How it was
motivated and sustained: An outline
Because those who took an anti-war position were in a minority, and
challenged basic tenets of the dominant ideology, there was a tendency for them
to be ignored by or written out of orthodox history for much of the 20th
century. More recent mainstream work has partly compensated for earlier
neglect. At the same time, their awareness of disapproved, dissident status
along with a strong conviction of being in the right, led activists to
propagate their opinions by publishing their own versions of events, and in
some cases gave their political successors an interest in rescuing them from
oblivion.
Socialists
and Libertarians
With socialist parties gaining ground in the early years of the century,
and employing rhetoric about workers uniting across international boundaries
against the common capitalist enemy, governments might well have had misgivings
about the likely popular reaction to a declaration of war. Although in the
event the initial upsurge of patriotic fervour in each of the belligerent
countries rather exceeded expectations – some of the most prominent labour
leaders immediately came out in support of the war – there were groups and
factions who took a principled stance, holding meetings and distributing
leaflets denouncing the aims and actions of their rulers. Notable among those,
in Britain, were the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and sections of the Herald
League such as that in North London. Ken Weller’s case-study of the latter uses
a variety of sources to give a picture of a population far from united in
support for the war, and disinclined to suffer its effects passively.
In 1912 an anti-war leaflet, “Murder is murder” was published by
well-known anarcho-syndicalist Tom Mann, incurring a prison sentence; he
continued to speak out during the conflict, sometimes sharing a platform with
Sylvia Pankhurst. Anarchists and libertarians, by definition “agin the
government” and hostile to authority, on finding themselves in a situation
where the state explicitly arrogated to itself the ultimate power over every
citizen, were more or less bound to deny any justification for war. They were therefore,
it is probably true to say, more consistent in their adverse response than
other sections of the left – although the foremost anarchist theoretician,
Kropotkin, was an unfortunate exception.
Writers,
Philosophers, Pacifists
The decision not to fight might arise as a private and personal matter, not
that it could remain so, especially when conscription made it punishable by
trial and imprisonment, or worse. But it was often proclaimed and publicised
with evangelical passion. “It was an objection to having one’s life dictated by
an outside authority,” stated Edward Marten (a Quaker), while Fenner Brockway
explained that he and fellow conscientious objectors (COs) were not merely
resisting a Conscription Act but “witnessing for peace... Not only against the
war of 1914-18, but... against war altogether.”
Views expressed by writers were, unsurprisingly, varied, complex, often
contradictory, and did not remain static. There were those who, like George
Bernard Shaw, felt their intelligence outraged by the reasons advanced for
going to war. Others fit more closely the romantic-poetic image: starting out
with excitement, even enthusiasm, later to be overcome by disillusion and
despair. The negative reaction did not inevitably entail refusing to fight any
more, but was perceived as subversive enough when articulated openly as in Siegfried
Sassoon’s cogent criticism of “the political errors and insincerities for which
the fighting men were being sacrificed.” (His now celebrated manifesto was
first published in the Workers’
Dreadnought).
Outspoken public opposition to the war was also voiced by some of the
most intellectually high-powered thinkers of the day, in particular Bertrand
Russell, who of course became and continued to be a leading advocate of
international peace, still taking on the war-mongering state as a civil-disobedient
nonagenarian in the early 1960s.
Some
Feminists
From opposing viewpoints, both of gender stereotyping and of a rational
assessment of the position of women in society, it might have been concluded
that active patriotism was not something for women, and that the idea of their
participation in war (anyway supposed to be vicarious or at most supportive) should
be rejected. Of course, they did participate in all sorts of ways. The feminist
movement had for some time been showing, in struggling for the vote, some of
what women were capable of in the way of organisation, forcefulness, courage
and endurance. Historians still sometimes allege or imply that “the
Suffragettes” supported the war en masse,
and were rewarded by the limited franchise bestowed in 1918 by a grateful state.
In fact the split, already apparent, between advocates of spectacular, often
self-martyring individual “deeds” and those who turned to class struggle,
became explicit on the question of the war. It is famously epitomised in the
contrast presented by Sylvia Pankhurst, working with women in London’s East
End, and her mother and one sister exhorting young men to get out there and be
killed.
Industry and
the Armed Forces
Actions that subverted the war effort did not necessarily arise from, or
lead to, a pacifist outlook. They did at least indicate, however, that a point
could be reached – especially, and crucially, within the industrial workforce
and among the fighting troops themselves – where marching along, in step with
the supposed national consensus, ceased to be of paramount concern. Inadequate
pay, unbearable conditions, irrational orders and enforced subjection to harsh
discipline repeatedly provoked outbreaks of resistance, even at risk of the
heaviest penalty. There were mutinies by British and Commonwealth troops as
well as extensively in the French army. Both countries saw significant episodes
of industrial militancy: France’s ”year
of unrest”, 1917, and Britain’s “Red Clydeside” with added rent strikes. Reverberations
from the Russian Revolution contributed to challenging the complacency of the
dominant class.
Changing
Attitudes
Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s novel Sunset Song (1932, first part of his
trilogy A Scots Quair) gives a
powerful impression of the impact of the First World War on a rural Scottish
community. In it (spoiler alert) the young guy who unthinkingly goes off to
join up, after a process of coarsening and de- then re-sensitising, eventually turns
his back (literally) on the whole business and is shot as a deserter. Meanwhile
the local conscientious objector, having held out against public opinion and official disapproval,
finally and fatally decides he is unable to stay uninvolved and is killed in
his turn. This kind of fictional scenario parallels the view of some historians
that people in society at large, as they became aware of casualty figures and
battlefield horrors, came to despise the rhetorical propaganda of patriotism
and to see through the rationale for going to war – even if perversely or
desperately determined to see it through to the bitter end, in a vicious spiral
of yet more sacrifice to make the preceding sacrifice seem “not in vain”.
Retrospect (from 1998)
During
the 80th anniversary commemorations of the Armistice, in Britain at
least, there were many harrowing depictions of horrors of war, and many
statements about its futility, including some from surviving veterans. It has
become possible, indeed customary, to acknowledge mistakes and even denounce
crimes committed by the authorities, in their conduct of campaigns and in
having shell-shock sufferers “shot at dawn”. Conspicuously absent, though, was
any allusion to those who consciously, deliberately opposed the war at the
time, and were prepared to act individually or collectively to resist it, at whatever
risk. Opinion-formers in society are evidently more comfortable with the idea
of tragic victims safely entombed in the past than with any realisation that
they might have tried to confront and alter their apparently inexorable fate.
L.W.
Nov. 1998, revised Dec. 2013
The above
fairly basic stuff, mostly from 15 years ago, is offered as a contribution to
the “remembering-the-real” discussion
around the WW1 centenary.
