Conscription & Conscientious Objectors

• Religious Objectors

  • Used biblical quotes to justify their refusal
  • Were willing to do jobs on the western front, e.g.
  • Collecting dead bodies in No Man's Land,
  • Driving vans
• Political Objectors/Absolutists

  • Refusal to fight usually not accepted
  • Many absolutists were members of the Independent Labour Party (ILP)
  • The ILP believed that wars were made by the government, and the working-class got no benefit
• • In Scotland, 70% of conscientious objectors were members of the ILP
  • In the whole of the UK - 16,000 conscientious objectors
  • Of this 16,000, 6,000 were Absolutists, and all were sent to military camps
  • Of this 6,000, 73 died
  • Treatment of conscientious objectors was horrible
  • In 1915, a camp in Dyce in Aberdeenshire was so appalling to its conscientious objectors, it had to be shut down