William McDougal, born 1891, spent his lifetime engaged in radical left wing politics in the city of Glasgow. In 1910 at the young age of 19, he joined the Glasgow Anarchist collective and worked as a secretary for anarchist groups around the city. With the beginning of the First World War, groups like the radical anarchists of Glasgow faced increased scrutiny and repression, and the introduction of Conscription in 1916 would see many of its members menaced or imprisoned for refusing to be forced into the Army.

William was one such man, and in 1916 when he refused to acknowledge his conscription under the Military Service Act, he was arrested and beaten by the local police. Kept and held under guard, he was handed over to the military in August 1916, where after refusing orders he faced a court martial and prison sentence.He had resolved to have nothing to do with the war, which as a communist and anarchist he likely believed was “the capitalists’ war”, fought by worker against worker for the profit of the ruling classes. His resistance got him sent to Wormwood Scrubs, and then, after a hearing from the Central Tribunal, through to Dartmoor work camp in late October 1916. At Dartmoor he would have worked on various punitive labour projects, most likely in agricultural or road-building work, while held in conditions marginally better than those of the prison he had left.

This was the Home Office Scheme, a government plan for removing the vast numbers of Conscientious Objectors from prison. It was, in many ways, a compromise between Objector and Government - the one promising good behaviour and agreeing to work, the other promising better conditions and less restriction. For many Conscientious Objectors, this was an unacceptable compromise, but despite his hard-left political views, William took it up - or at least seemed to.

After 9 months on the scheme, William decided to reject the HoS and return to Glasgow. He took a camp bicycle and travelled most of the way up to Glasgow - arriving there to start up his anti-war and anarchist propaganda activities again, as if nothing had happened. He continued to lecture, print and teach about anarchism and against the war until after the armistice, his ability to stay out of the clutches of the police and state perhaps a testament to the tight-knit and widely supported CO movement in Glasgow.

After the war, William reunited with the Anarchist movement in the city that had been widely scattered by imprisonment. Along with fellow Conscientious Objector Guy Aldred, he founded the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation, and continued to work in left-wing politics until his death in 1981.