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Background Information

Britain was the only one of the great powers who entered the war in 1914 without a system of conscription. There were several long standing reasons for this. Britain was a naval power. It did not have the long and vulnerable land borders with potentially hostile powers which all the other European powers did. As a result it did not need the vast standing armies and trained reserves that the European powers needed. There was also great pride in Britain in the professionalism of its small but well trained and capable army. Finally, there was a long standing suspicion in Britain of large armies. It went back to the days of Oliver Cromwell in the 17^th century, where a standing army had been used to secure political power against the wishes of many of the ruling class. This suspicion had been confirmed in the 19^th century where the French Emperor Napoleon had used his military power to secure his rule, as much as any kind of consent of the people.

By late 1915 these high ideals were about to be ditched, because Britain was facing a crisis. The government’s recruitment drive through 1914 and 1915 had been very effective in encouraging volunteers to join up. All manner of modern techniques were used – encouragement, moral blackmail and almost outright bullying. Despite these efforts, Britain still needed more soldiers. The original professional army were virtually all dead by the Autumn of 1914. The first of General Kitchener’s volunteer armies suffered devastating losses at the Battle of Loos in September.

It was not a simple argument. Many working married men, for instance, were quite prepared to fight for their country. However, they were not prepared to volunteer ahead of young single men, and while there were over 1 million unemployed in the country. Others objected to conscription because it infringed their civil and political liberties. The debate about conscription raged through the winter of 1915, but the supporters of conscription won. The Military Service Bill was introduced in January 1916. The first Bill affected only single men. The Second Military Service Bill extended conscription to married men in May 1916.

Many people felt that conscription was actually a fairer system of recruitment than pressuring certain groups into volunteering. However, the measure was not without its problems. Many Socialists opposed conscription. They argued that this was a capitalist war of bosses and rulers, but it was ordinary working people who were being slaughtered on the battlefield. The war also gave many workers the opportunity to earn a lot of money – the bosses were making vast profits out of the war so why shouldn’t they? This was certainly a major reason why many working men did not volunteer. When conscription took the son of the owner of the factory where they worked, they were more inclined to go themselves.

The best known opponents of conscription were the conscientious objectors, or conchies. They were given a pretty hard time by the authorities. Some probably were just trying to avoid the fighting. However, most had genuine political or religious convictions, like the Quakers. Some conchies took up jobs at the front such as medics or stretcher bearers. Many were sentenced to imprisonment, often with hard labour.

Conscription was controversial elsewhere. In Canada, the proposal was put forward early in 1917. The election of that year was to some extent a referendum on conscription, which the government won. However, there was much evidence of underhand tactics by the government. Troops abroad were allowed to vote in any constituency to help get the necessary votes. Also, some known opponents of the measure were disenfranchised. In Australia, there were two referendums on conscription in October 1916 and December 1917. Both resulted in narrow ‘No’ votes, although for complex reasons. Many of the serving troops voted against conscription for instance. It seems that they preferred to fight without reinforcements than with men who had to be forced to join up.

The most controversial area of all was Ireland. Ireland had been on the verge of Civil war in 1914, between Nationalists who wanted Home Rule (separation from Britain) and Unionists who wanted Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom. The Great War dampened the tensions. However, the idea of conscription stirred up immense trouble. Irish Nationalists viewed Britain as a foreign power, which had no right to conscript any Irishman. It was one of several factors which led to a rise in support for radical Nationalism in the form of Sinn Fein and the IRA.