'This man would make a splendid soldier'. (1979)

From the September 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Comment by the Military Representative on a Conscientious Objectors’ Appeal Tribunal, 1914/18 War.)

I was conscious, and grateful, that I was a beneficiary of the courage and persistence of others. Having sat for an hour watching earlier applicants before the Conscientious Objectors’ Tribunal being contemptuously, even angrily, rejected that morning, it came as a surprise that my treatment was so much easier. In Joe Lyons afterwards, drinking a relieved cup of coffee, a reporter from Peace News came to our table and told me that after years of doggedly asserting the case against war, socialists had established themselves, even in the minds of those Tribunal members, as authentic opponents of capitalism and all that went with it. When my turn came, after the war, it only needed to be attested that I was an active member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain for the point to be made.

There were four men on the Tribunal that morning, their faces looming down on me from the bench high above where I stood in the well of the council chamber. In the centre chair sat the judge, an old man who looked as fragile as singed paper. On his right sat a tame trade unionist, a man who had been prominent in the General Strike and whose presence was meant to reassure us that the people’s voice was being heard in the process which dragged young workers into the killing machine. He was dressed in thick, alarming sea green Harris tweed; he knew what socialists thought of traitors to their class and his round, mauve face sweated guiltily at me.

To the left of the judge was a local solicitor, prosperous and hearty and, maybe in consequence, friendly. Perhaps in reflex to the expediencies of a lawyer’s day-to-day refashioning of the truth, he was fascinated by the logic and consistency of our case. Was it possible for people to be so concerned about political principle? He was, I suppose, a sympathiser — to him we were a protected species. The other member was very forgettable and I have duly forgotten him. But I heard tell of another member who came down from his job as a Cambridge don to specialise in slicing up religious objectors with their own chop logic. He was reputed to be a formidably slippery debater and. arrogant eighteen year old though I was, I was not unhappy that he was away from the Tribunal that day.

Statement

I had submitted a statement which I was sure was one of the finest pieces of writing in the history of the English language. It had been lovingly polished and embellished with many words dredged up from my Thesaurus and I wanted justice done to it. (I cringe when I read it now.) The judge, however, did not have the same high regard for such great works of revolutionary literature and read it quickly and carelessly, losing all those hard found literary gems in a bored, piping voice which drifted like thin smoke into the brown rafters of the chamber roof. Once, when he misread a phrase I was especially proud of, I wanted to correct him but was restrained by the party member who had come to speak for me. I was, as I said, eighteen and arrogant.

My Tribunal came up a little over a year after I joined the SPGB. The socialist opposition to war had been one of the sticking points on my way to membership; the photographs of the heaped-up skeletons of Belsen and the black ovens of Auschwitz were still fresh in the memory. Shouldn’t workers fight to abolish that, I asked, before thinking about getting rid of capitalism? The man who argued with me, patiently and courteously, himself went to prison for his objection to war just as I joined the SPGB — which effectively impressed upon me that I too had taken a decision to resist.

Two contributions to the brave new post-war world of the 1945 Labour government were the National Service Acts of 1947 and 1948. These Acts made conscription, for the first time during peace, an established part of life in Britain. Perhaps Labour Party members called this socialism; it was in fact a continuation of the policy they followed in 1939 when, almost without debate, Parliament rushed through the measures making men aged between 18 and 41 liable for call-up.

After the war, with the more regular rhythms of capitalism back in operation, the call-up dominated the lives of young men from the day they left school. For a time it provided sociologists with an explanation for the post-war crime wave. It was also a ready source of conversation among socialists; as with the driving test, almost everyone had had a funny experience on their way to or from the Tribunal. There was, for example, the woman (one symptom of capitalism’s progress was that females were also sucked into the conscription machine) who shattered the august judges of her sincerity as an objector by replying, when they asked her ‘What would you do if a German soldier came along and raped you?’with the interested assessment: ‘I expect I’d lie back and enjoy it.’ (There was some evidence that the Tribunals were haunted by the spectre of Germanic virility.)

