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 | |
| JAMES RODWAY 1897 - |
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| James Rodway was a young Grocers Assistant living in Wimbledon at the time of his conscription in early 1916. Unusually for a 19 year old CO, it appears that the Wimbledon and Surrey Appeal Tribunals granted him exemption from the military provided that he took up Work of National Importance (WNI) that would provide a meaningful contribution to the war effort. For James this meant leaving Wimbledon to farm work at Leighton Buzzard. Many COs were sent to do farmwork and market gardening as part of their WNI. James faced a great deal of hostility while working in Leighton Buzzard, as COs taking on this work were easy targets for the local press and, often, their employers. Driven out of Leighton Buzzard by this pressure, James had to leave and find other work as a farm hand in Spalding. There, working for what amounted to a symbolic wage, he was discharged by his employer after asking for equal pay to other men doing the same work. COs on WNI often fell foul of this kind of treatment. Supposedly working under the "principle of equal sacrifice", WNI COs were supposed to sacrifice as much as a soldier at the front. Lethal danger being hard to find in Spalding, this usually translated into poor conditions, bad treatment and wages small enough to only be nominally different to slavery. WNI is often viewed as the "easy option" for First World War Conscientious Objectors, but James' experiences show that it was often a difficult and punishing verdict.
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