Resumen de Conscience and the Military Service Tribunals during the First World War: Experiences in Northamptonshire
Military service tribunals were established in Britain following the passing of the first Military Service Act 1916, to consider applications for exemption from men deemed thereby to have enlisted. The few that were stated upon the ground of conscience have attracted the most, and the most subjective, attention. Modern empathy with pacifist principles has made almost mandatory the depiction of the conscientious objector as a victim of, and even martyr to, the then-prevailing spirit of militarism. By the same token, posterity has judged the tribunals’ record as a whole predominantly upon their treatment of these men. Fuelled by the early propaganda of the No-Conscription Fellowship and its successor, the No More War Movement, they emerge as the pharisaic civilian arm of the British establishment at war. The paper tests the sustainability of this perspective by reference to the tribunals’ record in one county, Northamptonshire. Unusually, most of the papers relating to the county’s appeals tribunal have survived. Together with reports carried in local newspapers, which maintained a voracious interest in tribunals’ proceedings throughout the conscription period, they provide valuable insights into the dynamics of a system that has received relatively little, and selective, attention to date.
