John Rodker was a Post Office clerk and radical socialist, writer, poet, translator and publisher; of Jewish immigrant background, he was one of the ‘Whitechapel Boys’, who included Mark Gertler and Stephen Winsten, also COs. After his application for exemption was rejected,  He consistently refused co-operation with the authorities. After his first prison sentence he went "on the run" but was caught and imprisoned at Wormwood Scrubs and Wandsworth - followed by another brief attempt at escaping altogether! He finally evaded the authorities by agreeing to the Home Office Scheme at Princetown Work Centre, Dartmoor, but from there he absconded again and spent the rest of the war in London as a free man. After the war he became one of the leading modernist poets and a well known publisher. Both his daughter, Joan and grandson Ernest were involved in the peace movement after the Second World War. 

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