisted and transferred to the Army Reserve under the Military Service Act, and having on 13^th may been called up from the Reserve for service, he failed to report himself at Stirling Castle on 30^th May in accordance with the requirements of the notice served on him.

The accused pleaded not guilty.

In reply to the Sheriff-Substitute, he admitted a breach of the statute, but, in view of the conscientious objections which he held to participating in war service in any capacity, he maintained he could tender no other plea than that of not guilty. He acknowledged that he had not received a certificate for exemption as a conscientious objector, although he had applied for one.

Formal evidence having been led by the Procurator-Fiscal, the Sheriff-Substitute convicted the accused, and sentenced him to pay a fine of £2, or one week’s imprisonment. 

On leaving the dock, Dr MacCallum was taken into custody by a military escort.

 - The Scotsman, Saturday June 10, 1916, p.8, col.6-7. Military Service: Labour and Recruiting

Dr MacCallum was of course not alone in his stand, as shown in the next two reports.

Further details on most of the other COs listed can be found at:
https://search.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/search/world-records/conscientious-objectors-register-1914-1918.

As is also well know and well documented, all was not quiescent on the labour front either - not only on 'Red' Clydeside.

The same columns contain brief notices of how conscription was affecting essential work (‘agricultural labour’, ‘female labour in bakeries’, and ‘Fife colliery’), and several industrial disputes: Edinburgh corporation workers wanting an increase in wages; Edinburgh painters rumoured to be nearing a settlement after 11 weeks; and Dundee calender [sic*] workers back to work after 3 months on strike with an expectation of having their claim considered. Not to mention Galsgow muntions workers and the vexed question of postponing the traditional ‘Glasgow Fair’ annual holidays, in the national interest of course.

Calender Girls?

(There were many women working in the jute industry in Dundee even before the war)

*CALENDERER / CALENDERMAN / CALENDER WORKER - operated a machine which pressed using two large rollers (calender) used to press and finish fabrics or paper. - Answer to an online query.


The official labour and trade union movement of course supported the war...but not unanimously.

Finally, column 8 on the same page under the heading Biographical Notes records the sad fate of many of those who had gone to the war. The whole page can be seen as a pdf.      

Sections of CO group photographs, as featured on the cover of

Voices from War and Some Labour Struggles (Edinburgh, Mercat Press, 1995), ed. Ian MacDougall

(no picture credits given other than for the cover design as a whole).

For more events on 15th May see Peace Pledge Union:

http://www.ppu.org.uk/coday/coday2018.html

And a related news story from Edinburgh, 15-5-2018:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-44110224

------------------------------------

POSTSCRIPT:
Another small part of the story, this time from Aberdeen -
National Council Against Conscription (Aberdeen) (1916) 
"During World War One, the National Council Against Conscription was established in response to the Military Service Bills of 1916, which introduced conscription for men between 18 and 40. The Council opposed conscription as an infringement on civil liberties and campaigned against the bill seeking to stop it passing through Parliament. The Council was one of many groups operating at the time, such as The No-Conscription Fellowship, and these groups monitored the work of the military tribunals and gave advice to the men who appeared before them. The Council changed its name in 1916 to The National Council for Civil Liberties (n.b. there was another organisation with the same
name from the early 1930s and which became Liberty, as it is known today).
"There was a branch in Aberdeen and William Davidson, a stores porter, Vice President of the Aberdeen Independent Labour Party, was secretary.
"References: Conscientious Objectors Register 1914 – 1918 at Imperial War Museum website (record of William Davidson)."

Cold War Crimes: More on Nuclear Tests

 - Book review -

“Over 50 years, the Western powers used the Pacific region as a laboratory for nuclear testing.”

France was not of course the only or the first country to inflict damage on other places and peoples in the course of developing and testing nuclear weapons - and arguably far from the worst, although its resumption of the programme in the 1990s made it for a time the main focus of protests. 

"Britain tested nuclear weapons in Oceania between 1952 and 1958. There were 12 atomic tests at the Monte Bello Islands, Maralinga and Emu Field in Australia (1952–57). These were followed by nine hydrogen and atomic bomb tests in 1957–58 at Malden Island and Christmas (Kiritimati) Island in the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (GEIC)—today the Republic of Kiribati." - Preliminary pages, p.xv in:

Nic Maclellan, Grappling with the Bomb: Britain’s Pacific H-Bomb Tests. (Pacific Series). Australian Nation University (ANU) Press, 2017. ISBN (print): 9781760461379/ ISBN (online): 9781760461386. 

