The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
‘German soldiers? I’d offer them tea’
Britain’s civilised tolerance of Second World War conscientious objectors should make us all proud
BATTLES OF CONSCIENCE by Tobias Kelly
384pp, Chatto & Windus,
T £19.99 (0844 871 1514),
RRP £25, ebook £9.99
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Early in the Second World War, pacifist Roy Ridgway was asked by a policeman what he would do if he were approached by a German parachutist. He replied: “I would offer him a cup of tea.”
This was a magnificently British response to a peculiarly British situation. Britain had more conscientious objectors than any other comparable nation. That was largely because Britain was almost alone in recognising that such a thing existed. In France, military duty was an essential element of citizenship. In Germany and Russia, a refusal to take up arms on moral grounds was likely to get you at least imprisoned and possibly shot. Even in America, the land of the free, exemption largely depended on membership of an uncompromisingly pacifist church.
Britain’s geography and history had spared it the need for large standing armies, and national service was not part of normal life. Freedom of conscience was also (at least notionally) accepted as a fundamental right. So it was that the refusal of military duties on a variety of grounds was enshrined in law – although some contribution to the war effort was still expected – and staunchly defended from the top, with Churchill declaring that this was “a definite part of British policy. Anything in the nature of persecution, victimisation or man-hunting is odious to the British people.”
In his excellent book, Tobias Kelly has focused on a handful of the 60,000 Britons who refused military service, using their experiences to light up the broader story of what happens when conscience collides with the imperatives of national survival. They are a well-chosen crew, each of whose lives might make a good Ken Loach movie.
Ridgway was a young workingclass Londoner plagued by delicate nerves. Stella St John was an uppermiddle-class young woman with a St Francis-like devotion to animals and the poor. Fred Urquhart was the Edinburgh-born son of a chauffeur, unabashedly gay and convinced of his outstanding literary powers. Ronald Duncan combined reverence for Gandhi with a masterful attitude to women. They had little in common, but they shared an extraordinary determination to stand up to authority and peer pressure in defence of their principles.
That pressure was intense. For obvious reasons, pacifism and antimilitarism were widespread after 1918. In the mid-1930s, the Peace
Pledge Union attracted mass support from every class and political stripe, with members vowing they would never fight in another war. Yet as the decade progressed, more and more reluctantly accepted that they would have to, if fascism were not to overwhelm the world.
What motivated the 2 per cent of the population eligible for war service who rejected this conclusion? Intense religious and political belief sustained many. In some, this was reinforced by egotism or what seems close to a martyr complex.
Open refusal was far from a cop out. There were many easier ways to avoid call-up. Very few men of fighting age ever actually fired a gun in anger. The list of reserved occupations was broad, and included miners, farmers, tailors and dentists. Medical boards were generous and judged more than a third of men over 36 as unfit for service. If all else failed, you could always leg it – as some 100,000 were estimated to have done.
Objectors were given every opportunity to serve in a capacity where their conscience might not be unduly troubled, such as working the land or joining a noncombatant support unit. Yet some 6,000 exceptionally stubborn souls still chose prison. Among them was Stella St John, who having shown great bravery driving an ambulance during the Blitz still refused formal war service, and spent a month doing porridge in Holloway. Stella seems to have been a saint and, with her friend Doris Nicholls, cared for vagrants deemed too dirty or mad to be allowed into public bomb shelters.
Kelly’s subjects examined their conduct ceaselessly. For the men, the suspicion that their scruples might be a cover for cowardice was particularly troubling. This charge could not possibly apply to the likes of Roy Ridgway, whose voluntary service in the Quaker-founded Friends Ambulance Unit put him in as much danger as any soldier. Principle sometimes sat alongside a certain self-regard, most apparent among artistic objectors, one of whom voiced the conviction that “in a war like this it is imperative that people like me should be kept inviolable”.
This was a people’s war, with civilians often in the front line, and very few of those in uniform felt enthusiastic about the struggle. Yet there was little overt hostility to conscientious objectors. Prison officers did not single out the “conchies” for special treatment, and soldiers seem to have respected their non-combatant comrades.
The authorities saw little point in enforcing service – a policy they presented as a manifestation of the fundamental values for which we were fighting. This claim was, by and large, accepted by civilians and soldiers, and the likes of Benjamin Britten and James Mason found their post-war careers untroubled by their refusal to put on a uniform.
Kelly’s fine book sheds light on a little considered aspect of the war, as well as reminding us that our view of ourselves as a decent and tolerant people is not without historical foundation. Makes you proud to be British, as Churchill put it in another context.
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