THE MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT | INDEX
|
| Back | Home |
THE MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT | INDEX |
| DAVID GOURLAY 1889 - 1963 |
|
||||||||
| David Gourlay's anti-war principles came from his politics. As a Socialist and Internationalist, he believed that the First World War was being fought on behalf of the ruling classes, using the working men and women of Europe as a means to increase their own wealth. 27 when Conscription was introduced in 1916, David was one of the first men to be called up as a conscript under the Military Service Act. His Tribunal hearing in Surbiton on the first of March must have been one of the first in the country, and it returned what would become the standard predictable outcome for COs everywhere - exemption from Combatant Service Only. This would mean transfer to the Non-Combatant Corps, a section of the army set up specifically to incorporate Conscientious Objectors into the military structure. David may have been arrested and sent under escort to the army soon after his Tribunal hearing, but it may be that he evaded arrest, as the first record of a brush with military authority was in early 1917, when he faced a court martial for disobedience and was sent to Wormwood Scrubs prison. There, he accepted the Government's new compromise with COs who would not accept the army - the Home Office Scheme (HoS). Accepting the HoS meant a transfer from prison to a work camp where COs had a modicum of extra freedom, in exchange for abiding by certain rules drawn up by the Central Government. David stayed on the scheme at Wakefield and Dartmoor work centres for the rest of the war, finally released in February 1919, when he took up work with the Friends War Victims Relief Service in France. With the FWVRS, he helped to alleviate some of the terrible suffering left in the wake of the war, showing a determination to both resist the call to war and to work to cure its effects. After the war, he married Janet Vaughan, noted physiologist, later Dame Janet Vaughan. He died in 1963.
|
|
||||||||
| EditRegion7 | EditRegion6 | ||||||||
|
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||
