We Will Not Fight – The Untold Story Of World War One’s Conscientious Objectors, by Will Ellsworth-Jones (Aurum Press, £18.99)

10:19am Saturday 12th April 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

THIS book looks at the Great War, the so-called "war to end all wars", through the eyes of Conscientious Objectors (COs) - idealists prepared to die rather than do anything to support the British war effort.

Will Ellsworth-Jones explores pacifism through the extraordinary personal story of two Yorkshire brothers: one who served in the trenches as an infantry officer, the other who defied the might of the British Army by refusing to fight.

Philip Brocklesby survived the Battle of the Somme and was awarded the MBE for his services to the Home Guard in the Second World War.

His brother, Bert, was a respected teacher and stalwart of Conisbrough Methodist Church, where he played the organ.

He believed his obedience to the Sixth Commandment - thou shalt not kill - took precedence over patriotism.

His conscience would not allow him to do anything that would support Britain's war effort against Germany.

He ended up in a dank dungeon in Richmond Castle, in North Yorkshire, along with other COs - the so-called Richmond 16. The picture he drew of his fiancée on the cell wall is now preserved by English Heritage.

The Army, determined to make an example of the COs, secretly shipped them over to France where they were sentenced to death for refusing to obey orders on active service.

Only the late intervention of those sympathetic to their beliefs, including York MP Arnold Rowntree, led to the death sentence being commuted to ten years' penal servitude.

Bert survived his ordeal, other COs were not so lucky. The Yorkshire Gazette reported two sad cases of COs who committed suicide. One was Alexander Henderson, a 26-year-old sorting clerk at York Post Office, who hanged himself from a sycamore tree beside the River Ouse about three miles from York. His suicide note read: "A Socialist, I cannot conscientiously take part in a war which I feel to be wrong."

The other, a Quaker named Alfred Martlew, drowned himself in the River Ouse in July 1917. Before the war, he had worked as a clerk at the Rowntree's chocolate factory in York and had been one of Bert's fellow prisoners at Richmond.

After the war and his release from prison, Bert's career as a teacher was blighted by his pacifism because many schools would not recruit COs.

But he kept the faith. In 1962, aged 73, he entertained the Aldermaston "Ban the Bomb" marchers on his accordion. In the same year, he kept a three-hour peace solo vigil for the victims of Hiroshima at Scunthorpe's war memorial, telling a reporter it was an idea that would grow. He died four months later, still holding true to his beliefs.

The author has used his access to unpublished diaries, letters, legal records and memoirs to knit together an intensely moving history that gives a fresh insight into the First World War.