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Scottish War Resisters and Conscientious Objectors, 1914–1919

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The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War since 1914

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Abstract

When war was declared on August 4, 1914, Scots responded in great numbers to Lord Kitchener’s patriotic call to arms and on the home front, the Scottish public commitment to the war effort seemed never in doubt. Yet a small if vocal minority opposed the war and Scottish war resisters and conscientious objectors figured prominently in the British anti-war movement. From the commencement of hostilities, the Independent Labour Party (ILP), vowed to fight the jingoism, militarism, and secret diplomacy that had caused the war in the first place. Derided as “pro-German,” the ILP held to their anti-war stance throughout the war and by armistice the party had grown significantly across Scotland. This chapter investigates the role of Scottish war resisters and the reasons behind the ILP’s political success in Scotland in the face of intense patriotism and pro-war propaganda experienced during the First World War.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 1–2.

  2. 2.

    John William Graham, Conscription and Conscience. A History 1916–1919 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1922); Denis Hayes, Conscription Conflict: The conflict of ideas in the struggle for and against military conscription in Britain between 1901 and 1939 (London: Sheppard Press, 1949); D. Boulton, Objection Overruled (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1967); John Rae, Conscience and Politics: The British Government and the Conscientious Objectors to Military Service 1916–1919 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970); and, T. Kennedy, The Hounds of Conscience. A History of the No-Conscription Fellowship (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1981): Graham makes only four index references to the Independent Labour Party (ILP) across 388 pages, and Kennedy 9 over 322 pages. Kennedy largely dismissed the ILP and the No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF) as they were “numerically insignificant” (see page 267).

  3. 3.

    Caroline Moorehead, Troublesome People. Enemies of War, 1916–1986 (London: Adler and Adler, 1987), and Felicity Goodall, A Question of Conscience: Conscientious Objection in Two World War (London: Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1997).

  4. 4.

    Cyril Pearce, Comrades in Conscience. The story of an English community’s opposition to the Great War (London: Francis Boutle Publishers, 2001), 23–29.

  5. 5.

    William H. Marwick, “Conscientious Objection in Scotland in the First World War,” Scottish Journal of Science 1 (June 1972): 157.

  6. 6.

    William Kenefick, “War Resisters and Anti-Conscription in Scotland: an ILP Perspective,” in Scotland and the Great War, eds. Catriona Macdonald and E.W. McFarland, 59–80 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1999): see also Keith Robbins, “The British Experience of Conscientious Objection,” in Facing Armageddon. The First World War Experience, edited by Hugh Cecil and Peter H Liddle, 691–706 (1996): was objection to British intervention in the war “conscientious”? According to Robbins: ‘It is here that we begin to move into a thicket of conceptual difficulties. In short to support or oppose the war!’ 692.

  7. 7.

    For Aberdeen, see William Kenefick, “‘Aberdeen was More Red than Glasgow’. The impact of the First World War and the Russian Revolution beyond Red Clydeside,” in Scotland and the Slavs: Cultures in Contact 1500–2000, eds. Mark Cornwall and Murray Frame, 159–189 (Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 2001).

  8. 8.

    Pearce, Comrades in Conscience, 27.

  9. 9.

    William Kenefick, Red Scotland! The Rise and Fall of the Radical left c.1872–1932 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 147–155.

  10. 10.

    Kenneth Baxter and William Kenefick, “Labour Politics and the Dundee working Class, c.1895–1936,” in Jute no More. Transforming Dundee, eds. Jim Tomlinson and Christopher A. Whatley, 191–219 (Dundee University Press, 2011); William Kenefick, “‘An Effervescence of Youth: Female Textile-Workers’ Strike Activity in Dundee, 1911–1912,’” Historical Studies in Industrial Relations 33 (2012): 189–221; William Kenefick, “From Red Clydeside to Red Scotland c.1906 to 1922”—Culture and Conflict: an international academic exploration of the impact of war in the twentieth century, Edinburgh International Festival, August 2014; William Kenefick, “The impact of war, war resisters and the role of the Independent Labour Party in Scotland c.1914–1922” (Keynote Address)—War: Women, Work, Resistance, Scottish Labour History Society Annual Conference, Glasgow, November 2014.

  11. 11.

    Robert Duncan, Objectors and Resisters: Opposition to Conscription and War in Scotland 1914–18 (Berwick-upon-Tweed: Common Print, 2015). References to the activities of Dundee war resisters and conscientious objections (COs) are peppered throughout this publication: see chapter 3 (39), and chapter five (113–114).

