Wakefield in the Great War, page 10
But the army needed them. By 1916 conscription was the only way to keep Britain in the war. The first category of conscientious objector, ‘Non-combatants’, were relatively easy for the Tribunals and military to manage since they were prepared to accept call-up into the army, but not to be trained to use weapons or indeed have anything to do with weapons. The British army had no precedents or guidelines for managing conscription and so tried to compromise by creating the Non-Combatant Corps, to provide a guarantee that conscientious objectors (known as ‘COs’ or ‘Conchies’) would not be asked to perform combat duties. Commanded by regular army officers and NCOs, they would be soldiers and subject to army discipline but would not be expected to fight. Instead they would be a labour force doing a variety of jobs such as building, cleaning, loading and unloading stores, other than munitions, behind the lines in Britain and overseas. Around 3,400 COs accepted postings to the Corps during the war. Equally, ‘Alternativists’ who objected to military service but were prepared to undertake alternative civilian employment not under any military control could be exempted on condition that they actually did this work. Alternativist James Digby, of Duke Street Castleford, for example, was exempted combatant service in June 1916 and assigned to the Non-Combatant Corps but was discharged the following March to work in the mines back in his home town.
Far more difficult was the task of deciding what to do with men from pacifist religions who had already served in France. At the beginning of the war some Quakers formed the Friends War Victims Relief Committee (FWVRC) and travelled overseas at their own expense to aid refugees forced away from their homes by the fighting, continuing the work throughout the war and its aftermath. At the same time, another group of young Quakers who were trained in first aid set up the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU), explaining that their ‘ideal as a voluntary unit is to ease pressure on overworked or inadequate staff.’ Service with the FAU gave them a way to help the wounded without supporting the war itself, treating Allied and German wounded alike, although as one member later explained, ‘One has to help the latter mostly by stealth, but it is lovely to be able to do so now and then’. The French army reportedly regarded the FAU as ‘amiable and efficient cranks’ but there is no doubt that their bravery and determination saved many lives.
The Quaker School at Ackworth recorded 192 former students had volunteered for work overseas either with the FAU or the FWVRC, but the coming of conscription brought new dilemmas and many Conscientious Objectors given exemption on condition that they served with the FAU found their position increasingly problematic. Back in 1914, some FAU workers had expressed their concern that they might be taking non-combatant work away from volunteer soldiers, meaning that men would be placed in danger and possibly killed because the FAU was doing tasks the soldiers would otherwise be doing. The coming of conscription meant that the men freed up for front-line service would not be volunteers who chose the army but potentially unwilling conscripts forced into the front line. Some who resigned found themselves confronted by Tribunals who wanted to use their having been in France with the FAU as evidence that they did not object to alternative compulsory service and ordered them either back into the FAU or into the Non-Combatant Corps.
Anyone not in uniform faced pressure from neighbours.
Religious beliefs were respected by Tribunals but the outbreak of war had also brought a sharp rise in the number of men claiming to belong to pacifist denominations. In April 1916, for example, Flockton power-loom tuner Fred Peel was arrested by the police and charged with absconding from the military after the Appeal Tribunal’s confirmation of the original decision that he must accept the call-up. He explained that he was a Christadelphian and that his faith forbade him to enlist, but he was found guilty anyway. The organisation had petitioned parliament for exemption back in February 1915, stating that their objection was based on a literal interpretation of God’s command not to kill. Many, however, were quite prepared to accept well-paid work in munitions factories. This apparent inconsistency was a problem for individuals at the early tribunals, but negotiations with the Central Tribunal in April 1915 had established that Christadelphians could be granted conditional exemption dependent upon them agreeing to carrying out work of national importance. Further negotiations with the Army Council led to these men being granted a special ‘Christadelphian Certificate of Exemption from Military Service’ by the Army Council in August 1916. This, though, applied only to men who had been members of the church prior to the war and Peel’s own father testified that Fred had joined the Christadelphians in October 1914.
Most difficult of all were ‘absolutists’ who claimed to be opposed to the idea of conscription itself, as well as war in general, and who presented themselves as upholders of civil liberty and the freedom of the individual. Absolutists believed that any form of alternative service supported the war effort and, in effect, supported the immoral practice of conscription as well. As a result, they refused any form of compromise on the basis that working as a postman or tram driver could release another man for duty and therefore supported the war. In one case a man who had been ordered to serve in the Non-Combatant Corps refused to muck out horse stalls at an army remount centre in Britain on the basis that the horses were destined for service in the forces, and by cleaning their stalls he would be ‘directly contributing to the war’.
At a time when conscription relied on men being willing to obey the law of their country, allowing some to evade service on the basis that they did not want to go would open the floodgates for all to claim to have grounds to object. Hundreds of young men had moved to Ireland, where conscription was not enforced. There were genuine objectors among them but also large numbers of men who simply did not want to serve. Some presented absolutists as being heroes, and elaborate escape networks developed of safe houses willing to shelter men evading service, whilst others saw them as cowards hiding behind the freedoms other men were fighting and dying to protect. Some, like the man who refused Salford’s Tribunal’s attempts to grant him total exemption, were regarded as cranks; especially after he insisted that he must be exempted as a conscientious objector rather than because, as the Tribunal’s military representative patiently pointed out, he only had one leg.
