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 |
| HERBERT T A WOOD 1880 - |
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| Many Conscientious Objectors were members of organisations with a long-standing opposition to war and militarism. Herbert Wood was a member of several. Having joined the No-Conscription Fellowship as the threat of Conscription loomed in 1915 and a Quaker attender, Herbert was part of two of the largest and best-organised anti-war movements of the early 20th century. He made his stand for the Absolute Exemption promised by the Military Service Act at the Teddington Tribunal on the 27th of June 1916, in the full knowledge that thousands of other COs had applied and failed to gain this status. The Teddington Tribunal predictably refused his application, though on appeal he was passed "Exempt from Combatant Service Only", a decision that would attempt to force him into uniform as a non-combatant soldier. Herbert's case was raised in the House of Commons by Philip Snowden MP, after both local and appeal Tribunals "refused [him] an opportunity to state his case, and where his offer to take alternative service was not allowed to be put, although his conscientious objection was admitted by the decision to give him noncombatant service". His case was ignored by the President of the Local Government Board, Walter Long, and Herbert was ordered into the army. Like many other Absolutist COs, Herbert refused to report as ordered, and was arrested on the 29th of December 1916, fined and taken under escort to the Hounslow Barracks. Sticking to his decision to refuse all compromise with military authority, he was quickly court-martialled for disobedience and sentenced to prison. This prison sentence, beginning in early January 1917, would be the first of many until Herbert was released to find monitored work outside the penal system in June 1918.
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