British Military Service Tribunals, 1916–18

A very much abused body of men'

James McDermott

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781847797933
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art & Politics

Military Service Tribunals were formed following the introduction of conscription in January 1916, to consider applications for exemption from military service. Swiftly, they gained two opposing yet equally unflattering reputations. In the eyes of the military, they were soft, obstructionist 'old duffers'. To most of the men who came before them, they were the unfeeling civilian arm of a remorseless grinding machine. This work, utilising a rare surviving set of Tribunal records, challenges both perspectives. Wielding unprecedented power yet acutely sensitive to the contradictions inherent in their task, the Tribunals were obliged, often at a conveyer belt's pace, to make decisions that often determined the fate of men. That some of these decisions were capricious or even wrong is indisputable; the sparse historiography of the Tribunals has too often focused upon the idiosyncratic example while ignoring the wider, impact of imprecise legislation, government hand-washing and short-term military exigencies.

1
Introduction

There is this to be said about tribunals: They are a very much abused body of men …¹

Military Service Tribunals were the product of legislation that, in venerable British fashion, represented a decisive step taken tentatively. Conscription, though not unprecedented in the nation’s history, was sufficiently novel in 1916 to require the expenditure of enormous political energy to introduce in such a way as not to (or seem not to) traduce the principles for which, ostensibly, Britons were fighting. The result was ambiguous: a compulsory system of military enlistment that nevertheless provided a mechanism allowing deferral of, and even release from, the obligation. That mechanism’s human face – the Tribunals – comprised thousands of men (and the occasional woman), the vast majority of whom had no judicial expertise, no formal training for their role, no particular insight into Whitehall’s precise expectations of their work, and who remained excluded from the slow, tortuous process that sought to create a national manpower policy.

The Tribunals served two masters: one by legislative enactment, one by default. Though part of a wider initiative intended to maintain and replenish the enormously expanded establishment of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), the logic of their immediate role (almost certainly unintended by conscription’s architects) demanded that they should also accommodate the preoccupations of their local communities. The dichotomy ensured that few who had cause to evaluate their work were uncritical. Castigated either for being too sensitive to local concerns (by the War Office and GHQ), or for acting as the unfeeling servants of a voracious war-machine (by almost everyone else), Tribunals were unloved during their lifetimes and unmourned following their demise. Government’s subsequent instructions to borough, district, metropolitan and county councils in England and Wales to destroy all files, minute books and other records relating to the Tribunals’ work was both a practical measure to expunge the legacy of a politically troubled process and a symbolic repudiation of the process itself.²

That deliberate excision has circumscribed dramatically the historiography of the Military Service Tribunals. Expunged from communal perceptions of a local past, and almost unmarked in official histories of the war, their work has been viewed largely from the perspective of contemporary observations, reproduced in press reports of proceedings or in personal memoirs. Few offer a balanced perspective. Newspapers of the period, while often carrying verbatim reports, naturally sought out the atypical or remarkable story, while critics of the system invariably identified and advertised its least attractive manifestations. Given the controversial nature of the encounters, early commentaries overwhelmingly addressed the Tribunals’ treatment of the relatively few conscientious objectors who came before them. Supported by documentary evidence from the No-Conscription Fellowship’s The Tribunal newssheet, The Labour Leader and The Friend, all of which detailed occasions of abuse and unyielding judgements visited upon cases of conscience, they established an abiding image of tribunalists as middle-class, reactionary servants of the Establishment, instinctively antagonistic towards pacifist sentiments.³ A number of more recent works have buttressed this perspective, allowing, at most, the mitigations of ignorance and incomprehension.⁴ A few commentaries provide more balanced views, noting both the difficulties imposed by ambiguous legislation and the often-confrontational demeanour of conscientious objectors whose principles denied the moral validity of the process they were obliged to undergo.⁵ Nevertheless, enduring negative opinions of the Tribunals have been sustained largely by reference to the matter of conscience and its (lack of) accommodation.

Other aspects of the Tribunals’ work have received far less attention. Some monographs, examining official policy with regard to manpower allocation, assess their impact with specific reference to the expectations of the War Office. However, while broad overviews of the exemption process are offered, only the occasional illustrative reference illuminates the work of individual Tribunals.⁶ Indeed, a limitation common to all is that they consider the system only as an auxiliary issue. Shorter pieces that focus specifically on the work of named Tribunals necessarily lack depth, relying either upon fragmentary records, or in the case of the very few personal memoirs available to us, upon the recollections of individual tribunalists.⁷ As yet absent from the historiography is a detailed, discrete analysis of Military Service Tribunals based upon substantial documentary evidence. The present work is intended to provide that analysis.

