Wakefield in the Great War, page 9
So when, in May, South Kirby and Hemsworth Collieries Ltd appealed on behalf of a 28-year-old costs clerk on the grounds that they had lost 40 per cent of their clerks, the Tribunal were less than sympathetic to the argument. It emerged that ‘no effort had been made to secure female clerks as they were considered unsuitable. The Chairman said female clerks worked in banks and he did not see why they could not work in colliery offices and the appeal was refused. Another young clerk was living with three unmarried sisters, only one of whom went out to work. He said that he contributed 25s a week to the family budget but Alderman Kingswell told him that his other sisters could find employment and earn £1 a week at E. Green & Son in Calder Vale Road, who had branched out from making fuel economisers into munitions work and were employing a great many women. A Wakefield chimney sweep asked for exemption for his son who, he emphasised, cleaned the chimneys of the workhouse, the prison and the pauper lunatic asylum at Stanley Royd Hospital. Women, he said, were good for cleaning floors, but not for sweeping chimneys. The Tribunal chairman, Henry Chalker, told him in no uncertain terms that they ‘were only just beginning to find out what women were really capable of’. The sweep was given three months to find someone to replace the boy.
Dairymen and farmers in particular were desperately short of labour and often came before the Tribunal to plead for exemption for their remaining men. By 1917, a ‘Women’s Land Service Corps’ had been formed but in the early days there were two problems: firstly, was the need to persuade farmers to employ women and secondly to persuade women to work on farms. Lady Catherine Milnes Gaskell, of Thornes House, a member of the Wakefield Rural District’s War Agricultural Sub-Committee amongst her other posts, told a gathering of farmers that they must realise that the war was on a ‘more colossal scale’ than anything previously known. They must, she continued, both grow more food and free their men for active service. A representative of the National Farmers Union accepted that women might be able to do some jobs but, he insisted, they would never be able to put manure onto carts. Lady Catherine and her friend Lady Kathleen Pilkington, of Chevet Hall, canvassed local women to gather recruits to train as farmworkers but had not reckoned on the fact that town women were simply not interested in walking miles to work on the land in all weathers when they could earn better money doing munitions work closer to home.
Often hearing eighty or more cases per sitting, the Wakefield Tribunal worked hard to try to balance individual and local needs with national ones. Exemptions were made wherever a reasonable case of genuine need could be proven, such as the application by the West Riding’s Acting Chief Constable, Mr A.C. Quest, for the exemption of seventy-three unattested police officers, all of whom were considered essential. It was granted provided as long as they continued to be serving policemen. The Wakefield Gaslight Company was also able to achieve exemption for large numbers of its employees on the grounds that they had all required extensive training for skilled work and had already given many years of service. Such vital experience could not be readily replaced and as most local people depended on gas for their home power supply, it was considered essential to keep the men at home.
The Yorkshire (West Riding) Electric Tramway Company had taken over the Wakefield and District Light Railway Company in 1905 and ran all trams around the district and General Manager H. England, himself of military age, appeared before the tribunal many times to argue cases for his staff in an increasingly desperate attempt to maintain a reasonable service. A long-running debate developed around how far the service could be cut back and to what extent it could be expected to rely on women or men too old for military service to replace its trained drivers, inspectors and engineers. In July 1916, England sought exemption for some eighty employees including clerical staff, drivers, engineers, four inspectors and the chief inspector. The appeal was allowed in the majority of cases but the tribunal insisted that a driver who was a single man and only 20 years old must join the armed services along with two track workers. Three months later Edwards appeared again, seeking exemption for twenty-seven men, most of whom were drivers. He argued that men were being called up who were not really fit, a view shared by tribunal chairman Kingswell who said, ‘I think myself that there are men who are called up for military service now who would break down in a short time and who will cost the country a great deal in hospital or be sent back to ordinary employment.’ However, he also had to accept that the Tribunal could not ‘go behind the certificate of the proper medical authorities’. Exemption was refused for four of the men who were both young and single. The cases of the married men were to be further investigated with the military representative.
By the time England came before the Tribunal again in October 1916, conductors had already been replaced by women and he tried to plead the case for two men, aged 24 and 27, who ran the trams, carrying hundreds of men from Rothwell to work each day. It was not in the interests of the country to take them from their job, he argued, because he had already stopped the late trams and could make no further cuts. He was so short of drivers that if one were absent, an inspector had to take the tram. He explained that he had tried using women as drivers but one had fainted and the other had simply run away, leaving her tram driverless. Other companies, he claimed, had been allowed to keep all their drivers and repairmen.
