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WILLIAM WATT FINDLAY 1879 -  

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William Findlay was a Quaker Conscientious Objector who worked as a house painter in Dundee when Conscripted under the Military Service Act in 1916. Along with fellow Dundee CO Robert Halcrow, he was held by the Army in a futile attempt to force him to abandon his objection to warfare before being transferred to a civilian prison.

William had applied to the Dundee Tribunal in early March 1916 for exemption, citing his religious principles as a reason why he would not be forced to fight and kill as a soldier. The Tribunal passed him Exempt from Combatant Service Only, a verdict that would send William into the Non-Combatant Corps (NCC), a section of the Army set up to provide Conscientious Objectors with work useful to the war effort. NCC men were expected to wear and uniform and obey orders, and were put to work on logisitics and labour related tasks. They were soldiers, but with one important difference - they were assured they would not have to use or even transport weapons.

For some Conscientious Objectors, the NCC provided an acceptable compromise with authority, but to William and thousands others like him, it was a compromise too far. He resolved to refuse to become a soldier, no matter his combatant status. Ignoring call up altogether he was arrested in May and tried as an absentee from the Army. The inevitable fine followed, 40 shillings, and he was escorted under guard to the 4th Scottish Battalion of the NCC, there expected to conform and obey orders.

William refused, and carried on non-violent resistance by wholly ignoring orders. He was court martialled and found guilty of disobeying orders on the 20th of May, but instead of the by then typical one year sentence and transfer to civilian prison, the Army wanted to hold and punish William themselves. In the early months of Conscientious Objection in 1916, Officers at Army Training Camps were convinced that they could break the will of the resisting men brought to them. William was sentenced to six months imprisonment, which would normally have seen him transferred to a civilian prison. The sentence was commuted instead to 68 days - the longest period he could be held by the military. His sentence was to be served in Barlinnie military prison.

Direct control, or so the Army believed, was the best way to force COs into the Army. Sending them to civilian prison meant losing control, but keeping William in a guard room allowed them to act essentially unsupervised with his punishment. Physical assault, exceptionally rare in prison, was common in barracks guard rooms, and the threat of it would have constantly hung over William and the other Dundee COs held in Military Detention in Barlinnie during his sentence.

The end of this sentence came in July, but as it was a military detention, he was not released in any sense of the word. Taken from the military prison, he again refused orders - and was again faced with a court martial. This time, with 18 months hard labour the result, he was sent back to the same prison - but this time under civilian control. There, though conditions would have been much the same as the military prison, with the same mind-numbing isolation, starvation diet and endless cold, William could at least know that he was held by a civilian authority, and that his treatment was bound by civil law.

But even in Barlinnie (civil) Prison, William would get no respite from the cycle of release and rearrest he had begun. His first sentence there would last 10 months before he was released, therefore again becoming eligible for call up, sent again to the army, court martialled and sent back to prison. In May 1917 this was Wormwood Scrubs, then Barlinnie again in March 1918 and a final sentence in Duke Street Prison, Glasgow. This pointless and vicious cycle was widely decried in both Pacifist and National press, and took a heavy toll on the health and sanity of imprisoned COs.

By January 1919 he had served four prison sentences totalling more than two years, and was released shortly after as a “two year man”, for all his experiences and the attempts of both military and civilian authority to break his spirit, he had continued to resist the call to the murder of war.

 

 

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CO DATA

Born: 1879
Died:
Address: 7 Park Terrace, Dundee, Scotland
Tribunal: Dundee
Prison: Barlinnie, Wormwood Scrubs, Duke Street
HO Scheme: [1]
CO Work:
Occupation: House Painter

Motivation: Presbyterian, Quaker
[2]
ALTERNATIVIST ABSOLUTIST NON-COMBATANT

 


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