THE MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT | INDEX
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THE MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT | INDEX |
| HAROLD WILSON 1892 - |
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| Harold Wilson, born 1892, was working as a window dresser in Richmond when he was conscripted under the Military Service Act 1916. Married with three children, he would have received his call-up papers around late April, and he applied to the Richmond Tribunal as a Conscientious Objector at some point that month. His application must have been processed quickly, but to an unsatisfactory conclusion as by the 19th of May 1916 he was in the hands of the Police, having been arrested as an absentee from the army after he refused to report to barracks as a soldier. He was fined the standard rate of 40 shillings and sent to the Kingston barracks under guard. There, he continued to resist this attempt to make him into a soldier, refusing all orders that would make him a willing part of the military machine. By the 2nd of June 1916, his refusal had led to him being punished by Court Martial, which sentenced him to two years hard labour, commuted to 112 days imprisonment, to be served in Lewes. Towards the end of this sentence, Harold was transferred to Wormwood Scrubs to have his case reviewed by the Central Tribunal. The Central Tribunal met in Wormwood Scrubs to decide the cases of COs held in English prisons, and to judge their suitability for the Home Office Scheme (HoS), set up in mid 1916 as a way of putting COs to useful work outside of the prison system. Unlike other Tribunals it did not offer a range of decisions, simply passing COs as suitable for the HoS or unsuitable, returning them to prison. Harold was judged a "Class A" CO, with a genuine objection to war. While legally this should have meant an absolute exemption, in practice it meant only the offer of a place on the HoS, which Harold accepted. By November 1916, he had been sent to a HoS camp at Newhaven, where he worked on road construction and maintenance for several months. Harold was at Newhaven when COs on the scheme downed tools. One of the conditions for COs working on the scheme was that they would do work asked of them - but conversely, COs were assured this work would have no military character. Work at Newhaven focused around road construction, some of which appeared, in early 1917, to be primarily for military use. After a short work strike, COs were reassigned, and work recommenced on a less military footing. Harold most likely spent 1917-1919 being moved around different HoS centres, and would have been released in early 1919 with the general demobilisation that accompanied the official end of the war.
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