Being a pacifist

Graham Spinks and Martin Aitken engage in a dialogue on the Friends Ambulance Unit, conscientious objection and pacifism

Graham: A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk praising the contribution of a group of Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) members who were awarded military honours for their bravery in collecting casualties from the front during the Normandy campaign of the second world war. I sensed that you were troubled by this form of witness?

Martin: I am not sure if ‘troubled’ is the right word. I just cannot identify with that expression of pacifism. I don’t doubt the courage or the sincerity of the group you spoke about, and I wouldn’t want anything I say to be thought a criticism of them. I think they were extremely brave and committed men and women – who faced a situation I have never had to face. But for me, pacifism and cooperation with the military in action don’t go together.

Graham: These were men and women who refused to serve in the military or to bear arms. They had to go through the tribunal process to demonstrate their sincerity and at this late stage of the war would have risked serious stigmatisation from the population at large. I’m strongly reminded of the William Penn quote that ‘true Godliness does not turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it’. Wouldn’t you agree that the members of the FAU cooperated with the military only to the extent that they needed to in order to save the lives of conscripts from both the German and allied (in this case French) forces?

Martin: I am not sure about your application of the quotation from Penn. The military are only part of the world. There is a lot that we can do as Quakers that is ‘of the world’ without working alongside the military in action. During the second world war, many joined the Friends Relief Service, which was set up to relieve civilian distress, first from bombing and evacuation in Britain, and after the war in Europe and further afield. Some members of the FAU did similar work. You are of course right that if the members you spoke about saw their duty being to save the lives of conscripts, they needed to cooperate with the military on the battlefield to be effective. But the military too have an interest in saving wounded conscripts, so that they can be recycled as soldiers again. Could it not be that, in doing this work, the FAU relieved the military of the job, or of part of it, and so freed military personnel for fighting?

Graham: I guess I see the Penn quote as reminding us that religion can give people the courage to take responsibility in contexts which are complex or morally murky and where the potential outcomes are unclear. Non-military examples might be politics, business or social work. People working in these areas can find themselves having to make very tricky decisions which will often involve making compromises in one area in order to achieve a greater good in another. Perhaps that is where we differ. Do you recognise a difference between making a compromise and being compromised?

Martin: Yes, certainly, it’s an important difference. But the case we are discussing seems to me to be one of the latter. It compromises the basic belief that war is wrong. Saving the lives of wounded soldiers is obviously a good thing to do, but it is not what pacifism is about – which is the rejection of war itself, and of violence as an instrument of politics. As the Peace Testimony Declaration to Charles II makes clear: ‘All bloody principles and practices we do utterly deny’. To cooperate with the military on the battlefield, to rescue the wounded, is to talk to commanders and know what they are planning without doing anything to stop it. It is implicitly to accept ‘bloody principles and practices’. This does not seem like a compromise to me – more like a contradiction.

Graham: In my talk I was discussing an FAU unit operating in the Normandy campaign from June 1943. By this time there was clearly nothing anybody could have done to stop the conflict, no matter how wrong they thought it. These guys were realists and pragmatists searching deeply for the best course of action available; cooperating should not be mistaken for colluding. I am moved by the words of their leader Bill Spray in which he says that he was ‘looking for a path which did not run away from evil or from the war to which it had given rise but which came from a compelling personal commitment to Jesus’ love-in-action in the evil’. Later in his life he reported that the decision to register as a conscientious objector had not been easy and, indeed, that it had continued to haunt him throughout his life.

Martin: I think what you say is very helpful. The second world war must have presented many people with an agonising dilemma: whether to join military action against a regime that was clearly evil, or to refuse to take part in an activity that was itself evil. The path chosen by those who joined the FAU, willing to serve with the military, can perhaps be seen as an attempt to contain that contradiction. If so, this would by no means have been an easy choice: it does not resolve the dilemma and, as you indicate of Bill Spray, the threat of regret, if not remorse, would always be there, on one side of the choice or the other. I wouldn’t describe this path as a pacifist one, but it is certainly conscientious objection: a refusal to fight, although with clear sympathy for those who do.

Graham: Expressed like that I find my admiration for the FAU position only increases! Without wanting to trivialise the issue it reminds me a little of my attitude to vegetarianism. I am not prepared to eat meat myself, but I don’t waste energy or risk destroying my friendships by trying to impose my views on others. I don’t think there’s any contradiction there. However, I’m concerned that you’ve set the bar for qualifying as a pacifist unrealistically high. I think I understand where you’re coming from, but to misquote Oscar Wilde, life is never pure and rarely simple – and less so than ever in wartime.

Martin: I think the challenge for pacifists is different. They reject the dilemma, giving human life or the sanctity of human life the overriding priority, even though they may understand and identify with the values other people see themselves as fighting for. To that extent, I think it’s a simpler, less conflicted position. But it doesn’t lead only to a rejection of the use of violence for political ends. It means a commitment to the ways of peace – and to urging them. It’s a commitment, as I see it, that is rooted in our human reality. In civilian life, we are all pacifists – to the core – except for an extremist few. We treat the deliberate taking of life as murder, and violence as criminal. Even the military are – back home – civilian too. Pacifism honours that experience with the insistence that politics be conducted in the same spirit.

Graham: I can’t help feeling that you might be redefining pacifism in an excessively purist way. And I have a difficulty with this, which you may find a little paradoxical. In general, I’m a great advocate for making things simpler and less conflicted, but in the particular case we are discussing I can’t help feeling that somebody who rejects the dilemma in every circumstance could be failing to engage with what’s interesting and challenging, indeed missing the moral issue, in the decisions young men and women were forced to make at this time. Isn’t there a danger of oversimplification here?

Martin: A pacifist can fully understand the dilemma, but reject it in the sense that he or she does not identify with it. Part of that understanding is recognising that a case can sometimes be made for military action that others find convincing. The key fact for the pacifist, however, is this: whatever the intention, military action violates the most basic and universal of all values, that of human life. If we do that, what limits are left? Pacifism sets the limit at the start.

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Comments

One of the arguments of ‘absolutists’ who refused any form of alternative service was that by providing medical relief theough the FAU (for example) they would be relieving someone else who would thereby become available for combat duties. Such a stance might seem excessively ‘purist’ to some, but there can be no questioning of the morality that informed it.

By andrewrig on 30th November 2017 - 18:00

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