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 | |
| HARRY ALBERT RUFF 1896 - |
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| Tom and Harry Ruff were brothers who both took up an "Absolutist" stance as Conscientious Objectors. Tom was the first to be Conscripted in mid 1916, though it would be December before he was arrested as an absentee from the Army and handed over to the control of the military. Sent to Kingston Barracks, nominally as a private in the East Surrey Regiment, Tom refused to comply with military orders and was swiftly court martialled and sent to Wormwood Scrubs for 112 days hard labour. Harry followed this pattern two years later, arrested as an absentee only in the summer of 1918, sent to the Hounslow barracks and recieving the same sentence from his court martial on the 5th of September. By the end of 1916, and certainly by late 1918, the system for processing COs sentenced to prison by courts martial was well practiced and both Harry and Tom had been sent to the Scrubs specifically to face a Central Tribunal hearing. The Central Tribunal convened in the Scrubs to decide on the eligibility of English COs for the Home Office Scheme, the initiative designed to both alleviate the strain thousands of COs were putting on the prison system, and put the men to useful work. The Tribunal first had to judge the suitability of a man for the Home Office Scheme, declaring, after hearing the case, that a man was one of four classes ranging from "A" - genuine, to "D" - "not a CO". These categories, while arbitrary, determined the fate of the man in question, either passed fit for the Home Office Scheme, or sent back to prison. Tom was classed "A" and for the rest of the war worked on a variety of camps around the country. Harry, for an unknown reason, was instead classed "D". He was returned to prison and then, in December when his sentence expired, released back to the army. Again refusing to follow orders, he was sentenced by a second court martial to two years in prison. By May 1919 he was in Canterbury prison, to be released months later, one of the last COs still held in custody. The Central Tribunal hearings were a poor way of gauging the individual beliefs and motivations of men who came before it. In Harry's case the inability of the Central Tribunal to empathise with his position left him stranded in prison, long after the war had ended.
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