Conscientious Objectors from the Welsh Coalfields were often retained in their colliery work or shuffled around pits as and when the government required their services. Colliery work shows some of the arbitrary and unfair nature of the treatment of Conscientious Objectors who took up what was known as “Work of National Importance”.

E.J Williams was a miner working in Llandybie when Conscription was introduced into law through the Military Service Act 1916. Williams was a Christadelphian, a dissenting Christian sect whose adherents largely believed that they could take no part in the war effort, in a combatant role or in auxiliary support. Accordingly, Williams applied to his local Tribunal for exemption as a Conscientious Objector - most likely in early 1917 when revisions were made to the Military Service Act in the first round of the “combing out” process, gathering every possible man into the Army. Williams, as both a conscientious objector and a worker in a protected occupation - mining - had two solid legal grounds for exemption. He could, and should, have been exempted on his objection to war and his vitally important work. Instead, he was passed by the local Tribunal as exempt, provided he took on Work of National Importance (WNI).

He was referred to the Pelham Committee for the Employment of Conscientious Objectors, a body which met to oversee applications of COs for WNI. Having been passed for WNI, Williams was offered mining work again, but not at his own pit. Instead, he was expected to work twenty miles south near Pontarddulais in Glamorgan. This decision seems extremely arbitrary, moving a Conscientious Objector from his nationally important work to the same work - but further away. He could have remained in his pre-conscription position, or even have been granted exemption based on continuing in his current work. But that would not have satisfied the spirit of punishment that went with CO applications for WNI. It was organised along the rough lines of the “Principle of Equal Sacrifice”, whereby a CO would be expected to suffer as much as any soldier on the front. Making E.J Williams shift Collieries and moving him 20 significant miles away from home and family was only part of the process. With lethal danger (only slightly) less common in the mines than in the Army, Williams would have had his situation deliberately worsened, with lower pay and longer hours.