The First World War began with Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia on 28 July 1914. After other states had joined in in support of one side or the other, the impending German invasion of Belgium was considered to justify the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Irelanddeclaring war against Germany on 4 August.[6] At the time, the British government was responsible for the foreign affairs of the five overseas Dominions, as well as those of the British colonies and protectorates, so its declaration of war was made on behalf of the whole British Empire.[6]
By the winter of 1915, the British Army had suffered so many men killed or disabled that in January 1916 Parliament introduced conscription. The Military Service Act 1916 provided that in Great Britain (but not in Ireland, the whole of which was still part of the United Kingdom), single men aged between eighteen and forty-one were liable to call-up for war service in the Army; an amending Act later in 1916 included married men, and another in 1918 extended the upper age limit to fifty-one. There were exemptions for serving members of the Army and Navy, ministers of religion, those engaged in "work of national importance", men with dependents such as widowers with young children, and men who were disabled or in poor health. There was also provision for those with conscientious objections to fighting: men could object on religious or moral grounds, but even if accepted as genuine conscientious objectors (often referred to as "C.O.s") by the Tribunals set up under the Act, they could, at a tribunal's discretion, still be conscripted into the Army for non-combatant duties.[7]
Non-Combatant Corps
Thousands of men claiming to be conscientious objectors were questioned by the Military Service Tribunals, but very few were exempted from all war service. The vast majority were designated to fight or to join the Non-Combatant Corps (NCC), specially created exclusively for COs. For those accepted as having genuine moral or religious objections to fighting, being under military orders in the NCC was intended to make them support the war in non-fighting roles, such as transport or non-lethal stores. The relatively small number who refused such non-combatant duties were called "absolutists".[8]
The men who became the "Richmond Sixteen" had appeared before Tribunals, pleading their objections to war and the military, and had all been accepted as conscientious objectors, and instead of being designated for fighting they were designated as non-combatants. They conscientiously ignored notices to report to the NCC, so were arrested by the civil police and taken before a magistrates' court, where they were handed over to a military escort. Eventually they were taken to join the 2nd Northern Company of the Non-Combatant Corps, stationed at Richmond Castle, in the North Riding of Yorkshire. They refused to wear uniform or undertake any duties at all, as they had done ever since they had been "handed over", and were locked in eight small cells, pending court-martial for disobeying military orders. Similar disobedience by forcibly enlisted COs had been taking place over the past two months at military barracks and camps around the country, resulting in courts-martial and sentences of imprisonment.[9]
France and imprisonment
The "Harwich Frenchmen" in 1916, near Aberdeen
At some level in the military hierarchy – some have suggested it was the Secretary of State for War in person, Field MarshalKitchener– it was ordered that four random groups of the resisting COs, including what became the 'Richmond Sixteen', should be sent to the Western Front, where they could be court-martialled for refusing to obey orders and face the death penalty; that was not applicable for such an offence within Great Britain. The others sent to the front at the same time were seventeen men at Harwich, nine at Seaford, and two at Kinmel Park, Abergele, making forty-four absolutists in all.[8] It was later claimed that these "Frenchmen", as they became known, went to France willingly, supposedly anxious to keep up their resistance on a greater stage, but no evidence has been found to support this.[10]
While the seventeen "Frenchmen" sent from Harwich were on a train travelling through the London suburbs, one of them threw a letter out of the train window addressed to the office of the No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF), describing the men's predicament. This was picked up by a friendly railwayman and posted.[1] The NCF passed the letter to Arnold Rowntree, a Quaker member of parliament for York, who took the matter up with H. H. Asquith, the British prime minister.[1]
