Clifford CARTWRIGHT was born about 1895, and lived in New Wortley, Leeds, working as a stereotyper (maker of printing plates from moulded type). He was a member of the religious denomination known as Churches of Christ, and with many fellow members opposed the First World War and conscription. The Military Service Tribunal in Leeds allowed him only exemption from combatant service, meaning that he would be called up into the Non-Combatant Corps (NCC), guaranteed not to use or even handle weapons, but nevertheless part of the Army.

Clifford ignored notice of call-up, so was arrested by the civil police and brought before Leeds Magistrates’ Court on 28 April 1916, fined, and handed over to a military escort. He was taken to 2 Northern Company, NCC, in York, and the next day to the mediaeval castle in Richmond, Yorkshire, still in Army use as NCC depot, where he disobeyed orders, such as to put on a uniform, resulting in his being held in a block of 8 cells with 15 other resisting NCC ‘soldiers’, the group later becoming known as the ‘Richmond 16’, and remembered particularly for their still surviving graffiti on the cell walls, now an English Heritage tourist attraction. On 27 May he was court-martialled, and sentenced to 6 months military detention, commuted to 60 days, and on 29 May the group was taken by train to Southampton, overnight ship to Le Havre, France, and train to Boulogne, and held in a military camp guardroom. On 6 June they refused to unload military ships, leading to transfer to Field Punishment Barracks, where on 11 June the 16 were served with notice of a Field General Court Martial for disobedience. Clifford was tried with some of the others the next day, and on 24 June, together with others similarly tried, they heard the sentence formally read out before a large body of soldiers: death by shooting, pause, confirmed by General Sir Douglas Haig, pause, commuted to 10 years penal servitude.

So Clifford became one of 35 British WW1 COs to be taken to France, a theatre of war, and formally sentenced to death for disobedience, before being reprieved. By a circuitous and tortuous route, they were eventually taken back to England, shipped overnight on 4 July, arriving at Winchester Prison 5 July. The next month Clifford was taken to Wormwood Scrubs Prison, London, for appearance before the Central Tribunal, sitting at the prison, where he was found to be a “genuine” CO, after all, and offered a place on the Home Office Scheme. He accepted, and on 31 August was transferred to the first work camp to be set up under the Scheme, in old, leaky, Army tents at Dyce, Aberdeen, quarrying rock for roadmaking. When the camp closed in October, after the scandal of the death of CO Walter Roberts, Clifford moved on to a camp at Ballachulish, Scottish Highlands, making a road, and then to Wakefield Work Centre. It is possible that he served in other work centres before final discharge in April 1919, when the Home Office Scheme was wound up, and all work centres closed.