Some idea of the Tramway Company employees’ experiences at this time come from a surviving file of the manager’s correspondence. Albert Sharp lived in Rhodes Terrace, Kirkgate and was employed to work on mechanical and electrical repairs to the trams. Sharp had attested under Lord Derby’s scheme and received a letter in January 1916 requiring him to present himself for active service on 9 February. England wrote to Major Watson immediately to say that Sharp was necessary to the company for the proper conduct of its business, that it would be impossible to replace him and that losing him would cause considerable inconvenience. Watson agreed that he was in a reserved occupation but in July, Sharp was called up again and England made another appeal on his behalf. Letters show that Sharp was very conscious that young men in the street not wearing military uniform were a target of growing anger and that England advised him to carry his medical certificate and registration card with him at all times, ‘as you may be expected to produce these for the inspection of a police officer. Should you be accosted by the military authorities, you can inform them that we have entered an appeal for you before the Wakefield Tribunal but that the Tribunal have not yet dealt with the appeal’. Sharp was again granted exemption but was called up for a third time in December. This time he was granted exemption only until a substitute could be found. Major Watson found someone suitable in March 1917 and at last Sharp joined the army, serving in the Royal West Kent Regiment. It is a measure of how seriously England took his role that after the war he tried to re-employ Sharp. He wrote to him in January 1919, offering him work and, having heard nothing by March, he went so far as write to the manager of Wakefield Labour Exchange to ask him if he could speed up Sharp’s discharge, and he returned to the Company as a relief handyman in April. Despite the efforts on his behalf, though, papers in the file suggest that he was not a particularly good worker.
Finding a way to balance business needs was a continuing theme of the tribunal’s work. In June, problems arose around which Wakefield butchers should be regarded as essential and who could be released for military service. The Leeds Butchers Association had set up its own tribunal using members of the association elected by all members eligible for call up to make the difficult decision. In Wakefield, though, butchers could not ‘decide amicably among themselves’ who should form the tribunal and each member had to apply to the official appeal system on an individual basis. Rising meat prices, noted the Yorkshire Evening Post of 6 June 1916, meant that it was likely that some would go out of business anyway. ‘The tendency, at any rate, is toward fewer shops and this lightens the task of the butchers private tribunal’. One firm of meat dealers went so far as to lodge appeals at both Leeds and Wakefield in an attempt to retain managers of its shops in Wombwell and Normanton, a practice regarded as unfair and led to demands that appeals should be restricted to tribunals who understood local conditions.
A month later, the manager of the Wakefield Industrial Society asked for exemption for fourteen men, most of whom were branch managers. The Society had grown considerably since it foundation and had branches in many areas on the outskirts of the city and as far away as Crofton, Featherstone and Kinsley and had already lost 44 of its 143 male employees, all of whom had been examined that morning at Pontefract and found fit for service. Alderman Kingswell was scathing about the application, telling them that independent retailers had already suffered the loss of many of their male employees and could be put out of business if the Cooperative Society were allowed to keep all the men it wanted. Major Watson advised that the Society must ‘consolidate’, bringing three neighbouring branches such as those at Leeds Road, Outwood and Wrenthorpe, or the ones at Kirkgate, Thornes, and Thornes Lane together under a single manager. The case was deferred until the manager could bring a list of all employees liable for military service together, with details of their medical fitness or otherwise.
It wasn’t just local people who found themselves facing Wakefield’s Tribunal. Ernest Saunders, described as ‘a coloured man’ from the West Indies, appeared before them in September 1916. He explained that he had registered himself at Lincoln as required but had taken a job as a ship’s steward. His ship had later been sunk by the Germans and he had lost his documents. After returning to Britain via America he told the Tribunal that army recruiters had turned him away and his attempts to serve on a minesweeper had failed. Unsurprisingly perhaps, he had decided that ‘if they wanted him, they must fetch him’. Fetch him they did, he was handed over to the military authorities. In June 1917, a young man named John Foy was arrested at Sandal for vagrancy and brought before the Military Service Tribunal. He was a farm labourer but Chief Constable T.M. Harris reported that lately Foy had been going from farm to farm begging and was out of work. Foy had with him a certificate of exemption from the Midlothian Tribunal as long as he remained in work. For once, though, the Military Representative decided not to push for him to be called up, telling them that ‘being deaf and dumb the defendant was no good to the military authorities’. The Bench agreed to discharge him on the understanding that the police would find him work.
It was not only those unwilling to serve who appeared before the tribunal. In April it heard the case of an unnamed Dewsbury boot and shoe repairer who attended the Tribunal in uniform. The man had attested under the Derby Scheme but had appealed for exemption on the grounds of hardship since he would lose his business if he left for the army. When called up in February he had refused to sign the relevant papers as his appeal had not been heard. He was told by staff at the Dewsbury Recruiting Office that he had no choice and was pressured into signing on with threats of being dragged into a court martial. As a result he had signed the papers, been sent to various camps for training and, therefore, had lost his business and had not had chance to make any arrangements for closing it down properly. Since he had already lost his livelihood, the tribunal were unable to grant him exemption but urged him to seek compensation from the War Office and offered their support in his claim. In December, an Ossett rag merchant appealed against his call up after having already made three attempts to enlist. At the start of the war he had closed his business and joined the Officer Training Corps, spending around £35 before being medically rejected shortly before he was due to gain his commission. He went to Leeds but was again rejected before heading to York to try to join the artillery. Taking the hint, he had gone home and reopened his business only to be called up and passed as fit for home defence duties. By then, his enthusiasm had waned and the tribunal agreed that he had done what he could. Exemption was granted.
