Conscription and conscience: Part one
David Boulton begins a three part series on conscientious objectors in the first world war
On Sunday 2 August 1914 Britain saw the country’s biggest ever anti-war demonstration (before 2003): fifteen thousand people in Trafalgar Square led by Keir Hardie, fifty thousand in thirty-two English towns, and an estimated hundred thousand in Scotland led by James Maxton. A National Peace Emergency Committee was formed. Two days later Britain declared war on Germany and the new committee was renamed the National War Emergency Committee. ‘The working-class movement is contemptuously passed over’ wrote Hardie in despair on 6 August. Six weeks later, worn out and deeply disillusioned, he died.
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