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CONSCRIPTION to military service is a system
whereby the state requires all men (and in a few cases women) to serve a period
in the armed forces. Begun in Prussia in the 18th century, it was developed by
Napoleon in France and thence spread throughout continental Europe. It never
became a British tradition, although there was an obligation for some men to
serve in local part-time armies called the militia, which withered away in the
early 19th century. A National Service League lobbied for British compulsory
military training in Edwardian times, but a ‘Citizen’ s Army’ was
generally disliked as smacking of militarism.
Even in the chauvinist atmosphere of the First World
War conscription for the battlefield – the position of all Britain’s
allies as well as enemies – was resisted until by January 1916 the flood
of volunteers was reduced to a trickle, despite social pressure on
‘laggards’ by attempts to shame them.
The turning point in British military policy, the Military Service Act 1916, was
unique in conscription history by also providing for exemption on conscientious
grounds. Debate had centred not so much on whether conscientious objection
should be recognised as on whether it should be limited to Quakers (who in 1757
had been exempted from the militia) or defined in some other particular way. In
the event, conscientious objection was not defined, and it was left to those
implementing the Act to deal with it on a case-by-case basis.
The importance for the conscientious objection movement of not attempting to
define the concept was invaluable, for there was no single motivation or
attitude. Some were Quakers and fully accepted the historic Quaker rejection of
war; some were Christians in churches accepting the ‘Just War’ tradition,
but stood out against it; some were socialists and believed in a unity of fellow
workers ‘across the roar of the guns’; some were humanists or anarchists
rejecting the ultimate control of the state over life and limb. All agreed that
participation in war was a matter for individual conscience, overriding all
legal and social pressures. Many of them came together in the No-Conscription
Fellowship, formed in 1914 to oppose conscription and support objectors; women
and men too old for call-up helped with the work at the risk of their own
prosecution.
Local authorities were required to set up tribunals to deal with applications
for exemption, but the system enabled personal prejudice to override the
libertarian principle of the law. Councillors frequently appointed themselves,
with their pro-establishment, ‘patriotic’ views; and the same tribunals were
charged with exemption on non-conscientious grounds such as hardship for key
workers in family businesses, or compassion such as widowers with dependent
children; in this context it was easy to label men without specific
responsibilities as mere ‘shirkers’ or ‘cowards’.
Thus, although tribunals had power to recognise three degrees of conscientious
objection exemption without conditions, exemption conditional upon performing
alternative civilian work, or non-combatant service in the army (a special
Non-Combatant Corps [NCC] was created), many men were either refused exemption
or granted only non-combatant status.
An appeal system was also flawed, so that clashes inevitably arose between
individual conscience and the law. Men rejected by tribunals were deemed to be
enlisted (either in the army proper or the NCC as the case might be) and could
then be arrested by the civil police and handed over to military custody.
Following conscience, the men would disobey a sample ‘order’ such as to put
on a uniform, and then be court-martialled, receiving sentences of up to two
years’ imprisonment, served in a civil prison. Upon discharge the men would be
handed back to the army for the cycle to recommence. Some men were very brutally
treated in military custody, and for others, particularly those accustomed to
sedentary work, the rigours of prison were excessively harsh. Out of 16,000 WW1
conscientious objectors, some 6000 endured imprisonment varying between a few
months and three or more years. Some 50 men, illegally shipped to France, were
formally sentenced to death, but reprieved. 73 men, however, did die as a result
of their treatment and are commemorated on a Plaque in the PPU offices.
Conscientious protest march through central London 19XX
British conscription ended in 1919, but twenty years
later was resumed (Military Training Act 1939 [May], superseded by National
Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939 [September]) in the immediate prelude to the
Second World War. On this occasion the procedure for conscientious objectors
(with the three categories as before) was on the whole more humane.
Tribunals were appointed by the Minister of Labour, required to seek impartial
persons, the chair being a county court judge and one member appointed after
consultation with trade union interests; the procedure was also separated from
exemption on other grounds. In 1941 women were brought into the scope of
conscription, but as all women with dependent children were exempt, and many
women were informally left in occupations such as nursing or teaching, the
number appearing before tribunals (a woman served on the tribunal on such
occasions) was relatively few (1700).
Nevertheless, a number of the total 60,000 objectors were sent to prison by
civilian courts for disregarding the findings of tribunals, although not usually
for so long or under such harsh conditions as previously. The rising composer
(now Sir) Michael Tippett served a three months sentence. Most (like those not
imprisoned in WW1) worked in relatively menial capacities on farms, in hospitals
or in social services (a particular contribution was made by the Pacifist
Service Units, which pioneered a form of social work amongst the socially
deprived and became the present Family Service Units). Some, as in the First
World War, did relief work abroad with the Friends Ambulance Unit, and, like
some non-combatants, on occasions ended up in a battle-zone alongside the
military, with the risk and even reality of being killed.
