MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT |
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MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT | |
| ABRAM KAUFMAN 1893 - |
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| Before the Military Service Act tried to force him to murder others, Abram Kaufman worked as a Cinema Operator in Manchester. Single, twenty two and in a non-essential occupation, Abram was in the very first group of men to be called up as conscripts, and submitted an application for exemption as a Conscientious Objector in early March. His motivation for applying as a Conscientious Objector to the Manchester Tribunal is unknown, but it is possible that he was a Socialist applying for political reasons - a year later when in Wakefield Camp, he would write “Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not. Who must be free themselves must strike the blow”, from Byron’s revolutionary poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, which had become well known in Socialist circles. Whatever his motivation, his argument did not convince the Manchester Tribunal, which passed him exempt from combatant service only - sending him to the army. Abram refused to have anything to do with the military, and though in the hands of the military by May 1916, he staunchly refused to obey orders despite the threat of punishment. After being faced with courts martial in Kinmel Park depot, on the 20th June 1916, he was sentenced to two years in prison, and was transferred to Walton, Liverpool. There he would stay for several months, enduring the terrible conditions of Edwardian prisons, until in October 1916 he accepted the compromise offer of the Home Office Scheme, and was released from prison into Wakefield Work Centre. The Home Office Scheme provided marginally better conditions provided that COs agreed to rules of good behaviour, including being put to work on menial labour projects. Abram would most likely have worked at Wakefield until early 1919 when, with general demobilisation, COs were released from the camps.
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