What price peace?
TESSA DUNLOP commends an examination of pacifism in the Second World War that explores how following their consciences affected the lives of people who refused to fight
Tobias Kelly’s scholarly examination of British pacifism neatly addresses the gap between past reality and current historical narrative. Much more has been written about the (far fewer) conscientious objectors who refused to fight in the First World War than those in the Second, in which three times as many pacifists took a stand. This says a great deal about how we remember the 1939–45 conflict. Widely regarded as the right war to fight, there seems to be little space for pacifists in discussions of the war against the Axis.
The timing of this book is particularly prescient, arriving in the middle of another conflict – sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – in which freedom and oppression are clearly delineated. What do pacifists do in such circumstances? And how should the state treat them? As Kelly points out, the Second World War was “a war for freedom”, with conscience an important part of the mix. The impact on the 60,000 citizens who refused to take up arms – several of whom are introduced in this book – was complicated, often moving and occasionally fatal.
We meet Roy Ridgway, a young clerk from Liverpool whose religious and moral convictions led him to refuse military service and insist he was given humanitarian work “where his conscience was able to do as it demanded”. Roy endured doubts, arguments and a stint in prison before joining the Friends Ambulance Unit in Syria, later travelling to Italy and France. Pacifism wasn’t for the faint-hearted, nor action exclusively reserved for soldiers.
Roy is one of many protagonists featured in this rich, albeit wordy, assessment of what “people committed to peace should do when the world tips into war”. There are also cameos from Vera Brittain, John Middleton Murry and Benjamin Britten. With the Second World War coming just over 20 years after the horrors of the first, the prevalence and concerns of those pacifists should not surprise us.
Tessa Dunlop is a historian, writer and broadcaster. Her latest book is Army Girls (Headline, 2021)
The impact on the 60,000 citizens who refused to take up arms in the Second World War was complicated, often moving and occasionally fatal