THE MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT | INDEX
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THE MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT | INDEX |
| WILLIAM REGINALD THOMAS 1889 - |
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| William, Bernard and Harold Thomas were three brothers living in New Malden when they were Conscripted under the Military Service Act in 1916. All three were dedicated Christian pacifists, with William (28), Harold (25) and Bernard (23) attending local Quaker meetings and were active in the YMCA. Bernard and Harold took the same route through the war as religious Conscientious Objectors. Both brothers applied to the New Malden Tribunal in early 1916 , looking for absolute exemption as Conscientious Objectors, but content to take up non-army alternative service. Both were passed exempt from Combatant Service, and recommended for the Non-Combatant Corps. Bernard and Harold both believed this to be an unnacceptable compromise - appealing to the County Tribunal in April, they secured themselves Exemption from Combatant Service again, but this time with an important caveat - they could take up medical work with the Friends Ambulance Unit. The brothers worked with the Friends Ambulance Unit from May 1916 until the end of the war, providing medical support behind the lines in France and at home in Britain. The eldest Thomas brother, William, had a very different experience. Unlike his brothers, he would not accept an alternative role in the war - medical noncombatant or not. Though he recieved the same initial decision from his Tribunal hearing - Exemption from Combatant Service, he reacted very differently, refusing to accept any compromise, he fully rejected the military system as an Absolutist Conscientious Objector. By early March he had been arrested as an Absentee from the Army, and handed under armed guard to the East Surrey Regiment at the Kingston Barracks. From there he was court martialled for disobeying orders and sent to Wormwood Scrubs, for the first of his two sentences at that prison. In May 1917 after more than a year in the punishing conditions of the Scrubs, he accepted the Home Office Scheme and was put to work at the Dartmoor work centre, where he would stay until the end of the war. Why William took such a different track to his brothers isn't fully clear, but Conscientious Objection was a personal decision and relied on individual morality. What was right to one CO could well have been unnacceptable to another - even when they were related.
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