Stories of COs to be celebrated
Four-year project to be launched on 15 May
Quakers around the country are to launch a four-year project to tell the suppressed stories of world war one conscientious objectors on May 15, International Conscientious Objectors’ Day. The launch, at Friends House in London, will be hosted by writer and broadcaster Geoffrey Durham and Ruth Cadbury, prospective parliamentary candidate and a granddaughter of conscientious objectors.
Geoffrey said: ‘Conscientious objectors show us, then and now, that a peaceful response is possible. They remind us that, if we all believed we could play a part in the work of peacemaking, and if we knew for ourselves the difference it makes, we’d create a dynamic force
that would be irrepressible.’
Ruth Cadbury will reveal the personal dilemmas created by war and how they divide families. Her relatives Bertie and Laurence Cadbury chose different paths, to fight and not to fight.
The Quaker campaign aims to honour the men who refused to fight in world war one because
they refused to kill. They will be remembered by Quakers in Britain and peace groups. Relatives will honour the conscientious objectors in a simple ceremony led by the First World War Peace Forum.
Quakers will announce the names of the five conscientious objectors who will appear in an
online storytelling project, The white feather diaries. Through original letters and diaries the stories take us on a journey into their daily lives and dilemmas from the outbreak of the war in 1914 to the introduction of conscription in 1916. The white feather diaries project will go live on 4 August 2014.
In the afternoon of 15 May, two books charting the history of conscientious objection will be launched in Friends House Library: Objection Overruled by David Boulton and Comrades in Conscience by Cyril Pearce.
Events in London will include a display of artefacts. There will also be an opportunity to meet
relatives of conscientious objectors with untold stories of world war one. The events will centre
on the conscientious objectors memorial stone in Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, London, and the library in Friends House, the central office of Quakers in Britain, which holds an invaluable archive on the lives of those who refused to fight.
There will be an exhibition in Friends House library, open from 11.30am until 3.30pm, containing
photographs and rare historic artefacts, including diaries of imprisoned objectors, as well as
bullets transformed into cutlery, that will document Quakers’ opposition to war and their role in the creation of legislation to allow conscientious objection.
Other events around the country include a lecture in Bristol by Paul Rogers, professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, while Hexham Quakers will host a talk by Bruce Kent and Valerie Flessati on ‘Courage and Conscience in Response to an Avoidable War’. It is the fifth talk in Series 7 of the Hexham Debates.
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