Fighting About Peace: The No-Conscription Fellowship and the British Friends' Service Committee, 1915-1919

FIGHTING ABOUT PEACE: THE NOCONSCRIPTION FELLOWSHIP AND THE BRITISH FRIENDS' SERVICE COMMITTEE, 1915-1919 By Thomas C. Kennedy* One of Punch's wartime cartoons depicts two men fighting in the street, causing a spectator to remark: "They ought to be at the Front. That's the sort they want there." To which another replies: "They won't go, sir. They're Conscientious Objectors."1 In thus announcing his disdain for "conchies" and other peace cranks, "Mr. Punch" had accidentally stumbled upon a grim reality for British pacifists—the personal and ideological difficulties which led opponents of the Great War to spend an inordinate amount of time squabbling among themselves. This essay is concerned with the causes, effects and uneasy resolution of a series of enervating quarrels between the No-Conscription Fellowship (N.C.F.) and Friends' Service Committee (F.S.C.) . From the British Government's perspective , these were two of the most active and, therefore, most troublesome bodies of war resisters, but their factious disputes weakened an already tiny minority and revealed the impossibility of a unified peace movement surviving the War. Pacifist opposition to Britain's entry into the Great War was scattered and ineffective.2 The suddenness of the crisis and the overwhelming surge of patriotism which accompanied it left existing peace organizations shocked, depleted and largely bereft of ideas about how to proceed. Among the surviving pockets of war resistance were the Society of Friends and the Independent Labour Party. From these distinctive sources the F.S.C, and N.C.F. respectively sprang. The No-Conscription Fellowship was founded in November 1914 by young socialist intellectuals, who did not originally conceive of 'Department of History, University of Arkansas. 1.Punch, 2 February 1916, p. 81. 2.For discussion of some attempts to preserve British neutrality, see Norman Angeli After All (London, 1951), pp. 182-88 and "War and Peace in 1914" in Julian Bell, ed. We Did Not Fight (London, 1935), pp. 44-60. Also see Manchester Guardian, 3 August 1914. 4 QUAKER HISTORY it as a vehicle for anti-war propaganda/ In the beginning, the major objectives of N.C.F. leaders like Clifford Allen (later Lord Allen of Hurtwood) and Fenner Brockway (now Lord Brockway) were to create a sense of solidarity among men of military age who were not prepared to fight and to organize a political campaign to convince the Government that the introduction of compulsory military service would be impossible or at least disadvantageous. When the Fellowship began to attract hundreds of men who opposed the war for a wide variety of reasons, its leaders sought to broaden the base of resistance so as to accommodate as many antiwar elements as possible. In this they were apparently successful. Within a year, the N.C.F. was both the largest and most diverse pacifist organization in Great Britain.4 In marked contrast to the N.C.F., the Friends' Service Committee was from its inception united by the fundamental religious commitment of its members and the long-standing pacifist tradition of their Society. During the Friends' Yearly Meeting of May 1915, a number of younger men, including Alfred Barratt Brown, John P. Fletcher, Robert O. Mennell and Hubert Peet, urged that the Society unequivocally reaffirm its historic peace testimony. In recognition of this deep concern, the Yearly Meeting appointed the Friends Service Committee "to strengthen the Peace testimony among Friends of military age."5 The F.S.C. had only twenty original members and though it later expanded to include women as well as men, it always remained very small in comparison to the N.C.F. Because of the limited number and unified commitment of 3.See Clifford Allen's unpublished manuscript on conscription and conscientious objectors (hereafter cited as Allen MS.), Chap. II, p. 7, Allen Papers, McKissick Memorial Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia , S.C. Allen's view is confirmed by C. H. Norman, another of the N.CF.'s early leaders, in a letter to Fenner Brockway, 16 October 1916, copy in Bertrand Russell Archives, Mills Memorial Library, McMaster University , Hamilton, Ontario. 4.The only complete account of the N.CF.'s early history is Chaps...