Download free https://press.anu.edu.au/node/2626/download (5.0MB HTML, Mobile 5.8, epub 5.7.)  Buy Print $55 (£41.91 new via Amazon) 

An extraordinary and important new book published last year in Australia records, documents and comments on the devastating effects of what Britain did in the late 1950s on and to Malden Island and 'Christmas' (Kiritimati) Island in the Pacific.

See download for larger-scale maps

The book's structure is original, effective and readable, combining the best features of journalism (its author's profession), history writing and presentation of research findings. As the titles of its chapters indicate, it is first and foremost concerned with people, from the distant decision-makers to the all too close participants in the test, above all the large number who were adversely, often catastrophically affected by them.

This includes a wide variety of individuals and groups, among them some who tried to stop the tests and many who struggled for some semblance of justice in their aftermath. Here they often speak in their own voices, to an extent unusual in historical or scientific accounts, although not for the first time - interviews by Nic Maclennan with Pacific islanders were published in an earlier book, and much testimony has been recorded in the course of the long battle for 'compensation' to have their sufferings acknowledged. A major factor in hampering their quest, compounding the harm, has been the failure of the authorities to keep records of their exposure to radiation, or to destroy any that existed.

In each chapter, however, there is much more than biographical detail and anecdote. Memory, admittedly fallible, is supplemented by solid contextualisation and correlated with well-documented back-up evidence. For the non-scientist or non-historian, the relevant facts are presented in a straightforward, accessible way. The book begins with a time-line and glossary; 'interludes' expand on the key issues, and the extensive bibliography is helpfully arranged by subject (including American and French atomic tests) and type of material. And there are some striking and terrifying pictures.  

Sailors of the Fiji Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, May 1957

On deck in readiness for the test: HMS Warrior

A campaigning work, it presents a comprehensive indictment of British government meanness, bad faith and abdication of responsibility for those whose world was taken over and whose lives were irrevocably damaged and shortened for the sake of preparing even more damage and destruction.     

As we mark the 60th anniversary of the Grapple tests in 2017–18, the issues of British nuclear weapons, indigenous rights and a nuclear-free and independent Pacific are still with us.

There are debates in the UK parliament about the cost of renewing Trident, the heart of the UK nuclear arsenal. Post-Brexit, Scottish nationalists are calling for a nuclear-free and independent Scotland as they move towards a second referendum on independence. The Republic of the Marshall Islands—unsuccessfully—has taken Britain and other nuclear weapons states to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over their failure to meet disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As a consequence, in February 2017 Britain withdraw from the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ on matters of nuclear disarmament, in order to halt further cases that threaten its nuclear arsenal.

Eight Pacific island countries co-sponsored the December 2016 UN General Assembly resolution to establish a treaty banning nuclear weapons, with negotiations amongst 130 governments commencing in March 2017. The South Australian Government is seeking to establish a nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land, even as the Australian Government exports uranium to fuel nuclear reactors like Daichi Fukushima, which since 2011 has continued to contaminate the land and marine environment. Meanwhile the Tokyo Electric Power Company is wondering who will pay the horrendous price tag—US$160 billion and counting—to clean up the world’s latest nuclear sacrifice zone at Fukushima. The list goes on …

Even as some pundits call for an expansion of the nuclear industry to address the challenge of climate change, we have not addressed the costs and consequences of nuclear activities in the 1950s. As we enter a new era of uncertainty, following the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald J. Trump as US President, it is important to remember the tragedy of the nuclear era in the Pacific, so we are never forced to repeat it.

Moreover, it is time for the citizens of the United Kingdom to call on their government to do the right thing and address the legitimate claims of the Grapple survivors.

-   Introduction, p.16   

War Resisters' International pamphlet 1988

A longer and more academic review of Grappling with the Bomb is available online (June 2018). Journal: Medicine, Conflict and Survival, vol.34, no.2.

Link for e-prints (free for the first 50) here.

Reggane 1960: Dummies in the Desert

French Nuclear Tests in the Sahara

Notification from the research group “achac”:

Research group ACHAC - Colonisation, immigration, post-colonialism

"In the context of 'fake news', the photograph titled Reggane 1960 is a perfect example of the controversies and differing interpretations to which a picture can give rise. Taken by the French Army in the Algerian desert in December 1960, as part of the Gerboise mission – the first series of French nuclear tests, carried out in the midst of the Algerian War – it shows two lines of rigid, unmoving figures tied to stakes. Published in Les années 50. Et si la guerre froide recommençait ? [The 1950s: What if the Cold War started up again?] (La Martinière, to be published on 5 April 2018), it is deciphered here by the three authors of the book, Farid Abdelouahab, art historian, Pascal Blanchard, historian, and Pierre Haski, journalist and President of ‘Reporters sans frontières’."

