Glyn Evans was born and raised in Pontardawe, Swansea. A member of what was described as a “Plebian movement” at his Tribunal, he was both politically active in his local area and and a dedicated anti-war activist. By 1916 he was apprenticed to a dental surgeon and living over the border in Reading.

In March 1916 when Conscription was passed into law with the Military Service Act, Glyn became one of the first men to register his opposition to war as a CO. A single apprentice of 26 years of age, he would have been in the first group of men to be called up under the newly imposed conscription law, and his hearing before Reading Tribunal was very early, the 13th of March 1916. In common with many other COs who went before Tribunals in March 1916, Glyn’s application for exemption as a CO was refused. As Tribunals became more accustomed to dealing with COs, outright refusals became less common, but the refusal Glyn received was confirmed by the Appeal Tribunal, and he was expected to report for military service as a soldier.

Glyn refused to obey this command, and instead remained a free man until arrested, fined and handed over to the army in April 1916. There, he would have faced a difficult choice. Either obey the commands of the army and agree to become a fighting soldier or stay true to his principles and risk punishment, prison and torture. Glyn chose to carry on resisting war and struggling against the militarism of conscription, even though in the hands of the army, he could expect little in the way of sympathy or fair treatment. He was soon charged with disobeying an order and faced a court martial. It is likely to have been a short and uncontroversial affair. Having disobeyed an order and been found guilty of the offence, Glyn was sentenced to 112 days hard labour on the 9th of June 1916.

Close to the end of his sentence, in late July, the Government had realised the scale of the Conscientious Objector movement. Hundreds of articulate, intelligent and above all disobedient men were incarcerated around the country, creating a political scandal, overcrowding and a huge drain on the finances of the prison system. Of course, this could have been avoided easily. Conscientious Objectors were legally entitled to full and absolute exemption, but the purpose of the rules and treatment they received was not to enforce a law, but to punish the political enemies of the militarist state.

In order to keep on punishing COs, but also to rid themselves of the embarrassing problem of thousands of men arrested as political prisoners, the government decided on a compromise option, the Home Office Scheme. COs could effectively trade a promise of good behaviour and undertaking work at least of marginal national importance in exchange for better conditions and a release from the strict rules of prison into the comparatively open confines of a Home Office Work Camp.

Glyn Evans was one of the first COs to take up the scheme, and he was sent to the first Home Office Camp - Dyce Quarry in Aberdeenshire, in August 1916. Dyce Quarry was soon after shut down as a result of the death of another CO, Walter Roberts, which prompted an inquiry into the terrible conditions COs were confined to. Glyn was moved to the newly converted Dartmoor work camp where he remained for much of the rest of the war, working in farming and stonebreaking.

Towards the end of 1918, COs who had both been in the scheme for an extensive period and who had a record of good behaviour, were extended another compromise - the offer of Exceptional Employment under the Scheme, allowing some to return to nationally important jobs outside of the work camp environment. Glyn obtained work as a dentist in Swansea, near to his home. By October, he had fallen ill and within the month his health rapidly declined, until Tuesday the 22nd, when he died of pneumonia.

It is difficult to see Glyn’s death as the result of anything other than the conditions and experiences of his two and a half years in prison and work camp. He left Dartmoor emaciated and exhausted, extremely vulnerable to the epidemic of influenza that swept across Britain in late 1918.

His obituary in the CO newspaper, The Tribunal, on the 7th of November 1918 adds some weight to this idea:

“Glyn was a quiet and unassuming comrade. He was 28 years of age. He called to see me when he came from Dartmoor and I noticed then that he had suffered from physical and mental exhaustion and I have not the slightest doubt that his sufferings in prison and the H. O camps are responsible for his death.”

Glyn Evans is one of 69 men remembered on the Conscientious Objector memorial plaque, which bears his name. The plaque is not simply a war memorial to the COs that lost their lives through neglect, malice and illness, but also a testament to the aims and goals they died representing. The plaque bears the inscription “It is by the faith of the idealist that the ideal comes true”. COs like Glyn did not just stand for a concept or legal right, but for an ideal - hope, peace and a better world without war.