During the First World War, one grandmother played a vital role in enabling The Tribunal, the newspaper of the No Conscription Fellowship, to be printed and circulated in spite of the best efforts of the authorities to close it down. She came to the NCF offices, with a baby’s pram, each week, ostensibly to visit the caretaker in the basement (who wasn’t there at the time) - or as another writer has the story, looking impoverished and in need of relief. The police were camped out in the house opposite spying on the NCF.

Each week she smuggled out the copy for the next issue of The Tribunal in her bag/pram, and took it home. (Someone else took it to the house where the secret printing press was established.) It is believed she was the grandmother of the compositor.

In doing so, she was openly and regularly defying the authorities.

Because she was a woman, and an ‘old woman’ too, the police never suspected her of involvement with The Tribunal.

Her name may never be known, but her contribution is not forgotten.