Ann Kramer - Conscientious Objectors of the Second World War

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Pen & Sword Social History
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Copyright Ann Kramer 2013

Hardback 978-1-84468-118-1
PDF ISBN: 978-1-78346-471-5
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-78346-937-6
PRC ISBN: 978-1-78346-704-4

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Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to the following:

Susannah Farley-Green for permission to quote from an interview with her about her father, Eric Farley, and from his unpublished memoir, A Partial View, also for permission to reproduce photographs and memorabilia belonging to the family.

Lorna Vahey for permission to quote from an interview with her about her father, Fred Vahey, to quote from his memoirs and for permission to reproduce photographs and memorabilia belonging to the family.

Jenny Foot & Gwylim Newnham for permission to quote from an interview with them about their father, Jack Newnham.

Martin Davies for permission to quote from his account of service with the FAU (BBC Peoples War).

Ifanwy Williams, for permission to quote from an interview with her about her experience of registering as a CO.

Sally Phillips for permission to quote from an interview with her father Brian Phillips, who sadly died before this book was finished.

Isle of Man Newspapers Ltd for permission to quote from The Objectors: personal stories of five conscientious objectors (Times Press and Anthony Gibbs & Phillips, 1965). Specifically extracts from personal accounts by Clifford Simmons, Sydney Carter and Stuart Smith.

Merlin Press Ltd for permission to quote from Human Guinea-Pigs, by Kenneth Mellanby (Merlin Press, 1973).

The Peace Pledge Union for permission to quote from Challenge of Conscience by Denis Hayes (Allen & Unwin, 1949); Peace News, the PPU website, and Peace News and for permission to reproduce photographs.

The Board of Trustees of the Fellowship of Reconciliation for kind permission to reproduce photographs of COs working on the land with the Christian Pacifist Forestry and Land Units (CPFLU).

The Co-operative Womens Guild for permission to quote from The Guildswoman, May 1939.

Mrs Marjatta Bryan for permission to quote extracts from Alex Bryans book: Bloody conchie!: a conscientious objector looks back to World War Two (Quaker Books, 1986).

Mrs Rosalie Huzzard for permission to quote extracts from R. Huzzards private papers held in the Imperial War Museum Documents Department.

Mrs Winifred Porcas for permission to quote extracts from R.J. Porcass private papers held in the Imperial War Museum Documents Department.

The Imperial War Museum Documents Department for assistance in tracing copyright holders of documents used. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and the author and the Imperial War Museum would be grateful for any information which might help to trace those whose identities or addresses are not currently known.

Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of The Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive. Copyright The Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive.

Every attempt has been made to contact the copyright holders of quoted materials. Should any references have been omitted, please supply details to the publisher, who will endeavour to correct the information in subsequent editions.

Introduction

People of Conscience

It is hard to believe today just how much the Second World War permeated the early lives of those who were born immediately after it, as I was. Rationing, austerity, bombsites and prefabs were part of the landscape when I was a child in North London. So was the awareness, if not the understanding, that the previous generation had just gone through six years of war. My family did not promote force or fighting but both my parents had served in the war my father as a doctor, in the Royal Army Medical Corps and my mother as a nurse with the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD). Separately they were posted to India, where they met and married. Their wartime roles were to mend bodies not destroy them and they did not glorify war. Yet, from what I gathered, they clearly believed that the war was one that had to be fought, that it was as many believed a just war, and for the first few years of my life it never occurred to me to question this. I accepted it. I had no idea that there was an alternative view, nor did I know that a huge number of people during the Second World War had, for very principled reasons, refused to fight.

I dont know when I first began to question the need for war, perhaps once I knew about the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but at some point I realised that for me war was an unacceptable and futile way of trying to solve problems. By the time I was 14 or 15, I had joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). I went on Aldermaston marches; demonstrated against the Vietnam War; and protested at Greenham Common. I carried on demonstrating against the bombing of Libya in 1987; against the first Iraq conflict; and again in 2003 with the two million or more who marched against the governments decision to invade Iraq. It was what I did and it was what my friends were doing. So, while I grew up in a home where my parents had taken part in a war, my daughter grew up in a home where people were constantly making placards or arranging to go on yet another anti-war demonstration.

Ironically for someone who has been involved in anti-war activities, I have written a great deal about the two world wars in the last few years, both for children and adults. One of the things Ive noticed is just how little has been written about people who have taken a principled stand against war to the extent of refusing to take up arms, compared with those involved in war, both on the home front or on the battlefield. It is fascinating stuff and very valid, although conventionally it is those who participate in war who are highlighted, while those who take the immensely courageous step of resisting the call to war receive very little coverage.

War memorials alone make this point: just about every town and village has a memorial honouring the dead of both wars. Yet pacifists and conscientious objectors have very few and their memorials have only been created fairly recently. In 1994 Michael Tippett, then president of the Peace Pledge Union, unveiled a huge slate memorial to conscientious objectors past and present in Londons Tavistock Square. The Peace Pledge Union co-ordinated its creation and today it is a focus for events on and around International Conscientious Objectors Day, 15 May, when COs are remembered, not just in London, but all around the world. International Conscientious Objectors Day was not observed until 1982. In Wales, where there is a long tradition of pacifism, the first memorial to conscientious objectors was unveiled as recently as 2005. It stands in Cardiff, in the National Garden of Peace.