Ealing’s Conscientious Objectors: A Partial Overview

By mid-October 2014 there were well over 17,000 names on the Pearce Register of British Conscientious Objectors (COs). When this database was less than half the size, 43 COs had already been ‘placed’ in Ealing (including 10 from Acton, 3 Southall and 2 Hanwell as well as 29 from Ealing itself – Greenford does not appear on the list). There were Local Tribunals in Ealing, Acton, Southall-Norwood and Hanwell.

The amount of information supplied varies from a brief note of arrest date to a fairly full account of what happened to the individual;.the list of headings includes ‘motivation’, ‘prison’ and ‘war service’.  

Some data for Ealing are extracted here.

Ealing Town Hall, where the Ealing Local Tribunal hearings were held,

as it was about 30 years later

Occupations (mostly ‘white collar’, as has been observed elsewhere) were given as follows:

Accountant's Clerk; Bank Clerk (2); Civil Servant - Inland revenue; Estate Agent's Clerk; Gardener and florist; General manager Tailors; Grocer; Insurance Clerk; Junior Insurance Clerk; Joiner; Journalist; Mechanical Engineer; Motor bodymaker (Woodwork); Musician; Notary's Clerk; Outfitter's assistant; Printer; Salesman and Sub-Manager; Salesman, Company Director; Sanctioning  Clerk; Shop Assistant – ironmonger; Shop Porter; Solicitor's Articled Clerk; Solicitor's Clerk; Student of Chemistry; Worker for Alliance of Honour [“'Alliance of Honour' concerned with soldiers and sexually transmitted disease”].

 Among the reasons for the predominance of clerical work experience among COs may be the need for a certain level of articulacy and literacy in order to present a case to a Tribunal with any chance of its being effective, and the fact that such  jobs were unlikely to be classed as being ‘of national importance’.

Motivation when stated was nearly always religious, i.e. some form of professed Christanity involving a more or less pacifist position. Researchers have noted that Tribunals were extremely unlikely to recognise a conscientious objection that was based on political or humanist convictions.

Ealing COs appeared as follows:

Christadelphian (3);  Christian, not otherwise defined (4); Christian - "Brotherhood Movement" and member of No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF) since "late 1915"; Christian - formerly Baptist, now "Brethren" because he objected to the pro-war stance taken at Baptist chapel; Christian and pacifist; Christian Brethren; Christian; International Bible Students Association [Jehovah’s Witnesses]; Christian - Plymouth Brethren (3, of whom one is ‘willing to join RAMC’); Quaker, Acton Prayer Meeting (3); Quaker, Ealing Prayer Meeting (5, of whom one is its clerk); Quaker (Willesden PM); Roman Catholic; NCF member - Internationalist and Co-operator.

Some have multiple motives or affiliation:

Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) - Religious and moral objections to war - present job Work of National Imortance (WNI) - Quaker Attender,  Ealing Prayer Meeting (PM);

Christian but also because his four brothers already serving in some capacity - "The family has done enough";

FOR, Dartmoor Branch; Quaker Attender (Acton PM also Winchmore Hill).

“War Service”

Of the few cases where this is known,  3 served in the Non-Combatant Corps (NCC) and 6 for varying lengths of time between  Nov.1914 and March 1919 in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (FAU)

Prison

 Eleven of Ealing’s COs are recorded as having served one or more terms of imprisonment in various establishments (some in more than one): Wormwood Scrubs, Canterbury, Pentonville, Dyce Camp (hard labour), Crawley, Lewes, Durham, Maidstone and Winchester.

Three suffered illness during imprisonment, resulting in two being released on health grounds on and  the third being the subject of an appeal to the War Office.

At least two were still serving sentences in 1919 (the Military Service Acts remained in force after the Armistice).

Work Centres

Six are known to have been sent to one or more of the Work Centres which were supposed to provide a more acceptable and humane alternative to prison and to the atrocious conditions at Dyce. These included, in the cases of the Ealing men: Road  Board Camp, Denton, Newhaven; Knutsford;  and especially Dartmoor.

Work in Progress: It remains to be seen whether any of the Ealingites (? - Ealingers?) participated in the strikes, protests and other techniques of collective resistance developed by COs in prisons and work centres. Their capacity for individual resistance is evident.

Further interim case studies to follow...

Ealing’s Conscientious Objectors: Case Study No. 3

Jones, Arthur Morley 24, Grove Avenue, Hanwell, London W.
Arthur Morley Jones was 31 in 1916, (d.o.b. 14^th May 1885) and married (since April 27^th 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 5^th 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 5^th 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, 10^th 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 (21^st June 1916; non-combatant service granted 3^rd 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 2^nd 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 29^th 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, 1^st July 1916.

(Presumably the fact that his surname and Jones’ middle name are the same is coincidental).

The Appeal hearing was scheduled for 18^th 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 (20^th 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.        

Any sequel must await further research, and/or the anticipated online availability of the Pearce Register* of British COs.

*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.

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 1^st 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.

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 10^th 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 11^th 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 15^th 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.   

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.