William Davidson was one of many First World War Conscientious Objectors whose opposition to war and militarism came from a long-standing political affiliation with the Independent Labour Party. The ILP was an explicitly socialist party affiliated with the Labour Party that was an outright and consistent opponent of the war, and conscription that followed, as a senseless slaughter that put worker against worker for the profit of a few. William was the vice-president of the Aberdeen branch of the ILP, and his opposition to Conscription extended to his membership in the Aberdeen Council Against Conscription, a local branch of the National Council. Affiliated with national anti-conscription groups, the Aberdeen Council would have agitated first against the introduction of conscription and then provided a local level of support and campaigning for Objectors after Conscription was introduced in March 1916.

William himself was called up under the Military Service Act in April 1916, and appeared in front of the Aberdeen Tribunal on the 10th. They granted him Exemption from Combatant Service Only, sending him to the army as a non-combatant soldier. Interestingly for a man so deeply involved in local anti-conscription politics, William seems to have accepted this decision, willingly going into the Non-Combatant Corps at Aberdeen barracks on the 12th May 1916. He seems to have accepted the NCC, and may have worked with them providing labour and logistics support for the army at home and in France.

William’s wartime experiences are little known. Though he appears to have been sent to France as part of the First Scottish Battalion of the NCC, few records are known. Many COs who took up the NCC later refused to continue and rejected this form of alternative service altogether. Others, contentedly or not, continued their work with the NCC until 1919-20 when the final NCC men were demobilised. William may have taken up either one of these options, but his eventual experiences are as yet unknown.