Fallout from a Photograph

"This photograph of dummies set up to test the effect of the nuclear blast in the atmosphere gave rise to polemics. It was linked, as evidence, with the story of Algerian "human guinea-pigs" said to have been sent to the (test) site and deliberately irradiated by the French authorities; a news film proves that they are really dummies and not human bodies." [Reggane, Algeria].

Translation from French text, 'Fate of a photograph'
(slightly shortened)

We chose this photograph to illustrate one of the symbols of the Cold War, showing dummies set up by the French Army to test the blast from the explosion. But this picture, like present-day “fake news”, became the image of a crime perpetrated by France, that is the impact of these tests on a civilian population and on French soldiers, but also, according to some people, the “proof” that France had exposed not dummies, but FLN (National Liberation Front) prisoners of war in nuclear radiation tests. […]

On this photograph we see a dozen dummies in military uniform – very diverse and unregimented – set down in the Algerian desert. We ascertained that it should have been dated to the third test, that of 27 December 1960; this is confirmed by film and other archive images. For many years this photograph has featured in accusations brought against the French authorities by representatives of Algerian institutions … demanding acknowledgement of serious matters concerning “crimes against humanity”. In fact it is often used, mainly on the internet, to denounce presumed experiments carried out on 150 Algerian FLN POWs said to have served as ‘guinea-pigs’, in some cases disguised as dummy soldiers and tied to stakes about 1 kilometre from the epicentre in order to inform military scientists about radiation effects. The survivors/remains are supposed to have been taken to France for further research…

The First French atmospheric tests

To understand this, we need to go back to the early nuclear age… [USA 16-7-1945; USSR 1949; UK 1952}. In 1958 General de Gaulle, on coming to power, confirmed the order for nuclear weapons experiments and speeded up the preparations already begun by is predecessors two years earlier, and the Minister for Defence created a consultative committee tasked with studying the problems related to nuclear tests. The machine had got going…

In the following years the Operational Group for Nuclear Experimentation (GOEN) defined security zones. Contemporary military theories from the Warsaw Pact envisaged the possibility of manœuvres and confrontations with the enemy in zones contaminated by radioactivity after explosions. In the wake of the other great powers, the French army during that period doubtless had to take on board such views.

The Sahara Centre for Military Experimentation (CSEM) in Reggane began to emerge from the Algerian sand at the end of 1957, in the midst of the Algerian War, bringing together several thousand civil and military personnel in the Tanezrouft region, in a vast complex situated about 40 kilometres from Hamoudia.
The explosion of 13 February 1960 initiated a series of four atmospheric tests code-named ‘Gerbils’ – Blue, White, Red and Green (the gerbil being a small rodent of the desert). They went on until 25 April 1961, a few days after the generals’ putsch in Algiers.

Launched from the top of a metal tower, the first blast released energy of the order of four times that of Hiroshima (70 kilotons). Around point zero, military materiel (aircraft, vehicles…) and also animals (rabbits, goats, rats) spread about in cages had been placed in order to analyse the biological effects of the flash and proceed to ophthalmology experiments. Each test entailed numerous assessments to be made with a view to ascertaining the consequences of the energy release: nuclear diagnostics, high-speed photography, radiochemical analyses carried out on the particles collected by aircraft flown inside the radioactive cloud. The zone, in particular the Touat Valley, contained both sedentary and nomad populations. Many people would be contaminated by the tests. Like numerous French soldiers and technicians, most of them in shirt-sleeves and sunglasses, as well as many Algerian workers, and about twenty journalists present at the site, all of them subjected to large doses of radiation.

A French Senate report dated 2009 states that, “… the measures taken at the time were not sufficient to prevent the exposure to contamination of people who either participated directly in the experiments or were present in the zones around the explosions. These security measures, first and foremost did not prevent the occurrence of many technical mishaps during the preparation for or course of the tests.” (Report n°18 (2009-2010), Marcel-Pierre Cléach, on behalf of the Commission for Foreign Affairs, 7 October 2009). To sum up, things were not perfect. According to data from the Algerian League for the Rights of Man, 24,000 civilians and soldiers were directly exposed. A document declassified in 2013 and made public the following year highlights the significant duration of the fallout. All these indications tend to the same conclusion: the impact on the environment and on local populations was major.

On the day after the first explosion, the radioactive cloud reached Tamanrasset and Central Africa then moved up towards West Africa, reaching Bamako.

