A study of tribunals
Anthony Wilson reviews a study on conscientious objection
Britain was the first country to include the right to claim conscientious objection as a reason for exemption from military service. The Military Service Act of 1916 brought in conscription for the first time in Britain, to make up for the heavy losses of military lives in the first eighteen months of the 1914-18 war in readiness for the forthcoming battles, such as the Somme and Passchendaele. It was a remarkable provision – ‘the conscience clause’ – inserted into the bill following the efforts of two Quaker MPs, Arnold Rowntree and T Edmund Harvey.
This is the setting of the study Who Does Want to Kill Anyone? Its perspective is clear. Rather than top-down analysis of how the conscience clause was intended to work, it offers a bottom-up account of how the men claiming exemption experienced the Act as its terms were understood by local tribunals. Not surprisingly, there was ambiguity and a measure of confusion around the role of the tribunals and their members: no training was in place, and guidance came as experience of hard cases was gained. Those applying for exemption on grounds of conscience constituted only about two per cent of all applicants – small in numerical terms, but significant in the challenge they presented to a system whose explicit purpose was to recruit men into the armed services.
The two authors – John Babb, of Wolverhampton Meeting, and his colleague Gerry Barton – create an account of the workings of these tribunals through a series of case studies: not of the local tribunals themselves, but through the seventy conscientious objectors (COs) amongst the 3,400 applications to the Mid-Staffordshire Military Appeals Tribunal. These records are precious, as they survived the destruction of nearly all other tribunal proceedings on official direction, their content being judged so sensitive after the war that they should never be disclosed. Why so?
The authors suggest, on good evidence from the appeals, that decisions which could result in the life or death of unwilling conscripts might well not survive critical scrutiny for their consistency, especially when the tribunals were served by local notables in post-war public life. The book is sensitive to the situation of these members: notably, the clerk to the tribunal whose son had been killed in the trenches days before a hearing from a conscientious objector claiming exemption to army service. The book’s title is a direct quote from a tribunal member. These Staffordshire records may have been saved, deliberately, by a local authority employee who stowed them in the proverbial attic where they were overlooked until 2014. This blanking out did not, fortunately, extend to the local press, which often carried verbatim accounts of exchanges between applicants and board members. These are quoted to great effect.
The case studies take us through appeals by those whose claims are religious and ‘political’. The latter (the majority) rarely achieved exemption. The situation of the various church members is presented sympathetically, although no appeals by Friends were recorded. The Christadelphian and Jehovah’s Witnesses churches supported their members’ claims. Methodist COs were challenged on why they did not go along with their church’s acceptance of military service; while the established Anglican church found itself almost four-square behind the military.
Many appeals resulted in direction into noncombatant military service. This, in some cases, was refused and followed by court martial. The authors follow the experiences of these men to the end of the war. They offer contrasting comments: how difficult it could be for the tribunals to judge a man’s conscience within legal criteria, and the extent of the pain and suffering which those whose claims were rejected were prepared to undergo.
These Staffordshire cases appear not to contribute to two significant figures around conscientious objection in that war: twenty-one members of the Friends Ambulance Unit lost their lives in service, and seventy-one COs convicted for refusing the tribunals’ directions died as a result of their treatment by the authorities.
Who Does Want to Kill Anyone? The story of Conscientious Objectors in mid-Staffordshire and the Black Country during the First World War by Gerry Barton and John Babb is published by BBBNStaffs Publishing at £9.99.