Although there was some stigma (partly whipped up by the popular press with
headlines like ‘pansies’ ringing the changes on ‘pasty-faces’ of WW1)
and social exclusion, most were accepted by colleagues in the work situation
when actually seen to be pulling their weight as much as anyone. The greater
exclusion was by some employers, not least local authorities, adopting a policy
of refusing to employ objectors, even though a tribunal might have, for example,
granted exemption to a teacher conditional upon remaining in his employment. The
government condemned the practice but refused to make it illegal.
There was another kind of conscription for some, in that the government had
power to ‘direct’ civilians to certain kinds of work, and to order
‘fire-watching’ in air raids. There was no formal provision for
conscientious objection to these activities, and some people (including women)
were prosecuted and even imprisoned for refusing to perform civilian work which
they saw as part of the war, and others for refusing compulsory
‘fire-watching’. In this last case, objectors made it clear that they were
willing to be ‘good neighbours’ in an emergency, but could not
conscientiously become ‘a cog in the war machine’.
In a different way from the aftermath of the First World War, conscription for
men was continued fifteen years into ‘peacetime’, until 1960, adding some
10,000 objectors to the British total. These continued to be supported by the
Central Board for Conscientious Objectors, set up in 1939 with advisory bureaux
all over the country. Even today, volunteer members of the armed forces have a
right to claim discharge on the grounds of a conscientious objection developed
since enlistment. The Ministry of Defence recognises the Peace Pledge Union as
an independent ‘third party’ to observe hearings of the Advisory Committee
on Conscientious Objectors, which sits in the capacity of former tribunals.
Meanwhile, conscription continued in continental
Europe, and only after patient endurance of repeated imprisonments by individual
men in Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, has the right to refuse to kill gradually
and grudgingly been established in most west European countries. None, however,
allows the former British possibility of absolute exemption, and some require
alternative service to be longer than military service. In some states only
religious grounds are recognised. Ironically, after the extremities of the Nazi
regime, under which the Austrian Franz Jagerstatter was beheaded in 1943 as a
conscientious objector, the Allies insisted that the newly emerging West German
army must recognise conscientious objection.
Even before the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989, conscientious objection
had become a significant mode of dissent in eastern Europe. Along with other
liberal values, conscientious objection is being more widely recognised in the
former Soviet bloc, but still not yet in Russia, although an intention to phase
out conscription has been announced.
Conscription has already been abolished in Belgium and is set to be in the
Netherlands and France; Greece, however, where objectors were executed as late
as 1949, only recognised conscientious objection in 1997 – with
alternative service twice the length of military service; Switzerland still has
to properly recognise it, and Turkey – in NATO – is rigorously
repressive.
Two Commonwealth countries – Cyprus and Singapore – have
conscription without recognition of conscientious objection, and Bermuda has
conscription to a part-time army, with the right of conscientious objection won
as recently as 1995. The new government of South Africa has abolished
conscription, whereas the former regime (which conscripted only Whites)
imprisoned some objectors for six years. Conscription without recognition of
conscientious objection applies in most of Latin America, but Costa Rica has
officially abolished its army, and Colombia has recently begun to recognise
objection. In Israel women also are liable, but it is easier for them to claim
conscientious objection than for men. In authoritarian states such as China,
Iran or Iraq, refusal of military service would probably result in death.
Although it has only persuasive rather than binding force, the UN Commission on
Human Rights has since 1987 recognised ‘the right of everyone to have
conscientious objections to compulsory military service as a legitimate exercise
of the right of freedom of thought, conscience and religion’. Similar
resolutions have been adopted by both the Council of Europe and the European
Parliament, and all these bodies have urged member states to give effect to such
right. The UK government has supported all these moves, but what counts for more
is the persistent demand by conscientious objection and civil rights groups, and
the accounts of individual experiences in many countries.
Short of the complete abolition of conscription, there is another ideal set
forth by the European Parliament in 1983, which no government has yet
implemented: ‘no court or commission can penetrate the conscience of an
individual and a declaration setting out the individual’s motives must
therefore suffice in a majority of cases to secure the status of a conscientious
objector’.
Many in the peace movement now take an even wider view of conscientious
objection. There is the refusal to take civilian work in arms factories, weapons
research and the like. People are refusing to pay the proportion of their taxes
that pay for war and preparations for war. School pupils have resisted pressures
to join military cadet forces. There is a sense in which everyone who stands out
as a human being against a society which seems to accept the inevitability of
war is a conscientious objector.
In the meantime, each 15 May is observed as International Conscientious
Objectors’ Day, and on that day in 1994 a Stone was dedicated in Tavistock
Square, in London, ‘to commemorate men and women conscientious objectors to
military service all over the world and in every age who have established and
are maintaining the right to refuse to kill’
Amongst the wide variety of conscientious objectors,
two broad categories may be distinguished: ‘alternativists’ and
‘absolutists’.
‘Alternativists’ are prepared to perform some
compulsory but socially useful service instead of military duties.
‘Absolutists’, or ‘total resisters’, deny the
right of the state to impose any compulsory service.
In states which do not recognise conscientious objection at all, there may be no
practical difference in the way the two groups are treated. Some states,
however, recognise conscientious objection, but only on the basis of alternative
service being performed, and ‘total resisters’ are much more harshly
treated.
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