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MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT |
WILLIAM MAIN 1884 - 1959  

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William Main was a leading Socialist in his home town of Stonehaven long before the Military Service Act attempted to coerce him into the Army. In 1916 William, then 32, was working as a market gardener, and was well known in his local area for his Socialist views. A member of the Independent Labour Party, he most likely took the commonly held ILP view that the war was one for the profits of capitalists, fought for and died for by working people across Europe. As a socialist and an internationalist he could not, and would not, fight against his fellow workers, no matter their country of origin.

William took up an absolutist stand against military authority, and refused to take up any alternative military service. He began his stand against militarism at the Stonehaven Tribunal where he argued for absolute exemption - but both there, and at the Aberdeenshire County Tribunal, his application was refused. Unusually, he was granted leave to apply for the Central Tribunal, which, on the 16th of May 1916, granted him “Exemption from Combatant Service Only”. Though he had gained exemption of a sort, it was not one that his conscience could accept. Exemption from Combatant Service meant joining the army - and though he would not be forced to kill in this role, he would be forced into serving within the military machine, and lending clear support to the war effort.

Like thousands of other Absolutist Conscientious Objectors around the country, he could not accept this decision. Refusing to make any gesture that could be understood as accepting conscription, William decided to ignore his call up, leading to his arrest and trial as an absentee from the Army at Aberdeen Magistrates court in June 1916. Found guilty, fined and handed over under guard to the Army, William was sent to the Forge George depot, there expected to become a willing soldier.

Continuing to refuse to legitimise the military authorities with his actions, William resisted all orders. Inevitably, he was punished through a court martial which sentenced him to the first of three Prison sentences, this first only 112 days of hard labour. During this sentence, served in Aberdeen prison, he was sent to Edinburgh, where the Central Tribunal would again hear his case, this time to judge his suitability for the Government’s recently devised “Home Office Scheme”. William, judged “genuine” and therefore passed for the Scheme, accepted it and was sent to Ballachulish work camp in October.

He was only on the Home Office Scheme for five months before he was officially sent home to await another arrest, court martial and prison sentence. It appears that William could not abide by the terms of the scheme. Neccessarily, for what was explicitly a compromise between Objector and Government, the Home Office Scheme offered COs better conditions, but at the cost of a written promise of good behaviour, and the agreement that they would accept the government putting them to work. For some COs who took up the Absolutist line, this was a compromise too far and smacked of implicitly accepting the Government’s right to punish men for breaking the unjust Conscription laws. With the Home Office Scheme rejected, prison was the inevitable outcome, and William would be returned to Aberdeen for a second and third prison sentence, finally freed in mid 1919.

William’s complete refusal to cooperate with the conscription system does not simply indicate a refusal to kill in wartime, but also a fundamental objection to the nature of conscription itself. In refusing all compromise, William showed that conscription could not force a man to act against his conscience, and withheld his support for a war which he believed was waged against his fellow man.

After the war William suffered some rejection from the community as a consequence of his objection. In 1919 he resumed work as a gardener and handyman. He died from a suspected stroke aged 75 on the 22nd of December 1959. He never had much nor wanted much said one of his relatives but he left us a large collection of paintings of his home town.

 

 

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CO DATA

Born: 1884
Died: 22nd of December 1959
Address: The Cross, Stonehaven, Kincardine, Scotland
Tribunal: Stonehaven; Aberdeen and Kincardineshire County; Calton CP, Edinburgh
Prison: Aberdeen CP; Edinburgh; Aberdeen CP
HO Scheme: Ballachulish Oct. 1916-March 1917[1] - rejected or rejected by HOS
CO Work:
Occupation: Jobbing and market gardener

Motivation: Socialist - ILP
[2]
ABSOLUTIST

 


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WIDER CONTEXT | more
ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION
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CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION
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TRIBUNALS | more
SENTENCED TO DEATH | more
PRISONS | more
HOME OFFICE CENTRES | more

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Conscientious objection in WW1
Conscientious objection today
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