This was a great success- and it was a lively
buzzing atmosphere at the MMU Business School on Saturday 15th November
for the No Glory Day School. Fifty people attended and we learned a lot
from one another, exchanged ideas, thought about future activities by
creating a time line which covered local, regional, national and international
events. We ran a banner workshop throughout the day and we produced a beautiful
banner.
Ali Ronan gave an inspiring opening talk
appropriately titled “It is our duty to clamorously and unceasingly
agitate”, which told the largely forgotten stories of women who campaigned
for peace throughout World War One, focusing on Manchester women in
particular.
Penny Hicks from Stop the War Coalition
facilitated one of the two workshops on building an anti-war movement
today while Chris Clayton’s workshop looked at research into conscientious
objectors giving local researchers a chance to share their findings.
After lunch Lindsay German gave an
excellent talk on how 100 years of war has changed women’s lives.
This was followed by Ali Ronan sharing her
research on publicity and handbills which gave an insight into the bravery
and resourcefulness of activists a century ago and allowed contemporary
activists a chance to think about their own publicity.
Meanwhile Jean Spence led a moving workshop
on creating and producing imaginative/photographic narratives of remembrance,
using material she had bought from eBay and from records found in a local Boys
Club.
The day finished with a look at both
the timeline which participants had been adding to throughout the day, and
showing off the banner to much applause.
We went away feeling inspired.
So November wasn’t all about the cultivation and cult of ceramic and
other poppies (the latest opium of the people?)…
In addition:-
Bolton Quakers organised a series of four
lively and well attended talks about WW1 throughout November 2014
·
Barrie Mills led a talk about the Northern Peace
Board and the work of Manchester Quaker and University tutor, John W Graham who
was instrumental in coaching COs for the military tribunals that were set up
after the Military Service Act 1916. Graham was an active member of the local
No Conscription Fellowship
·
Ali Ronan gave a talk on the network of anti-war
women across the NW
·
Cyril Pearce gave an illustrated talk about his
extensive CO database
·
Malcolm Pittock gave a very moving talk about
his uncle
Alfred Evans who was an absolutist CO and was taken to France in the
summer 1916 and threatened with execution. This was commuted to hard labour and Evans was a prisoner until 1919.
“None of the books are quite accurate about him
because they do not know that he had a serious eye condition, which developed
in the 1920s and which a botched operation only made worse. So when he was
required to register for fire watching in WW2, he could easily have used medical
evidence to get himself excused, for his sight was too bad for him to do it.
But it was the principle of the thing that he objected to and so he did not
refer to his eyesight when refusing to do firewatching and was sentenced to
three months imprisonment. A CO friend of his, Jock Murphy, who had managed to
obtain unconditional exemption (I think he obtained it when conscription was
reintroduced but before the war was declared) went to prison with him. He was
thus one of of the very few CO's to be imprisoned in both wars. What was also
distinctive about him was that in WW1, he objected primarily on religious and
secondarily on political grounds. He was a Roman Catholic and his position was
closely similar to that of the Catholic Workers today, who reject both the
doctrine of the so-called Just War and all social injustice. At 21, and working
class through and through, he had worked it out for himself with the assistance
of Leo Tolstoy and Karl Liebknecht.”
- Malcolm Pittock on Alfred
Evans, Dec. 2014
See also:
Max Plowman and the
Literature of the First World War by Malcolm Pittock,
Published on behalf of Cambridge
Quarterly
PREVIEW: This article argues
that Max Plowman, the only member of the armed forces to be court-martialled
for refusing to return to the Front in the 1914–19 War, has been oddly
neglected. Consideration both of his case and of his Memoir, A
Subaltern on the Somme, however, can illuminate the partly parallel case of
Siegfried Sassoon, and lead to a reappraisal of the orthodox account of the
literature of the First World War.
