Harry Gouldsbrough was, like many other Conscientious Objectors of the First World War, a man with both political and religious reasons for refusing to do military service. He was a Congregationalist and a member of the Weavers’ Union, which had passed motions condemning both the war and conscription and was active enough in the union for it to have been mentioned in his local tribunal hearing in Blackburn in early 1916.

Though Harry’s Tribunal records no longer exist, he must have been refused the exemption he was looking for as, on the 18th of May 1916, he was picked up by the local police and taken to Blackburn Magistrates court, where he was tried as an absentee from the army and transferred under guard to military control. As an absolutist, Harry made no concession to the military and refused both non-combatant service and any and all military orders. This refusal to compromise his principles meant only one thing - prison.

Harry was one of many thousands of Absolutist Conscientious Objectors who became trapped in a cycle of release and rearrest from 1916 to 1919. From his first court martial sentencing, at Prees Heath barracks in June 1916, of eighteen months hard labour, Harry would serve four prison sentences. At the end of each one, he would be released, only to again become eligible for conscription, arrested, handed over to the army and sent to prison. This cycle would have been both drearily familiar and depressing to COs held within it, as with no end to the war in sight, men felt that they were trapped in

With the Armistice signed and the war coming to an end, the Government faced renewed pressure to release COs who had served long prison sentences. Harry, as what would be known as a “two year man”, was in poor health making him eligible for an early release. He was finally removed from the system in January 1919 and left Wormwood Scrubs for the last time, as a free man. Unfortunately, his four sentences and nearly three years in prison had destroyed his health, and he never recovered, dying shortly after his release.

Harry is one of 69 Conscientious Objectors whose names are recorded on the CO memorial plaque, a memorial not just to the COs who died as a result of their experiences during the war, but also to their spirit and aims. The plaque is engraved with the slogan: “it is by the faith of the idealist that the ideal comes true”. Harry lost his life in pursuit of an ideal the remains as relevant today as it was when he died in 1919 - the realisation of a better and more peaceful world.