Criticism was powerful, but the French media and the services concerned were to develop counter-propaganda. 
Two weeks later, still laden with radioactivity, it reached the Mediterranean coastlines of Spain and Sicily (Fabienne Le Moing, « Tribunal administratif : les conséquences des essais nucléaires en Algérie » [archive], France 3-4 September 2014). Some radio-isotopes thrown out by the explosion could have been ingested by people on the ground in spite of being diluted in the atmosphere. 
There is no doubt that these radioactive elements cause cardio-vascular disease and cancers. (Brunot Barillot, « Le document choc sur la bombe A en Algérie », Le Parisien, 14 February 2014). 

This is all known and acknowledged today but it is necessary to proceed with the story as it relates to the famous photograph. 
The second explosion, much less powerful (4 kilotons) was carried out on 1^st April 1960 during the official visit of Nikita Khrushchev to France (23 March to 3 April 1960), and Gaumont news announced that “France, for its part, wished to demonstrate, at Reggane, that its inclusion in Nuclear Club was not simply a matter of form”.  The means of detonation and measurement were installed in barracks and the bomb was placed on a platform at ground level (for all the other test, it was placed in shelter at the top of a hundred-metre-tall tower, later a smaller one of 50 metres).  (Pierre Billaud (Direction), La grande aventure du nucléaire militaire français. Des acteurs témoignent, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2016). The explosion set off a fireball more than 100 metres in diameter going up to 280 metres above the ground.

For the third atmospheric test of 27 December 1960 several hundred animals and military materiel as before, but along with dummies dressed in uniform (supplied with radiation receptors according to some sources), were placed at various distances around ground zero, situated 15 kilometres from the command post. The two tests, with two different dates, are central to the mistake made about the photograph, this is why the facts are important.

As can be verified in a news programme of the time (Gaumont News, December 1960, Reference 6101GJ 00006), those figures held up by iron bars are certainly made of cloth and cannot contain human bodies, dead or alive. They are the same dummies which are to be found on the photograph we published in our book (so dated December 1960), and which subsequently illustrated articles denouncing the use of human guinea-pigs in tests for radioactivity… but locating the event in April 1960. 
But the image is powerfully symbolic and invokes the violence of the Algerian war and those terrible years. This is why it is re-invoked regularly. A narrative now emerges about the use of Algerian prisoners who were allegedly deliberately contaminated and this picture has become the most obvious symbol or even ‘proof’, given its composition and the violence it illustrates in such a situation. No-one really sets out to seek its real context, nor to find the other pictures or film relating to the event. Then conflation begins. The arrival of the dummies - which can be checked on other photos (like one from the archives of l’Établissement de Communication et de Production Audiovisuelle de la Défense, Réf.: F 60-20 R651) - is as if non-existent; no-one has looked for the images or they have failed to find them. The Gaumont film archives or those of the army are forgotten. In this respect too, no-one has pursued the investigation to its conclusion.

In the course of the fourth blast, Operation Green Gerbil – a failed test since its power was no more than 1 kiloton, whereas it was initially estimated at between 6 and 18 kilotons – ‘tactical exercises in the nuclear environment’ [blog ref. supplied] did take place. Operations involving about a hundred troops: helicopters, armoured vehicles, and infantry provided with protective equipment undertook reconnaissance in the contaminated area. Nearly 200 soldiers were involved after the blast, in exercises which put them within 650 and 300 metres of ground zero for several hours. Showers were their only means of decontamination. The Parliamentary Office for Evaluation of Scientific and Technical Choices Report, 2001, indicates 42 cases of skin contamination among personnel in the test area. The obvious, known shocking thing is this above all – the contamination of soldiers and civilian populations in all the tests – but the polemic citing the image as evidence persists; on the contrary, the ‘fake news’ becomes more significant, copied form one site to another. It makes people forget the central evil and most importantly this photograph is taken as proof, when a genuine investigation should be undertaken on the use of guinea-pigs during the Algerian War. 

This question is even more important today since in early 2018 the French Constitutional Council reviewed all the traumas suffered by civil populations and decided that Algerian civilians who had sustained physical damage from violence attributable to the conflict could now claim pensions paid by France. The Constitutional Council removed the words ‘of French nationality’ which until then had restricted these benefits to victims of the ‘Hexagon’ [‘casual synonym for the mainland part of Metropolitan France’] only, invoking the principle of ‘equality before the law’ guaranteed by the Constitution. From now on, Reggane can be included in an extensive set of questions about possible compensation for populations affected at the time. It is therefore a major subject and investigation of provable and alleged facts must be resumed.