On arrival in France, the men were moved from place to place, spending their time in a variety of guard rooms, sometimes lodged "on parole" in rest camps,[11] and were eventually held with other prisoners near Boulogne.[10] However, they suffered no "field punishments", as other conscientious objectors before them had done. At Boulogne they were told they were "in the presence of the enemy" and that wilfully disobeying orders could now result in their being shot by firing squad. They were therefore urged to join other COs who had accepted their assigned role in the NCC, however reluctantly, and they were also falsely told that the 'Harwich Frenchmen' had already "saved their lives" by giving in and obeying military orders. The sixteen men were then given twenty-four hours' leave to make up their minds, and they considered their position at leisure, five of them even going swimming. All sixteen remained convinced that supporting the war in any way would be morally wrong, and as a group they decided to hold out, partly on principle and partly because they believed that agreeing to obey military orders would lead to other objectors being treated in the same way. (There is a persistent legend that one of sixteen – never named – decided at this point to "give in", but the names of all sixteen appear in War Office court-martial records of the soldiers formally sentenced to death.) The next day, the men all continued to refuse to obey all orders and were returned to the guard room. They were individually court martialled, eleven (Cartwright, Cryer, Stafford Hall, Herbert Law, William Law, Lown, Martlew, Myers, Renton, Senior, Spencer) on 12 June 1916, and five (Brocklesby, Gaudie, Clarence Hall, Jackson, Routledge) on 13 June 1916. They were all found guilty, and on 24 June 1916 all sixteen were sentenced to be shot at dawn, but this was immediately commuted to ten years' penal servitude.[12] The other "Frenchmen" were tried in separate courts-martial on 7, 10, 13, and 24 June 1916 and similarly sentenced to death and reprieved, except for seven who received shorter terms of imprisonment without any formal sentence of death.[11][13] The outcome was considered the result of the influence of Asquith, following the death of Kitchener at sea on 5 June, a week before the courts-martial and two weeks before the sentencing.[14]
The men were transferred to Rouen, from where they were sent back to England by ship, after facing an angry French crowd on the quay-side. From the ship they were taken to Winchester Prison, where they found the Harwich seventeen, who had been at Boulogne before them.[11] Some were then taken to Dyce Work Camp.[15] On 11 July 1917 Alfred Martlew was found drowned in the River Ouse, reported in a newspaper under the heading "An Objector Drowned".[13] The other men were released unconditionally in April 1919, well after the Armistice. On returning home, they were widely seen as cowards and were spurned by their local communities.[1] They were formally disfranchised for five years,[16] beginning on 1 September 1921, but as there was at the time no mechanism for putting disfranchisement into effect, the procedure had little effect. However, some of the men were unable to get jobs on release.[8]
Later life
Robert Armstrong Lown went to live in Stalham, Norfolk, and died there in 1954.[17]
Hubert Brocklesby returned to teaching and moved to Barton-upon-Humber. He died in a Scunthorpe hospital in 1962, leaving a widow, Olive.[18]
Commemorations
The Cockpit Garden, Richmond Castle
In 1995, the men's story was turned into a Tyne Tees Television documentary called The Richmond Sixteen, and in 2007 they were one of the subjects of a book by Will Ellsworth-Jones.[3] At Richmond Castle, early in the 21st century English Heritage laid out an area called the Cockpit Garden as a memorial to the men known as the Richmond Sixteen. However, the decision was controversial in Richmond, as the town's economy depends heavily on business from the nearby British army garrison at Catterick.[19] In June 2013 the Teesdale and Cleveland Area Quaker Meeting organized a silent event at Richmond Castle in honour of the sixteen men.[1] In May 2016 English Heritage announced plans to conserve the copious amounts of graffiti that the men had left on the walls of Richmond Castle. Most of this is in pencil and is deteriorating.[20][21]
Norman Gaudie's story is depicted in the film Asunder, directed by Esther Johnson and funded by 14-18 NOW, a First World War centenary arts commission.[22]
↑ A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914–1945 (Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 116
↑ "LOWN Robert Armstrong of St. Johns-road Stalham Norfolk died November 1954… Effects £112 3s 7d" in Wills and Administrations 1954 (England and Wales) (1955), p. 432
↑ "BROCKLESBY John Hubert of 32b Burgate Barton-on-Humber Lincolnshire died 27 December 1962 at The Memorial Hospital Scunthorpe… Effects £5358 2s" in Wills and Administrations 1963 (England and Wales) (1964), p. 882
↑ Guy McDonald, Cadogan Guide England (New Holland Publishers, 2004), p. 805
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to objecting to working for the military–industrial complex due to a crisis of conscience. In some countries, conscientious objectors are assigned to an alternative civilian service as a substitute for conscription or military service.
Richmond Castle in Richmond, North Yorkshire, England, stands in a commanding position above the River Swale, close to the centre of the town of Richmond. It was originally called Riche Mount, 'the strong hill'. The castle was constructed by Alan Rufus from 1071 onwards following the Norman Conquest of England, and the Domesday Book of 1086 refers to 'a castlery' at Richmond.
Compulsory military training (CMT), a form of conscription, was practised for males in New Zealand between 1909 and 1972. Military training in New Zealand has been voluntary before then and ever since.
Archibald McColl Learmond Baxter was a New Zealand socialist, pacifist and conscientious objector.
