Herbert Morrison was born in London in 1888. At the start of the war he was working as the General Secretary for the London Labour Party and was a prominent member of the Labour movement in the city. He was not a radical socialist but did believe that the First World War was a capitalist’s war and joined the No-Conscription Fellowship to campaign against the possibility of forcing men to fight, kill and die in the grinding slaughter of the western front. Along with Alfred Salter, he formed a branch of the NCF in Bermondsey and made several anti-war speeches to large (and sometimes hostile) crowds.

By 1916 the work of the NCF in opposing conscription had failed and with the Military Service Act 1916, all men aged 18-41 were to be forced into the army. Herbert went before the Wandsworth Tribunal as a Political Conscientious Objector and, when asked if he belonged to any religious group said: “I belong to the ILP and Socialism is my religion”.

Herbert was one of a large group of COs with legitimate medical issues that would have kept them out of the war, and one of a smaller group that refused to inform the Tribunal. Herbert was blind in his right eye which, had he informed the Tribunal, would have meant absolute exemption from the military. Instead, he decided to keep this to himself and made his case entirely on his moral and political objection to the war. His case must have been well argued, as the Wandsworth Tribunal seemed to agree at least partially with his stance and decided that he could be exempt from the army as long as he agreed to take on Work of National Importance.

From May 1916 to December 1918 Herbert worked in fruit gardening in Letchworth under the auspices of the Pelham Committee. The Pelham Committee was set up to organise and oversee Conscientious Objectors doing work of national importance. It set which jobs a CO could take on and the conditions of their employment. COs could not be paid too much and could rarely carry on their pre-conscription employment or work close to home.

Herbert’s opposition to the war, both during his years as a CO and in his 1914-1915 anti-war campaigning was one of the first major long-term political campaigns he was involved in, but it was certainly not the last. After the war he was elected as a Hackney councillor and eventually Mayor (1920-21) and the MP for Hackney South in 1923, 1929-31 and 1935-45. Labour and Socialist Conscientious Objectors like Herbert were common sights in local politics after the war and many became MPs. Herbert was one of the most famous, becoming Deputy Prime Minister from 1945-51.