Where did the myth around this photograph come from?
It was natural enough that the French authorities always disputed the secondary effects of Reggane: “There was never any deliberate exposure of local populations,” a Ministry of Defence spokesman asserted in 2007… “Only dead bodies were used to study the bomb’s effects,” he added. Such a statement only added to the controversy, and gave support to those who thought that France had committed a crime at Reggane. Acknowledging that cadavers had been used left room for further doubts. And what bodies were involved? Might it be new evidence that living people had been exposed at Reggane in December 1960?

To reopen this question is also to investigate a state secret, relating to the pact concluded between Paris and Algiers allowing France to continue its experiments after independence until the site was dismantled in 1965. It explains the silence of the Algerian regime (or at least the complex twists of history writing) which, under military influence, has until the last few years made little use of the tests in anti-French propaganda or critiques. So it was human rights organisations that took up the fight on this issue and took the “Reggane dummies” as an icon of their struggle, a just one insofar as it concerned their quest for knowledge, but based on a misleading image.

In fact, numerous recent studies have shown that the populations of Reggane and of Eker in Tamanrasset are still suffering the effects of those tests, which have cost the lives of thousands of people and led to serious illnesses. At Reggane, where the tests were atmospheric and covered a vast unprotected area, doctors say that exposure to ionising radiation has caused more than 20 types of cancer. Before the tests, cereals and dates were grown there, and there were various types of animal. That has all gone.

This major ecological crisis is part of the historical record. Attention turned to the testimony of a Legionary said to have taken part in the assembling of 150 prisoners in March 1960 – this was taken up very quickly by the Algerian league for the Rights of Man – a fact reported by a hero of anticolonialism, the unassailable cinéaste René Vautier. In fact Vautier, who was then working on his film Algérie en flames (Algeria in Flames), seems to have been told this story by another director, Karl Gass – second hand testimony, never repeated, but for many this was taken as irrefutable proof.

Then the Canard enchaîné published photos in a dossier. Forensic doctors validated the photographs. There was talk of many others, but they were never seen. There was talk of numerous witness statements showing that the prisons had been cleared of 150 prisoners by the French Army and these taken on to the Reggane site. From here on, no-one saw dummies any more, but human bodies wrapped in clothes. This photograph had to be the missing piece of evidence, to influence opinion. Actually, it was a false trail and the investigation stalled.

Witnesses mixed up dates and evidence. What did it matter if the “150 Prisoners” business dated from March-April 1960 and the photograph from December 1960? It became an icon, pictorial proof. Witnesses like a doctor from El Harrach hospital confirmed the facts. Some people began to denounce the secret clauses of the Évian accords regarding the tests, negotiated in 1961-62… The FLN had agreed that France could use the Saharan sites for nuclear, chemical and ballistic tests for 5 more years. So the French could not be held to account, then or now.

In Algeria, the lawyer Fatima Ben Braham stated: “A study of certain photographs enables us to affirm that the position of the so-called dummies is oddly like that of human bodies wrapped in clothing. Besides that, a number of Algerians detained in the west of the country and sentenced to death by special tribunals of the [French] army have contributed illuminating testimony. Some of those sentenced to death were not executed in prison, but were transferred and never seen again. They were said to have been handed over to the army. Research in the registers of judicial executions yields no trace of their executions, still less of their release. The same fate was reserved for other individuals interned in the concentration camps.” But those testimonies are neither published nor verifiable. [... A couple of other examples.]

It all tends in the same direction. Still, there is confusion over facts, evidence and dates, on several levels. There are the facts – what happened at Reggane during the Algerian War, in the midst of unlimited violence? There are witness statements and evidence, their value impossible to assess. And there is the photograph, which has become 'the' definitive proof. Of course this does not mean that the alleged crime has no basis in fact, but it does mean that a photograph has a history and cannot be taken as evidence without being examined.

The picture actually recounts another story, about France in Algeria during and after the war, with a total of 11 tests carried out after independence, up to February 1966, tested its bomb, in the process contaminating with no shadow of doubt French soldiers, scientists, and thousands of civilians. A government which has no doubt made experiments on bodies, living or dead, as the then spokesman of the MoD, Jean-François Bureau, rashly acknowledged in 2007. But the investigation is still at an early stage.

All this now requires in-depth study. Improper use of the picture involved is stopping us from getting at the truth. A mistake which has become typical of our time: claiming without proof, affirming without investigating, favouring ‘fake news’ over thorough research. It is the role of historians and journalists to question facts and images and go beyond appearances to try to understand what really happened at Reggane. In 1960. In the middle of the Cold War. In the nuclear arms race. Pictures tell us about history and can make history, but like facts they need contextualisation, analysis and validation.