In ordering the destruction of Tribunal records (both of local Tribunals and of Appeals or county Tribunals), the Ministry of Health decreed two exceptions: all papers compiled by the Middlesex and Peebles and Lothian County Appeals Tribunals were retained as benchmark models for future reference. These are held, respectively, at the National Archives, Kew, and the Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh. Elsewhere, there remain a number of unauthorized ‘survivals’. No formal, standardized method of maintaining Tribunal records was laid down by Whitehall, and, consequently, their disposal was undertaken with varying degrees of efficiency. Many counties’ archives retain no trace of their Tribunals’ documented business; a few hold considerable fragments still, the result of oversight or deliberate efforts to preserve some token of a recent and substantial commitment.

In the case of one county, Northamptonshire, all urban and rural councils appear to have followed Whitehall’s directive faithfully, as no original records relating to the proceedings of the county’s local Tribunals are known to survive. In contrast, a decision was taken at some point to disregard official instructions and to preserve the Appeals Tribunal’s paperwork almost in its entirety. If upon a sole initiative, it was most likely that of Herbert Millington, secretary and clerk to the Tribunal, though his culpability may only be assumed.⁸ At his or another’s decision, some 11,200 individual appeals forms were preserved, each giving an appellant’s name, address and occupation, the ground(s) for his appeal, the decision of the local Tribunal that heard his original application and the confirming or dissenting decision of the Appeals body. Additionally, Millington’s working notes of the Appeals Tribunal’s sittings (rough and fair-copied) survive. In the case of sessions held at County Hall, Northampton, these date only from 1 January 1917 until the end of the war, but notes of their less frequent Peterborough sittings cover the entire conscription period. Too terse to represent a full record of the Tribunal’s business, they nevertheless record appellants’ case references, brief details of issues considered and decisions reached, with, very occasionally, supplementary information attached.⁹ A large, though not comprehensive, selection of circulars and instructions from government departments was retained also.¹⁰

The Appeals Tribunal files and supplementary material, now held at Northampton Record Office, constitute the principal primary sources for this study.¹¹ Additionally, Northampton’s press paid much attention to local Tribunals’ proceedings. Three of the town’s newspapers, the Northampton Mercury, Northampton Herald and Northampton Independent, carried ‘Tribunals’ columns, with the first-named assuming, for the purpose of this work, the role of medium of record.¹² These reports, revealing the political and social dynamics of the Tribunal Chamber and setting the context of appeals made against judgements therein, constitute a further major source for the following analysis.

Comparative data are drawn principally from the comprehensive records retained in the National Archives, comprising all Middlesex Appeals Tribunal files, minute books, registers and correspondence. Central Tribunal minute books, correspondence with local and appeals Tribunals, and postwar reports are held in the same division.¹³ The Peebles and Lothian Appeals Tribunal files – held at the Scottish Record Office – are in fragile condition and cannot be accessed at present. However, many surviving files and supplementary material from Cardiganshire’s Appeals Tribunal are held at the National Library of Wales, and, where appropriate, reference has been made thereto.¹⁴ Finally, fragmentary material contained in a number of regional record offices has also been examined and utilized where useful comparisons may be made with the work of the Northamptonshire Tribunals.

Drawing upon these sources, this book examines the character, functions and developing policies of the county’s Tribunals, and of the Appeals body in particular. Certain themes will emerge strongly. The impact of ambiguity in legislation is analysed, particularly in areas where it allowed (or obliged) Tribunals to place their own interpretations upon what was required of them. Few tribunalists were entirely new to aspects of local administration; however, the particular nature of their task, was, in early 1916, beyond the experience of any contemporary Briton. It will be proposed that legislation defined their role in broad terms yet failed to provide meaningful preparation for the minutiae of adjudging claims for exemption. This lack of precision had important consequences. As constituted, Tribunal were, in effect, sovereign entities, duty-bound to consider cases judiciously and impartially, but with no de jure obligation to answer for their decisions. They received occasional, non-binding advice on specific issues from the Local Government Board, and amending legislation sought to close off their perceived misinterpretations, once apparent. Decisions contested either by the applicant or military representative were appealed at the County Tribunal and, ultimately (with leave), to the Central Tribunal at Westminster. Yet the ‘policy’ of each Tribunal grew entirely from within, not as a product gifted by a higher authority. Accordingly, individual bodies exhibited discrete and even divergent tendencies that were only slowly, and partially, corrected by the intervention of Whitehall.