In April 1916, 30-year-old scythe stone maker George Burton of Ackworth appeared before the Wakefield Appeals Tribunal, who upheld the Military Service Tribunal’s decision that he had not proved his case, but could be assigned to the Non-Combatant Corps. Once his appeal failed, Burton was legally deemed to be a serving soldier, so when, in May, he refused orders, he was brought before a court martial. A month later he was in France, where he served for the rest of the war, but again refused orders, in December 1917, and was sentenced to eighty days’ hard labour. Supporters of the COs wrote of men being ‘crucified’ for their beliefs but whilst treatment of COs could be harsh, COs who were sent to Non-Combatant units and who refused to obey orders were treated the same as any other soldier, so when they consistently refused to obey orders they were usually given ‘Field Punishment No. 1’. Introduced in 1881 following the abolition of flogging, it was a common means of dealing with military offences overseas, and the convicted man could be placed in some sort of restraints, and attached to a fixed object such as a gun wheel or a fence post for no more than 2 hours per day, three days out of every four. A Commanding Officer could award field punishment for up to twenty-eight days or a court martial for up to ninety days, depending on the severity of the crime, and the aim was to provide a clear deterrent to other potential offenders. The punishment was often applied with the arms stretched out and the legs tied together, giving rise to the nickname ‘crucifixion’. Those who chose to see the COs as religious martyrs seized on the term and it is still commonly used to suggest that they were harshly treated, but one survivor, Alfred Evans, claimed that ‘it was very uncomfortable, but certainly not humiliating’, and in many cases conscientious objectors even saw ‘F.P. No. 1’ as a badge of honour.
In one extreme case, in June 1916, thirty-four COs who had refused to obey orders in France were court martialed and sentenced to death. This was not because they were conscientious objectors – after all their appeals had failed – but because they were legally serving soldiers and, like every other soldier, subject to military law. Military law in wartime is by necessity harsh, and the generals had to consider what message it would send to other troops if they allowed some to pick and choose what orders to obey. Only after a pause did the officer then tell them that General Haig had commuted the sentence to ten years’ imprisonment, which would be served in England. Ignoring the open disobedience of the COs could have had disastrous consequences at a time when the army was preparing for the huge Somme offensive, and even sentencing them to ten years imprisonment risked signalling to men in front-line trenches that they could escape to a nice safe prison cell far behind the lines or even back home in England, by refusing to do their duty, but political sensitivities around conscription saved them. On their return, the men were sent to civilian prisons to serve out their sentences.
By the middle of 1916, there were around 6,000 COs under some form of military control and such was the scale of indiscipline that Kitchener recommended to the Cabinet that the government should establish a civilian organisation to employ them ‘under conditions as severe as those of soldiers at the front’, under what would become known as ‘equal sacrifice’ principle. At the end of May, a new Army Order was drafted, which directed that CO’s convicted by court martial of offences against discipline, and who had been sentenced to a term of imprisonment, should be held at the nearest civil prison. It was also proposed that these men should not be discharged from the army, but instead placed in Class W of the Army Reserve as ‘soldiers whose service is deemed to be valuable to the country in civil rather than military employment’. In effect this meant that those who accepted work under the Home Office Scheme, but breached its conditions, could be recalled by the army and made subject to court martial again, if appropriate, and returned, on sentence, to a civil prison. In order to manage these cases, prisons at Warwick and Wakefield were emptied of their usual inmates and converted into ‘Work Centres’.
Prison staff at Wakefield Prison. In 1916 the remaining prisoners were moved out and the locks removed so it could accommodate conscientious objectors.
A Home Office scheme was created under which COs who were serving sentences in civilian prisons, including those sent back from the army in France, could have their prison sentences suspended provided they were willing to work. By October 1916, the prison had been emptied and its cell locks removed to create Wakefield Work Centre where COs wore civilian clothes and were paid 8d per day to undertake work under the same conditions as local civilians. The Centre was run by a manager, not a governor, and COs could elect committees to make representations to the management, create social and sports clubs and outside working hours and every Sunday, they were free to go outside as they wished. Despite the relaxed regime, several of the men threatened with execution in France in May had to be transferred from Wakefield to the prison at Armley, in Leeds, in December after refusing to comply with the terms of their agreement.
Feelings toward the COs were mixed. The Yorkshire Evening Post of 18 May 1918 reported on events in Knutsford where ‘disturbances’ outside the prison housing COs had led local authorities to approach the Home Office to have them moved: ‘It was made clear that the presence of the ‘‘Conchies’’ was repulsive to the population and a menace to peace, and it was highly desirable that they should be sent to a more populous district where they would be less conspicuous if no less obnoxious. They hoped Knutsford would soon be rid of the nuisance. The announcement was received with delight by residents and wounded soldiers who crowded the court. They rose en masse and cheered lustily’. By contrast, in October the same year, the Derby Telegraph reported on the local Labour Party’s resolution expressing its ‘admiration of the consistency and courage with which the absolutist conscientious objectors at Wakefield have maintained their stand for liberty of conscience’.