=======================

Previously on this blog:

French nuclear tests in Polynesia 

- and protesting in 1966 against them 

A Trip to the Mainland from Stornoway, 1952

Written by a Stornoway shopkeeper to her niece.

The writer with two great-nieces in her back garden, Stornoway, c1952

Athol Private Hotel
St. Leonards Bank
Perth
8th Sept. 1952

Dear Peggy,

  I have posted today a doll for Alison - but couldn't think of anything to post Dimpy [nickname] - so if you think the parcel should be hidden until there is something for Herself - just Hide. - What can I get for her? The shops here are no better than at home - indeed I think Jumpers & baby clothes are much nicer in D---- [Doug’s? - Stornoway shop, probably] The navy blue wool & coarse stocking are for her wellingtons & if they are any good I can get more - or any finer wool - for Alison. As I am not buying "Ready Mades" I can get wool & materials.

 We haven't heard from SY [Stornoway] since we left.- The red Jumper is a Marks & Spencer - also the "Lindsay Maid" [label] not the blue coat - nor the navy Jersey. My shopping is not a success. Can't get anything to fit but Hats. & I'll never 'Kahn' [criticise verbally, slag off; phonetic from Gaelic] Wilkie [presumably another Stornoway shop, or mail order?]again - after seeing the price of O.S. Suits, £29 - £33!!

How are the Girls - I miss them - & will be quite ready to return.

MA [Mary Ann]

"Dimpy" a few years earlier,
probably taken outside Mary Ann's shop in North Beach Street.

An unworldly World of their own? A look at 20th-century Free Church life

Rebarbative as the public face and loudly trumpeted doctrines of the Free Church (FC) may appear to many people born in the 20th and 21st centuries, that institution is an inescapable part of the history of Lewis, and so of the family history of the majority of those with roots in Lewis, varied and scattered though these may be. There were other aspects to life on the island, but it was scarcely possible to live in Stornoway without some awareness of the FC and its beliefs - including the one about reaching out to those not already affiliated to it, and telling them off if their habits and customs deviated from its rules. Being a committed part of its demanding world and peculiarly rich emotional life was different, and its details can be viewed as casting an interesting sidelight on the 'history of mentalities', among other things. For an insider's view of Free Church life and thought in the first half of the 20th century, we turn one more time to the Diary of Kenneth A MacRae.

(Dates on the left are those of the diary, not its writer.)
Such marathon Communion sessions in various places feature largely in the book.

Still spreading the Word:
These items were found in a second-hand copy of the Diary.

Theological arguments will not be rehearsed here, nor will doctrinal differences (other sources are available for that sort of thing, e.g. The People of the Great Faith, by Douglas Ansdell, Acair, 1998). On the other hand, MacRae's constant reference to spiritual matters, in particular the state of his own "soul" and its travails, does become repetitive but has a certain fascination, not unlike that exerted by several fictional works attempting in different ways to describe the psychological state of the religious-minded. One might cite James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner, or numerous passages in the novels of Iris Murdoch, or rather more frivolously, Amos Starkadder in Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm. Not that any of these can fairly be compared to MacRae, who would have found much to blame in their doctrines: ultra-Calvinsim taken to extremes; Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, unacceptable by definition; and populist evangelism. There is likewise interest in the language used, the behaviour expected and rituals practised, as well as, of course, the social attitudes evinced.

A page from 'Cold Comfort Farm', by Stella Gibbons, first published 1934

The following extracts and comments are again grouped by topics, often overlapping, not by date.

Interior World

2-6-1912 old 'offensive' preaching urgently required...

27-9-12 disagreement with the strictness and indeed unreasonableness of some of Miss Kemp's views
9-10-12 Edinburgh: new interests and temptations

15-4-1913 back to the university and my godlessness... Perhaps no specific sins. No time... Pride.

26-5-13 I must not quietly pass what I know to be out of accordance with God's laws; must be prepared to endure.

20-7-13 dread seeking souls for my own name as preacher.

9-8 craving for and lure of romance; pride... Vain wretch! (Referring to himself)

5-9-13 cycling not conducive to spirituality

7-9-13 preaching of the "law" - told Lowlanders will not suffer it. Will not alter, to the end: Calvary, judgment and hell.

31-12-13 "The groan or sigh is the prayer most pleasing to God, for there is the least of self in it." (He quotes; mot of his reading was of and by old-time preachers and ministers.)

19-1-1914. What mysterious power is in Gaelic melody?