Those unhappy with the Military Service Tribunal decisions could ask for their case to be heard by an Appeal Tribunal. Sitting in County Hall, the East Central (West Riding) Appeal Tribunal had responsibility for the area from Slaithwaite in the West to Goole in the East and the members included Edmund Bruce (Huddersfield), Joe Haley (Dewsbury) and Edward Lancaster (Barnsley). Benjamin Littlewood (Huddersfield), Frederick Mallalieu (Delph), Edmund Stonehouse (the Mayor of Wakefield) and Ben Turner (Batley), were also members. All but Stonehouse were already local magistrates. It was their job to hear from those determined not to serve, including the case of the Castleford man who argued that his work as a bookmaker was of national importance or the man who objected to killing under any circumstances, but who was known to enjoy blood sports. One man claimed that his religion of Spiritualism prevented him from joining up whilst tripe-dressers, barbers, corset makers and others all insisted that their work was vital to the war effort. They also had to manage the difficult cases of men who claimed conscientious objection.
Contrary to popular belief, the British government had worked hard to try to accommodate those who felt unable to serve in combat. Unlike conscription in other countries, the Military Service Act allowed a man to ask for exemption on a variety of grounds, including moral and religious conscience. Conscientious objectors could ask for exemption on the basis of their beliefs and the Tribunal had to form a judgement about whether an individual had genuine grounds for claiming they were not able to serve. The Ossett Observer of 25 March reported on a debate in Parliament on the problems of managing conscientious objectors:
Mr Lloyd George said that tribunals had a difficult task in discriminating between the person who had a real conscientious objection and him who made use of it as a cloak for cowardice. It was clear from the evidence that some men only had a conscientious objection to being fired at. He agreed that the test applied to these cases might be improved. Questions as to whether the claimants had expressed conscientious objections before the war, or had made sacrifices for conscience, were relevant and ought to be pressed home. He had been twitted with being a conscientious objector. That was true; he held very strong views about the injustice of a certain war. What were they to do with the genuine conscientious objector? The Government were entitled to ask that every citizen should contribute something to helping the country. He had conscientious objectors in his own department who were helping him to improve the condition of workers in the workshops. They would rather be shot than fight, but they were doing valuable work which was perfectly consistent with their consciences. Surely conscientious objectors could not object to assisting the Royal Army Medical Corps. If he had been recruited in the Boer War, he would not have hesitated for a moment to take part in helping to succour the wounded. What was there inconsistent in a man, who objected to war, doing his best to cure its wounds and repair its damage? If a conscientious objector told him he objected to doing that, he said without hesitation that the real reason was not conscience but fear. Mr Walter Long was sympathetic towards genuine cases, but in plain English, he could not understand the position of a man who claimed all the rights of citizenship, who enjoyed the right to live in this country, with all its privileges and institutions, who did as he liked, it might be that he amassed a fortune under the protection of our laws, and then when every institution that we cared for was at stake, when our liberties, our privileges, it might be the lives of those we cared for most were in danger – men who claimed all these privileges and yet declined to raise a hand in defence, even of women and children. Mr Long said it was the intention of the Government to devise machinery by which the conscientious objector, when he had established his case to the satisfaction of the tribunal, would have an opportunity of doing some work for the country which would be of importance.
Those whose conscience did not allow them to enlist found little sympathy among those whose fathers, sons and brothers were already overseas.
Lance Corporal Willett of the local KOYLI battalion, wrote home to his sister about his feelings towards the men now appearing at Tribunals back home:
The man who has hung on until it came to practically compulsion, with no reason at all, except the saving his own selfish skin, ought to be ashamed to wear the same cloth as the men who died in their countries [sic] cause in 1914. The khaki uniform is a dress of honour. These men should have a dress of their own and be forced to emigrate when the war is over. Thank God there is only a small percentage of such men in the United Kingdom. I would much rather be under a soldier’s wooden cross than in their ranks any time. We have many a laugh out here when we get the papers with reports of the tribunals. I saw that one chap said he would stand by and watch his sisters be assaulted. He said he would pray to God. Much good that would do him! God helps those who help themselves. Praying did not save the Belgians at Louvain, not physically anyhow. May the Lord grant that we shall never need such men.