  12. 12.

    Duncan, Objectors and Resisters, 2–3.

  13. 13.

    Cyril Pearce and Helen Durham, “Patterns of Dissent during the First World War,” War and Society 34 (May, 2015): 140–159.

  14. 14.

    Pearce and Durham, “Patterns of Dissent,” ibid.

  15. 15.

    Imperial War Museum, Lives of the First World War. Conscientious Objectors Register 1914–1918: https://search.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/search/world-records/conscientious-objectors-register-1914-1918.

  16. 16.

    The most recent iteration released by Cyril Pearce through a private network was December 1, 2017.

  17. 17.

    Census of Scotland, 1911. Scottish population is 4,782,904: UK population is 42,082,000; Scottish population is therefore 11.31% of UK Totals.

  18. 18.

    William Stewart, J. Keir Hardie: A Biography (London: Independent Labour Party Publication Dept, 1921), 358.

  19. 19.

    Keir Hardie feared “anti-democratic Russia” more than Germany. Nationally, the ILP had been organising an annual peace event for a decade and more before the outbreak of war in 1914; working closely on annual summer propaganda campaign with the Social Democratic Federation/later the British Socialist Party, the Fabians, the Christian Socialist Fellowship, the Clarion and ILP Scouts, and the Catholic Socialist Societies. In 1911 it was also part of the ILP’s “Struggle for the Living Wage” campaign and trade union recruitment drive among women and unskilled male workers: see Kenefick, “An Effervescence of Youth,” 214–215, ft. 122.

  20. 20.

    Independent Labour Party, Report of the 19th Annual Conference, Birmingham, April 1911 (London, 1911): 93–97.

  21. 21.

    Independent Labour Party, Report of the 20th Annual Conference, Merthyr, May 1912 (London, 1912): 16, 96.

  22. 22.

    Independent Labour Party, Report of the 21st Annual Conference, Manchester, March 1913 (London, 1913).

  23. 23.

    Independent Labour Party, Report of the Coming-Of-Age Conference, Bradford, April 1914 (London, 1914): 20–23; other leading socialists included Victor Adler (Austria); Emile Vandervelde (Belgium), Karl Leibknecht (Germany), and leading European anti-militarist Jean Jaurès (France).

  24. 24.

    Stewart, J. Keir Hardie, 357.

  25. 25.

    Labour Leader, July 30, 1914.

  26. 26.

    Stewart, J. Keir Hardie, 378.

  27. 27.

    Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War. 1914–1918 (London: Basic Books, 1998), 158–173.

  28. 28.

    Stewart, J. Keir Hardie, 357, 366: The 1914 the Internationalist Socialist Congress was originally to be held in Vienna on August 23 that year, but war in Austria forced a change of plans; it was brought forward by two weeks and held in France.

  29. 29.

    Labour Leader, August 6, 1914.

  30. 30.

    Kenefick, “War Resisters and Anti-Conscription in Scotland,” 59–61, 77; and Kenefick, Red Scotland, 132–133, 154–155.

  31. 31.

    Ferguson, The Pity of War, 158–173.

  32. 32.

    Ferguson, The Pity of War, 174–179.

  33. 33.

    Ferguson, The Pity of War, 179.

  34. 34.

    Report of the 19th Annual Conference, Birmingham. Directory of ILP Branches: Division 1. – Scotland and Ireland; 112–115: for estimate of membership consult Harvie, “Before the Breakthrough, 1886–1922,” 16.

  35. 35.

    Glasgow Forward (hereafter Forward) was published weekly every Saturday from 1916, and was the Scottish ILPs propaganda organ. Forward provided for a growing body of radical groups principally in Glasgow but also the expanding membership in Scotland which increased by 60% before the war: see Christopher Harvie, “Before the Breakthrough, 1886–1922,” in Forward! Labour Politics in Scotland 1888–1988 (Edinburgh, 1989), 7–29.

  36. 36.

    Labour Leader, August 13, and Scottish Prohibitionist, August 15, 1914.

  37. 37.

    Kenefick, Red Scotland, 135–136.

  38. 38.

    Forward, August 15, 1914.

  39. 39.

    Pearce, Comrades in Conscience, 75–78.

  40. 40.

    Forward, August 22, 1914.

  41. 41.

    Harvie, “Before the Breakthrough,” 24: see also Kenefick, “War Resisters and Anti-Conscription,” 63.