20-1-14 old couple of old school, condemned in unreserved terms modern civilisation. Wife of strong mettle, uncompromising.
7-6-14 danger of being led away by imagination
25-10-14 I have a right to expect my prayers to be answered.

9-1-1922. Oh that I could be serious at all times!  10-1 spoke on revivals, their dangers.

23-1-22 spiritual benefit of diary: own soul must receive first interest.

World of Ministry, first experiences

28-6-1914 Lochgilphead. Knew I loved the people.
22-11-14 surprised at opinions sometimes held by Free Church people.

21-3-1915 Kildonan: feeling of desolation; the terrible change which has come over our dear land.

1-5-15 Aberdeen. Set forth the present deplorable state of Britain.

16-5 Tarbert, Lochfyne. An inquiry into the prevailing desolation.

1-8-15 the voice of my people; was afraid I was offending some. Feeling that I had set the people against me. 12-9 I had wonderful power. No-one spoke, I saw no smile on any face.

1-1-1916. In the prayer the tears rolled down my cheeks.
9-1-16 tired of preaching and all to no purpose.
14-5-16 If I can't get to preach I don't want to live.
30-7 desire to flee away to Skye or Lewis.

15-4-1917 to get away to the dear north land, God's own dear people.
11-8-17 The sight of Dingwall [his home town], quiet, lying in its peaceful valley across the water.
12-8 Ferintosh Communion. Saw many tears at the table.

13-7-1918 Skye. Man came forward, tears streaming down cheeks and falling on floor.

9-9-18 blight of Moderation everywhere present.

1-10-18 generally heard Free Church people [seen as] queer, prejudiced and narrow-minded. 

7-9-1922 A band of Plymouth Brethren began to sing at the street corner... was longing to go and join them.

Isle of Lewis, some early impressions and observations

MacRae had found much to approve in Lewis, before receiving the 'call' to Stornoway.
9-10-1919 Ness: size and beauty of church. Attendance 650, 1000. Native garb modest and becoming - exceptional today.
10-10-19 One said that those who felt it long at a Question Meeting would find it long in heaven.
12-10-19 Lewis singing... so like the song of glory.
13-10-19 ... amazed at the giving of the people. Black houses: did not think them so bad at all.
14-10 Bragar, Carloway, Callanish - enjoyable run.

6-1-1922 reports from Lewis re spiritual life very encouraging; in November found ministers mourning frivolity and decadence of the young people.

22,26-9-22 Crossbost, Lochs, Gravir. Church holds 1700, crammed to excess. Earnest attention; more brokenness under the Word with us in Skye.

Women and children - maybe not first, but not last either

Although predictably patriarchal in his attitudes, and restrictive in his assumptions about the role of women in the church, MacRae was not a misogynist, showing interest in and appreciation of many female members of his congregation as well as his own family. Women were also assumed to take full unmediated responsibility for their own spiritual development as individuals; there are frequent mentions of them being "awakened" and received into the church after the due process of being "troubled" and "exercised", with assessments of their characters. Women acting as elders and ministers were, however, numbered among the "hindrances to revival".

June 1916 Arran Striking girls, strong, hardy and intelligent; contrast with the poor, weakly dressed-up things [in towns].
Two young girls who vexed me with their inattention and restlessness.
15-8-16 married in Kyle Temperance Hotel. (His wife was a fellow member of the Free Church).
20-8 happiness engaging affections and interests too much.


p.221 on Monday evenings he tried to relax, play with daughter. -224 Wife's account: fortresses of wooden bricks, child became adept. Supply of troops was not meagre: regiments; and alien soldiers, not all of the smartest appearance. Hard peas for ammunition, shouts of victory when battle won, usually by 'Kilties', brought back new from city.


7-4-1932 finished the visitations; would like to reach all the servant girls, pupils and lodgers.

9-4-32 Two awakened. Girl from Back had to be carried out of the church, now serving in the Nurses' Cottage. Other on staff of girls' hostel.
23-10-32 Would that my own daughter were persuaded to come!

11-12-32 girl in tears [at the service], from Point, a gutter in the town.

29-12-1934 little Bayble girl - not easy to arrange private conversation.

28-11-1953 (Australia)... afternoon tea in the park, prepared by the ladies of the congregation.

Stornoway Free Church Sabbath School in the 1930s.

The noticeboard lists 3 services on Sunday (Sabbath) and a Thursday Prayer Meeting.

p.465 MacRae's editor tells us he believed "children enlightened by the Spirit can understand the preaching of the Word" and the Free Church expected quite a lot from its youngest attendees. They were encouraged to call attention to lapses and errors among their friends and neighbours.