The Civilian Public Service (CPS) was a program of the United States government that provided conscientious objectors with an alternative to military service during World War II. From 1941 to 1947, nearly 12,000 draftees, willing to serve their country in some capacity but unwilling to perform any type of military service, accepted assignments in "work of national importance" in 152 CPS camps throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. Draftees from the historic peace churches and other faiths worked in areas such as soil conservation, forestry, fire fighting, agriculture, under the supervision of such agencies as the U.S. Forest Service, the Soil Conservation Service, and the National Park Service. Others helped provide social services and mental health services.
The Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (CCCO) was a United States nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people avoid or resist military conscription or seek discharge after voluntary enlistment. It was active in supporting conscientious objectors ("CO's"), war resisters and draft evaders during the Vietnam War. Founded in Philadelphia in 1948 and dissolved in 2011, CCCO emphasized the needs of secular and activist COs, while other organizations supporting COs principally focused on religious objectors and/or legislative reform and government relations.
The Royal Pioneer Corps was a British Army combatant corps used for light engineering tasks. It was formed in 1939, and amalgamated into the Royal Logistic Corps in 1993. Pioneer units performed a wide variety of tasks in all theatres of war, including full infantry, mine clearance, guarding bases, laying prefabricated track on beaches, and effecting various logistical operations. With the Royal Engineers they constructed airfields and roads and erected bridges; they constructed the Mulberry Harbour and laid the Pipe Line Under the Ocean (PLUTO).
Field punishment is any form of punishment used against military personnel in the field; that is, field punishment does not require that the member be incarcerated in a military prison or reassigned to a punishment battalion. It may be formalised under a system of military law and may be a sentence imposed in a court martial or similar proceedings
The Conscientious Objector Support Group (COSG), a support group to conscientious objectors (COs) in South Africa, was formed in 1978. The organisation grew in the context of South African resistance to war, at the time of Apartheid. COs at the time included those who openly refused to report to the Military, once conscripted, those who were sometimes referred to as draft dodgers, and in due course those who were doing statutory community service.
German military law has a long history.
Arnold Stephenson Rowntree was a Quaker and Liberal MP for York, England.
Military Service Tribunals were bodies formed by borough, urban district and rural district councils to hear applications for exemption from conscription into the British Army during the First World War. Although not strictly recruiting bodies, they played an important part in the process of conscription. Tribunals were published as part of the Derby Scheme in 1915, but were continued on a statutory basis by the Military Service Act 1916, which brought in conscription.
Percy Frederick Horton MA, RBA, ARCA was an English painter and art teacher, and Ruskin Master of Drawing, University of Oxford from 1949 to 1964. During the First World War he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector.
Stephen Henry Hobhouse was an English peace activist, prison reformer, and religious writer.
Joseph and Michael Hofer were brothers who died from mistreatment at the United States Disciplinary Barracks, Fort Leavenworth in 1918. The pair, who were Hutterites from South Dakota, were among four conscientious objectors from their Christian colony who had been court-martialed and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment for refusing to be drafted in to the United States Army during World War I. After initially being sent to Fort Alcatraz for refusal to comply with military orders and discipline, Joseph and Michael were transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where they both died within two weeks of their arrival. Their bodies were returned to their families in military uniforms that they had refused to wear.
The Non-Combatant Corps (NCC) was a corps of the British Army composed of conscientious objectors as privates, with NCOs and officers seconded from other corps or regiments. Its members fulfilled various non-combatant roles in the army during the First World War, the Second World War and the period of conscription after the Second World War.
The Conscientious Objectors' Commemorative Stone is on the north side of Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden.
Dyce Work Camp was set up in August 1916 at quarries north-west of Aberdeen, Scotland, to accommodate conscientious objectors who had been in prison for refusing military service in World War I. These men, mostly from England, had been released on the condition that they performed "work of national importance" – breaking up granite rock to produce stone for road building. The conditions in the tented camp near the village of Dyce were poor, exacerbated by the very wet weather, and one man died of pneumonia without receiving medical treatment. Following an inquiry and a debate in parliament, the camp was closed in October 1916, with the ministerial statement that it had always been intended to be only temporary.
Eric Barry Wilfred Chappelow was an English poet and conscientious objector during the First World War. His arrest and harsh treatment during four months of imprisonment garnered support from prominent people in Britain, including Chappelow's connections within the literary community. A campaign for his release was supported by Bertrand Russell, W. B. Yeats, and George Bernard Shaw. His arrest and the treatment were highlighted in the House of Commons by the Liberal MP Philip Morrell.
James Scott Duckers also J. Scott Duckers, was an English lawyer, and prominent pacifist organiser and conscientious objector of World War I. He is now best known for his wartime memoir Handed Over.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
