Conchies , livre ebook

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230 pages

English

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On the centenary of the Great War, we hear and read of valiant and heroic stories. There is another story, one less spoken of. The story of the people who refused to fight for their country. Today, the individuals mentioned in this book would be the focus of internet trolls. In their own day they elicited an equally vehement reaction from their communities. These were the people who refused to fight for their country, and they were known as 'Conscientious Objectors'. This book provides a remarkable testimony about the experiences of conscientious objectors and their treatment at the hands of the state. It contradicts the received view that these objectors were treated universally brutally by the army, the prison system and the government, and is bound to lead to a modification of the orthodox view. Andy Ward was given access to 300 letters that had been discovered in a local family's attic. They record a correspondence from 1916 to the end of the war between Leonard and Roland Payne, two brothers who chose to become conscientious objectors, and their friends and family. The letters follow their journey as the authorities attempted to dissuade them from their course of action, through punishment, until finally they were placed in a situation where they could be useful. Conchies is not a work of purely local history. Rather, it is a case study: local history in a national context and national history in a local context. It is also a very human story, treated with balance and thought. It will appeal to those interested in the First World War, civilian experiences of the War, British social history, the evolving nature of public opinion and the ethical and moral issues of conscience.

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World War I

Histoire

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	12 octobre 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781784628185
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Copyright © 2015 Andy Ward
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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ISBN 978 1784628 185
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Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
For Sharon, Michael and Sarah.
CONTENTS
Foreword
PART ONE: HOME TOWN
Home Town
Renaissance
Notes & References
PART TWO: HOME FRONT
Home Front
Notes & References
PART THREE: AWAY FROM HOME
Asquith’s Ship of Liberal Values
The First Rock
The Second Rock
Arrest
With the Tigers
The (Military) Daily Round
Spanked
Not Alone
Whitburn Army Camp, County Durham
The Waiting Game
Court Martial
Reading Out
The Third Rock
Prison
Durham
Wormwood Scrubs
Durham – Again
The Fourth Rock
Wakefield
Bradford
Horbury and Beyond
Notes & References
PART FOUR: HOMECOMING
Homecoming
Notes & References
PART FIVE: THE LONG ROAD HOME
Foreign Fields
Lutterworh Rugby Club
Disenfranchised
Indifference
Changing Attitudes and a New World War
The Long Road to Forgetting
Notes & References
Select Bibliography
Local History
Acknowledgements
FOREWORD
As we reach the centenary of the Great War, we hear and read of valiant and heroic stories: the suffering of the troops in the trenches and the inhuman environments which the young men of the world endured in the name of ‘victory’ and the ‘glory’ of war. There is another story, one less spoken of. It is an unpopular story about individuals who, if living today, would be the focus of internet trolls but in their own day elicited an equally vehement reaction from their communities. These were the people who refused to fight for their country.
Many took this course of action because of the belief that killing their fellow man was a sin in the eyes of God. Some refused to fight because they felt unable to attack working men on socialist principles. There were many motives but each man felt compelled to follow the dictates of his conscience. Such individuals were vilified by their communities and many sought the company and support of like-minded groups, such as the Quakers, Christadelphians and other religious and humanist networks. Society did not differentiate between the reasons for refusal to fight and called them all ‘conscientious objectors’.
The author of this book, Andy Ward, was a talented Historian and teacher with a passionate interest in the First World War. When preparing for his retirement, he was offered access to a collection of letters which had been discovered in the attic by a local family. They record a correspondence from 1916 to the end of the war between two brothers, Leonard and Roland Payne and their friends and family. The brothers chose to become conscientious objectors and the letters follow their journey through the system as the authorities sought first to dissuade them from that course, then to punish them and finally to place them somewhere where they would be useful. Andy’s wide ranging research uncovered the stories behind the letters using evidence in the National Archives, the Quaker Library and local archives in the Leicestershire Record Office. He also made sure that every family holiday enabled visits to every place where the Payne brothers had been held around the country! His approach was meticulous and thorough and the result is an academic work of both local and national importance but it is also a very human story which Andy treated with balance and thought. His enthusiasm for the subject shines through and the account is both readable and enthralling.