By then the regime at Wakefield had changed. The relaxed regime had led to a bizarre situation where men on the run from the law had hidden out in the prison without being noticed, in some cases for months. More and more wounded ex-servicemen had been employed to act as wardens to bring things under control. Food shortages meant that rations had been reduced to 8 ounces of bread per day and only 12 ounces of bully beef per week, supplemented from time to time by tinned salmon. For most workers, rations were basic, but for those employed on foundry work, it was barely enough. Despite the hardships, though, the COs were reported to be continuing to stage plays and concerts.
When the Knutsford contingent transferred into Wakefield, they arrived as tensions between the COs and locals were reaching breaking point. For some time groups of discharged soldiers and other locals had taken to gathering outside the prison gates to jeer at the COs as they came and went. ‘There have been wild and disorderly scenes at night along the misnamed Love Lane which leads to the portals of the gaol,’ reported the Yorkshire Evening Post of 23 May, ‘and as a result a good few of the men are in the prison hospital nursing broken heads and bruised bodies’. Prisoners had been allowed out between 5.30 and 9.30pm, and so gangs were able to lie in wait on the evening of 20 May. The trigger was never identified but several COs had their bicycles and other items stolen and one was thrown repeatedly into the beck at the rear of the prison. Some took refuge in the police station and had to be escorted back, others hid at friends’ homes but were tracked down and beaten. In some cases, COs only managed to get back into the prison by climbing ladders to get over the wall – effectively having to stage a prison break-in. Sister paper the Yorkshire Post described this as a ‘far from complimentary reception’ but noted ‘some of the burly young objectors, though professedly opposed to fighting, not having objected to give battle’.
By 1918, the country was ever more desperate for recruits and the Wakefield Tribunal spent much of its time considering appeals from the National Service representative against exemptions already made. So serious was the problem that he personally spent time at the Wakefield Employment Exchange looking for candidates to replace those seeking exemption. The battle with the Wakefield Tramways Company continued, with a debate about retaining male inspectors, when women had shown they were clearly able to do the job. In June, the Tramways Company applied for exemption for a 44-year-old driver. The man had eight children aged between 18 months and 20 years and averaged 68 hours a week working for the company, including training one-legged discharged soldiers to drive the trams. Additionally, he worked 24 hours a week for a market gardener and cared for two vegetable allotments of his own. He was given six months’ exemption and freed from the customary obligation to train with the Volunteer Corps. By the time his months of grace were up, the war had ended.
Tensions continued long after the war. COs began be released from prison by mid 1919 but this meant in some cases they were back home before men conscripted at the same time. Some had been broken in health during their time in prison, others had suffered psychologically. In November 1917, CO John Taylor attempted to slash his own throat with a razor and was committed to the Wakefield Asylum after medical treatment. He died there in January, but the authorities concluded that neither the military nor the prison was to blame, saying that his mental health had suffered as a result of air raids near his home in London.
In achieving their aim of opposing the war, some COs had also achieved the government’s aim that they should make an ‘equal sacrifice’. Their sentences meant they were denied a vote until 1926, but to many that seemed a small price to pay when the streets were full of bereaved families and disabled men. In some places they were shunned and refused jobs, in others treated as heroes and elected to government positions, but the animosity felt by those who had served for those they felt had accepted the benefits without any of the costs would survive for many years.
CHAPTER 5
News from the Front
The first weeks of the war were marked by massive public interest but very little real information about what was actually happening. In the absence of hard news, the public turned instead to a flood of stories based on half truths, rumours and even pure fiction. Propaganda efforts to portray the enemy as brutish ‘Huns’ began immediately.
Forty years earlier, during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the Germans had suffered casualties at the hands of civilian franctireurs who wore no uniform as they shot at Germans far behind the front lines. The laws of war offered no protection to them and they could be executed if captured. In 1914, stories emerged of German troops in Belgium shooting boy scouts and were presented as though they were murdering young boys, but pictures also appeared in newspapers of teens in Scout uniform openly carrying their own rifles as they marched alongside soldiers. Even British soldiers in France accepted that the shooting of spies, franc-tireurs and obstructive local officials was both widespread and legitimate.
The sacking of the Belgian town of Louvain between 26 and 30 August came as retaliation for actions by franc-tireurs during a counter-attack by Belgian forces, which had caused a panic among German troops. As an official German source at the time explained, the ‘only means of preventing surprise attacks from the civil population has been to interfere with unrelenting severity and to create examples which, by their frightfulness, would be a warning to the entire country’. Meanwhile, in Germany, almost identical rumours spread of the savage treatment of civilians in East Prussia by invading Russians whilst in the German army; wild tales of the torture and murder of wounded Germans by Belgian women and children fuelled the anger with which troops responded to real or imagined attacks by franc-tireurs. All sides, it seemed, were determined to portray the enemy as sub-human barbarians.