This book examines how these idiosyncrasies impacted upon the consideration of cases, and, in consequence, upon local Tribunals’ relationships with the Appeals body, in whose hands laid responsibility for the correction of aberrant decisions. It also, and particularly, considers the degree to which the latter were willing to define their own role independently of government direction – where lacking or ambiguous – and expectations. In evaluating these issues, reference is made to applications made in a purely personal context (conscientious objection, domestic hardship), to those reflecting local occupational and industrial issues (agriculture, boot and shoe, one-man businesses), and to what might be termed functional complications of the exemption process (medical examination and re-examination of applicants, imposition of the Volunteer Training Corps requirement).

More than any other issue, the social impact of conscription highlighted differences of approach between individual Tribunals. Some exhibited relatively little awareness of (or, perhaps, concern for) the personal and domestic consequences of their decisions, regarding their role as essentially identical to that of the defunct ‘Derby’ Tribunals, which existed merely to process postponement applications from voluntarily attested men. Others adopted notably progressive policies with regard to such issues as the sole child – and support – of a widowed parent, the last remaining sons of families who had already contributed creditably, and, in the case of one Tribunal at least, conscientious objectors who had been misled into attesting their willingness to serve with the Colours. Occasionally, the degree to which a Tribunal might accommodate extraordinary personal circumstances placed them directly at odds with the spirit of legislation and firmly within the mainstream of local sentiment.

If Tribunals’ attitudes towards personal applications often reflected their localist concerns, decisions on claims for exemption by reason of occupation were often regarded as having implications at both community and national level. It was in the consideration of these cases that different interpretations of what constituted the ‘indispensable’ man were most pronounced. Other than ironstone quarrying, which had been brought within the jurisdiction of David Lloyd George’s ‘Super-Ministry’ of Munitions and therefore lay outside the Tribunals’ remit, Northamptonshire had two principal industries: agriculture and footwear (or ‘boot and shoe’). Each had assumed a transcendental importance to a nation at war, yet enjoyed only partial – and, in the case of boot and shoe, declining – protection from manpower dilution. The necessity of maintaining production was recognized by most Tribunals from their earliest sittings, and several developed robust policies that placed them in direct confrontation with recruiting officers and their representatives. Agriculture’s ‘corner’ was fought also by the Board of Agriculture, which negotiated temporary freezes upon recruitment from the land in every year of the conscription period. Boot and shoe had only its presence on the Tribunals (from both management and the unions), yet used these with great effectiveness. As discussed, large-scale arrangements were negotiated and implemented in 1916–1917 that both contradicted Local Government Board instructions and directly resisted efforts by the War Office to control the rate of manpower depletion in the industry.

Applications made by sole proprietors and directing heads of business were, as Government recognized, among the most difficult to adjudge. Tribunals faced conflicting imperatives here: they felt keenly the necessity of demonstrating equity of treatment, yet increasingly were sensitive to the implications of over-dilution of key men, particularly in the food production and distribution trades. Prompted constantly by Whitehall to consider one-man businesses on a trade-wide basis, most Tribunals, it will be proposed, employed a ‘strategy’ of prevarication that contrasted strongly with their energetic policies towards agriculture and boot and shoe. In the few cases where a collective policy was attempted, the resulting decisions almost always reflected an unwillingness to weaken local commerce further. To many Tribunals, the value to the Army of these relatively few men was greatly outweighed by the potential loss to their communities.

Regarding the fraught issue of conscience, the county’s Tribunals largely reflected contemporary prejudices. However, following an early period of relative harshness (due in part to a peculiar degree of ambiguity in the relevant legislation), many exercised a marked degree of circumspection in the treatment of men seeking exemption on this ground. Applicants continued to be subjected to heated interrogations regarding their willingness to defend their mothers and wives against marauding Germans, but the certificates they were offered thereafter were not notably more circumscribed than those provided on other grounds. Indeed, it will be argued that several Tribunals in Northamptonshire recognized the futility of sending such men into the Army from a relatively early stage in their proceedings: one went so far as to indicate a willingness to re-open the cases of former ‘absolutists’ who had expressed a change of attitude,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Note on the medical grading of enlisted men
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Tribunal system: provenance, characteristics and issues
• 3 The matter of conscience
• 4 Boot and shoe
• 5 Agriculture
• 6 Directing heads, sole traders and the professions
• 7 Rank, deference and empathy
• 8 Fitness to serve
• 9 The Tribunals and the Volunteer Training Corps
• 10 Conclusion
• Appendix 1 Appeals Tribunal files, minutes, register books held at the Northamptonshire Records Office
• Appendix 2 Central and Middlesex Appeals Tribunal files, minute books, registers etc. held at the National Archives
• References
• Index