CBCO

Objectors who were rejected by the Tribunals, or who would not accept its decision, were required to take a medical examination. This was a crucial dividing line between civilian and soldier; once the army doctor got his stethoscope on a man, he was considered to have joined up. Refusal to take the medical was an offence, dealt with by a magistrates’ court. By the end of the war, after some confusion and suffering, the sentence had settled at three months — the minimum to enable the objector’s case to be put again to the Appellate Tribunal. At that point it was conceded that the objector had proved his ‘sincerity’ and he was usually released. So it was that, by the time I was called up, members of the SPGB were liable to disappear from activity for a few weeks, to come back with tales of slopping out, bawling warders and discussions about the nuances of the third volume of Capital with bewildered fellow prisoners who only wanted to be left in peace to do their bird.

The experiences and the advice of Party members varied so widely that I thought it wise, before I went up to my Tribunal, to consult the Central Board of Conscientious Objectors (CBCO) — a body set up by the Society of Friends, the Peace Pledge Union and the like. The CBCO, which published some invaluable material on the processes of conscientious objection, had its offices in the heartland of pacifist dissent, in Endsleigh Square. My reception there, among the dusty files and misshapen wire letter trays, was not encouraging; the CBCO secretary was gentle and helpful, but clearly he did not think much of my chances, until:

“What are the grounds for your objection? You sound religious.”

“Blimey, no. I’m in the SPGB.”

He perked up at once; hope and relief flooded into his face:

“SPGB? That’s different. You should have no difficulty, then.”

I needed that reassurance, preoccupied as I was with fantasies about the ill-treatment which awaited all who stood out against capitalism’s wars. In fact, there was little of this during the 1939/45 war, or after it. Certainly, there was nothing to compare with what happened during World War I. The CBCO were ever watchful. In 1948, when an objector who was officially a deserter was paraded at an army camp dressed only in a towel, they protested, and at once he was discharged from the army. One group of COs in a store in Welwyn Garden City were known locally as ‘the rats’. In 1940 there was a minor scandal when the government were embarrassed by Peace News publishing a ‘confidential’ memo from a Regional Information (sic) Officer which advocated being “. . . free to call ‘artificial’ conscientious objection by its true names, which are Disloyalty, Treachery and Cowardice.” During 1914/18, such events would have passed without notice.

Panic

Nobody knew, in September 1939, what the war would be like. There was a lot of panic propaganda from the government and a widespread expectation that the cities of Britain would soon be in ruins under the bombs; as I stepped onto the evacuation bus I did not expect to see my parents again. Socialists too were unsure of their future; they did not know that they would not get the same harassment as they had received during the previous war. But with the outbreak of war the SPGB again stated its opposition to being persuaded or dragooned into taking arms to protect the interests of our capitalist masters against the interests of our fellow workers. In this opposition they held firm, so that when my turn came there was little left for me to say, no need for defiance to be articulated any more.

My Tribunal, too, seemed to know this and they grew impatient of me. After a few questions they wanted to hear from the other member, who was a well-known speaker for the SPGB. As he came forward they craned towards him from the bench, their faces transformed in eager smiles, anxious to be impressed. The judge obviously wanted his lunch, but the solicitor felt me out with one last question on the socialist opposition to war. By then I thought I knew what they wanted and gave the sort of answer I would have given from the platform. The solicitor and the trade unionist almost applauded; I had, apparently, got it right. They told me I was exempt from military service, provided 1 stayed in my job in the film industry, and they let me go to breathe the sweet air of freedom in Fulham Broadway.

There is much to be said for being a socialist. An understanding of the dynamics of society brings its own satisfactions with the awareness of class interests and how workers should respond to them. That is why we stand out against capitalism's wars. Instead, we immerse ourselves in the class struggle and, defiantly, we do not make splendid soldiers.

Ivan