15-1-1918 poor wretch, (I) cannot even talk to a child about his soul!

20-6-1932 examined 7 classes in the Nicolson [school, Stornoway] in R.I. (Religious Instruction) It was well done on the whole but no better than in Skye.

22-2-1936 movement in the town among the schoolchildren misguided by the 'Pilgrim Preachers'. I have no faith in it; cocksureness and self-sufficiency. Attendance upon concerts and 'the pictures' mark them off as the victims of a religious delusion.
30-5-36 opposed forming organisations to foster friendships among young people; gave warning as to the serious consequences...
13-6-1953 Melbourne, a very godless city. Restlessness among children.

5-2-1963 lecture on The State and Education

p.486-487 letter on Religious Instruction in schools. 15-3-63

p.480 notes of Address to children at Laxdale school: Holding On.

Evangelism, Revivals and Conversions

While looking forward to a genuine general "revival" and always keen to make the right sort of converts, MacRae was suspicious of many of the movements that arose in the aftermath of the First World War, and later., as indicated in the reference to schoolchildren above, and in other references:

31-3-1922 Reports of revival activity... Fear emotionalism and artificiality.

1925 Lectures on historical revivals; many questionings.

p 220 Kilmuir congregation: an element of Hyper-Calvinism.

Feb. 1928...ultra-Calvinism has generated a mysticism and drowsiness that is strangling the Gospel.

p 224 re Sabbath League, some ministers strangely lethargic.

25-11-1931 Baptism, father unwilling. In a way I respected his thoughtfulness...

2-11-1933 began winter's lectures; spoke on 'Religious deceivers'.  (p.268n other lectures this year included "The Sabbath Question".)

10-11-1934 since Spring Communion, Carloway, 10 men, some ringleaders in frivolity, and 7 female - influence of truth, so concerts etc. cannot now receive enough support to continue.

17-11-34 place of fear as a motive to religion, neglected.

Extracts from early 1933 (p.49 in the published Diary)
evoking the process of securing the right sort of adherent.
Note specialised use of 'concern', 'broken', 'wakened', 'relief':
it wasn't supposed to be too easy or painless.

2-5-1936... very much annoyed on Monday by a good woman (who complained about the church not being open at the former time on Sunday afternoon) ... Unreasonable spirit which refuses religion the right to adapt itself has done infinite harm in the Highlands. Strange, too, how good people can be the main hindrance...

October 1936 Arran: non-churchgoing has come in as a plague.  Renton: annoyed to see a vase of flowers and plants in the church.

pp.319-320 Report to Public Questions Committee: The great mission of some churches would almost appear to be to amuse their young people, but to neglect them and allow them to go their own way is almost as fatal.

p.363- re revivals. Address to the Young. -368 simply, what is medically known as mass hysteria. Young women, nervous reactions (1940). I shall give the 'swooners' no latitude.

10-3-1941 I am inclined... to think a great deal of this business is just a put-on.

p 443- contents of worship to be warranted by the Westminster book of praise. -451 All Scotland Crusade: SY Town Hall hired by Church of Scotland, relayed outside.  -458-9 a sad Assembly…  apprehension as to the future.

1960 report of Church and Nation Committee of Church of Scotland re "half-day Sunday": most devastating blow; Sabbath has been ruined in this land.

A few further animadversions on social life etc.

27-1-1922 unveiling of Clan MacRae war memorial... Doctrinal abuse... Another promising report as to religious conditions in Lewis, Back.

9-2-22 ... (re) marriage ceremony: indicated that the wedding must be over by midnight and have no dancing and such frivolity.

6-5-22 religious type of Highland soldier gone now. My regiment still has the old place in my pride and my affections.

29-12-22 case of the 'poor and the needy'... Thus was Satan foiled.

5-5-1924 Influenza still prevails in the district.

4-6-24 Long prayers are ruining prayer meetings in the Highlands today. They are a weariness to the flesh and they tire the people by their unfitness and selfishness.

30-12-24 having to send up to HQ a report anent the state of religion and morals in the congregation.

1960 report of Church and Nation Committee of Church of Scotland re half-day Sunday: most devastating blow; Sabbath has been ruined in this land.

p.472 Greatest cause of emigration persistent propaganda... Ruin of the Highlands as the home of the Celtic race.  Tourism. 476 Sunday papers.


28-4-1956 Time will alter things in spite of us.

  
17-2-1925 [not on Lewis] funeral, amazed; did not see a tear.

MacRae died on 5-5-1964

May 1964. Reportedly the largest funeral ever seen in the island.