  42. 42.

    Forward, February 13, 1915.

  43. 43.

    Hayes, Conscription Conflict, 150.

  44. 44.

    Glasgow Herald, November 18 and December 8, 1914.

  45. 45.

    Forward, November 21, 1914.

  46. 46.

    Forward, November 28, 1914.

  47. 47.

    Labour Leader, December 3, Forward, December 5: see also Hayes, Conscription Conflict, 249, 251; and Kennedy, “Hounds of Conscience,” 46.

  48. 48.

    Rae, Conscience and Politics, 12, 83–84.

  49. 49.

    Harvie, “Before the Breakthrough,” 23; see also Kenefick, Red Scotland, 139.

  50. 50.

    Forward, January 2, 1915.

  51. 51.

    James Maxton, “War Resistance by Working Class Struggle,” in We Did Not Fight, ed. Julian Bell, 213–222 (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1935).

  52. 52.

    Labour Leader, February 25, March 18; and Forward, March 13, 1915.

  53. 53.

    Scottish Prohibitionist, November 6, 1915.

  54. 54.

    Scottish Prohibitionist, January 29, 1916.

  55. 55.

    Labour Leader, August 17, 1916: see also Duncan, Objectors and Resisters, 38–39.

  56. 56.

    Scottish Prohibitionist, May 28, 1916.

  57. 57.

    Forward, December 18, 1915.

  58. 58.

    Forward, February 19, 1915.

  59. 59.

    Forward, July 15 and September 2, 1916.

  60. 60.

    Duncan, Objectors and Resisters, 103–107.

  61. 61.

    Carr Archive © Dundee City Council, Dundee Art Galleries and Museums.

  62. 62.

    Harvie, “Before the Breakthrough,” 23.

  63. 63.

    James Maxton Papers, Mitchell Library: Coll TO956/5/7. Letter dated 8/2/1917: citing his wartime address as Work Centre, Wakefield, Yorks (including prison number C2: 34), 252. It was written on ILP Cycle Scouts headed notepaper. Note: NI refers to offer of Work of National Importance. “Ross, Henderson and ‘& others’ likely refer to the ‘Dundee Seven.’”

  64. 64.

    John Paton, Proletarian Pilgrimage: An Autobiography (London: Routledge, 1935).

  65. 65.

    Maxton, “War Resistance,” 213–222.

  66. 66.

    Forward, April 28, 1917. “Fair hotchin wi conchies” is Scots for “a great many” COs.

  67. 67.

    Aberdeen Evening Express, May 23; Forward, June 15, 1918.

  68. 68.

    Paton, Proletarian Pilgrimage, 274–278.

  69. 69.

    Forward, July 27, 1918.

  70. 70.

    Kenefick, Red Scotland, 153–154.

  71. 71.

    Forward, July 27, 1918.

  72. 72.

    As reported in Forward, October 26, 1918; see also Kenefick, Red Scotland, 153–154.

  73. 73.

    Dundee Courier, July 31, 1917.

  74. 74.

    Scottish Prohibitionist and Forward, August 4, 1917.

  75. 75.

    See variously letters of support published in both the Scottish Prohibitionist and Forward, over July and August 1917.

  76. 76.

    Duncan, Objectors and Resisters: makes many specific references to Dundee COs and their activities. Duncan identifies 70 COs of which 14 do not appear on the Pearce register which records 92 COs (with at least one duplication), which gives a total of 105 COs for Dundee.

  77. 77.

    Forward, February 23, 1918.

  78. 78.

    Pearce, Comrades in Conscience, 27; Pearce and Durham, “Patterns of Dissent during the First World War,” Local Studies—Hyde and Huddersfield, 141–142: see also Kenefick, Red Scotland, 132–183; and Duncan, Objectors and Resisters, 37–39.

  79. 79.

    Forward, October 26, 1918: see earlier report March 19, 1918: “ILP gaining ground in Scotland.”

  80. 80.

    Harvie, “Before the Breakthrough,” 23–25.

  81. 81.

    Kenefick, Red Scotland, 154–155.

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  1. University of Dundee, Dundee, UK

    William Kenefick

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  1. University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia

    Martin Kerby , Margaret Baguley  & Janet McDonald ,  & 

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Kenefick, W. (2019). Scottish War Resisters and Conscientious Objectors, 1914–1919. In: Kerby, M., Baguley, M., McDonald, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War since 1914. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96986-2_17

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