Sadly, Andy died before he was able to see his book in print. His family are pleased to make his dream a reality.
Sharon Ward, 2014
PART ONE
HOME TOWN
In our mind’s eye and in our imagination we see them: two boys – brothers – well-dressed,smartly turned out in the fashion for boys in Edwardian England. It is Sunday and today is Christmas Day. The year is 1904: this year Christmas Day falls on a Sunday. We see the boys as they trudge their way through the deep snow this cold Christmas morning, the scene familiar to us from a million Christmas cards, on their way to chapel in their small home town, deep in the English Midlands, to sing carols – for they are musically gifted – and to celebrate the birth of their Saviour, Jesus Christ. Perhaps they will sing Edmund Sears’ great Victorian Nonconformist hymn ‘It Came upon a Midnight Clear’ with its lines ‘And man at war with man hears not/ The love-song which they bring:/ O hush the noise ye men of strife,/ And hear the angels sing.’ The hymn, and the Christian faith which underpins it, are taken seriously and literally by the boys and their family.
The older boy, a good looking nine-year-old, is wearing his chapel clothes, a long jacket with a button-up waistcoat and straight trousers down to his sturdy boots; his brother, two years younger, wears a similar jacket with stiff Eton collar beneath, and knickerbockers to the calf with dark stockings below. He also will be wearing hefty boots, for these are no barefoot urchins – far from it.
They are Leonard and Roland Payne ( Roland already known as Bill, or ‘Puffing Billy’ to his friends ), respectable, middle class boys, sons and grandsons of basket weavers, of successful, small businessmen selling what they make, catering for the needs of small town rural south Leicestershire: efficient, industrious, socially ambitious. Their father, John, has moved up in the world: he has for some years past acted as Assistant County Court Bailiff, serving summonses mainly for debt, and, where necessary, accompanying the unfortunates the dozen miles to Leicester Gaol. It is not a job he relishes and he often organises collections among the debtors’ friends to pay off the creditors.
The new twentieth century is now safely underway, filled with hope and boundless possibilities, but also promising profound changes, some already in train. For Leonard and Roland the future looks bright and secure, their family well established, staunch members of the chapel and well respected among their neighbours. Roland has just this last year joined his brother as a pupil at the town’s Sherrier Elementary School. They are strong boys, not particularly big for their age, but well able to fend for themselves in the hurly-burly of a boyish childhood, playing their summer games down by the river or in the recreation ground behind the churchyard. Leonard is already a keen rugby player, a member of the local rugby club juniors – a connection that will, in future years, stand both of them in good stead. Do they in the winter snows join in snowball fights? Probably, though not, perhaps, in an aggressive way. And in the wake of the South African War, had they played a boyish game of ‘Britons’ versus ‘Boers’, we wonder; it would be fascinating to know, either way.
For, though they do not yet know it as they make their way through the heavy snowdrifts this Christmas morning, Leonard and Roland have been born into a cursed generation, the last of the nineteenth century, the generation of the Great War. The lives of many of those who sit next to the brothers at their elementary school desks or share the children’s pews with them in the Congregational Chapel, will be brought to ruination and, for some, a violent and squalid death far from home when they are barely full grown.
Not these brothers, though. Their fate will be different. For they will refuse to fight when war comes, and that refusal will mark and haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Let us for the moment leave the boys to their Christmas goose, their modest presents and their singing round the Christmas tree, as we seek first to understand something of the lost world they inhabit and the community of people of which they form a part – the same community which will reject them with a violence and anger they could not have anticipated and we can scarcely imagine: imprisoned, assaulted, their home attacked, their livelihood destroyed, they then forced to flee for their lives from this sleepy little market town.
Theirs is a remarkable – and surprising – story.
HOME TOWN
‘SOMNOLENT RESPECTABILITY’
One observer, writing just before the First World War, characterised Leicestershire as a ‘commonplace’ county: if we remove the sneer from the voice, what remains is essentially true. 1 Its county town, too, lacks the extraordinary: ‘the only praise that I ever heard visitors give to my native town of Leicester,’ wrote the journalist Henry Nevinson, ‘was that it was clean. They always said that, and they said no more’. 2
In the south of the county, fourteen or so miles from Leicester and close to the border with Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, lies the small market town of Lutterworth. Every Thursday since 1214, the High Street had been lined with market stalls selling all kinds of produce, the pavements left wide enough to accommodate them. Lutterworth was commonplace and clean, a ‘typical English town’ 3 as some called it, ‘neat and well-built’ 4 : never a pretty place, but workmanlike and worthy. It was a town built by and for shopkeepers with the odd flourish of grandeur. A small town, characterised by i