MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT |
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MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT | |
| JOHN THOMAS WOOLLISCROFT 1877 - 1955 |
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When John Woolliscroft received his call-up papers, he was a joiner and member of the British Socialist Party and the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. His appeal for exemption from military participation in April 1916 was refused. Unusually, we have a substantial report of the hearing, published in the Glossop-dale Chronicle, which gives a clear picture of John's views:. John Thomas Wooliscroft, joiner of 13 Green Lane, Hadfield, applied for total exemption from both combatant and non-combatant service, saying that as a socialist and internationalist of 20 years' standing, he was entirely opposed to war in all its forms. Then he held that the only way to prevent further war was to increase the number of persons refusing to engage in war, whatever the pretext; he had always been opposed to war in peacetime. Now that the war was taking place, he still held the opinion that the party to which he belonged had always been in favour of arbitration and working for international brotherhood, trying to point out to the people that for many years Europe had been an armed camp. He thought that was the present time. The people should be striving for peace instead of trying to continue the war, and any man who could view the terrible loss of life, which is taking place near Vrdum were human beings were being mowed down as if by an invisible site and were recommended of human bodies were being mowed down as by an invisible scythe and where fragments of human flesh are being hurled in all directions and not feel an abhorrence for the whole system, warfare had forfeited the right to be regarded as a civilised human being. He held that if the German soldiers were being mutilated as they read in the papers by big guns and machine guns, etc., during the advance on Verdun, it was reasonable to suppose that when the allies came to make the advance, the same thing would occur to the British troops and the troops of their allies. Warfare was a relapse of barbarism, and he could take no part in it.The clerk: And supposing our own men did not take part in the fighting, should we not be bowed down as you say by the Germans? - My point is that there should be arbitration and not war, and we should be linked up with the workers of Europe. There are men in Germany who hold these opinions, too, just as I hold them. The clerk: If so, they did not help much when the war was declared, did they? I think they did, and I have some evidence to support that. The clerk: Your contentions may be sound theoretically, and most of us would like peace if it were possible, but it is not now a matter of choice how we stop the war. Are we to let the Germans shoot us down unarmed? Suppose everyone adopted this view. Mr Phillip Snowden advocated in Parliament that we should negotiate for peace. The chairman: The tribunal has decided to refuse the application. The claimant requested the appeal form, which was provided. A later appeal exempted John from Combatant Service and directed him to perform work of National Importance as part of the Home Office Scheme instead. John was one of eight conscientious objectors we know of in Glossop.
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