by Trevor Royle
The emergence of the new fault line was caused by the poet and academic Douglas Young who had already emerged as an outspoken opponent of the conflict by recommending that Scotland should attempt to broker a separate peace in the event of Germany winning the war. In the summer of 1940 he decided to capitalise on the SNP’s earlier opposition to conscription by refusing to be called up for National Service, and began a lengthy legal defence of his actions. It was a high-profile case, not least because Young had made no secret of his beliefs – at a May Day rally in Aberdeen in 1939 he had answered a heckler by pointing out that the British government had no jurisdiction to conscript Scots against their will under the terms of the Act of Union of 1707.
No court in Scotland would uphold the view that the legislation allowed Scots to refuse conscription but Young was both a determined and a resolute fighter who was absolutely certain of the rightness of his cause. He was also instantly recognisable, being a tall rangy man with a distinctive black beard, and he possessed the intellectual capacity for a lengthy tussle with the legal profession. Born in 1913 in Tayport in Fife, he spent part of his childhood in Bengal before being educated at Merchiston Castle School, the University of St Andrews and New College, Oxford where he studied classics. At the time of his protest he was teaching Greek at King’s College, Aberdeen where he had become involved in nationalist politics, becoming chairman of the local party branch. As to the conduct of the war, his opinion was unequivocal: Scotland should be granted Dominion status with ‘no acquiescence in the unconstitutional conscription, either for military purposes or, as was soon imposed, for industrial work.’5 This did not make Young an all-out pacifist but he remained true to his principles as far as conscription was concerned, and his position is made clear in a poem, ‘Auntran Blads’, which was written at the time of his refusal to be conscripted.
Instans tyrannus—But och, why fash
for the waesome war, that doesna inspire us,
nae me oniewey, wi onie rowth o pleasure,
as weel warssle wi the Antinoe papyrus [Antinoöpolis, situated in Middle Egypt].6
When he did make enquiries about his personal position in 1940 the official response was that Young was in a reserved occupation and would not be called up for National Service, but this changed in the spring of 1942. Having been ‘de-reserved’ (as he put it) and having received his call-up papers Young promptly refused to attend the obligatory attestation and medical examination. (Ironically, because he did not enjoy robust health this would probably have found him unfit for service.)
As had happened during the First World War there was a system for conscientious objectors to register their refusal to serve, but this time round it was a much fairer process. Once their objection had been registered, they had to appear before a tribunal whose members had to include a trade union representative and a lawyer but no longer required the presence of a serving officer from the armed forces. Objectors were also allowed to produce letters of support, and were encouraged to bring a character witness to speak on their behalf, but it was still a daunting process. Having failed to convince his tribunal Young was allowed to take his appeal to an appellate tribunal chaired by a sheriff who was clearly sympathetic but still refused to grant him any leeway. In the words of Young’s friend and fellow writer Compton Mackenzie, the situation almost became farcical: ‘Douglas Young, six feet and six inches tall, thin and bearded, argued with an elderly Sheriff that the Treaty of Union had conveyed no power to the Parliament of the United Kingdom to conscribe the Scots for foreign service. The Sheriff, who must have thought that he had something like a totem pole before him, congratulated Douglas Young on the able presentation of his case and then, expressing regret, sentenced him to twelve months’ imprisonment.’7
Having been sentenced, Young immediately gave notice that he would appeal, and it was at this stage that the SNP began imploding. In April 1942 their good showing in Argyllshire was not repeated at a similar by-election in Glasgow Cathcart where their candidate William Whyte only polled 1,000 votes, coming a poor fourth behind the Labour candidate and two independents, one of which was the Hon. William Douglas-Home, a well-known and successful playwright and son of the 13th Earl of Home, who had already come to prominence by opposing Churchill’s policy of seeking Germany’s unconditional surrender as a pre-condition of ending the war.8
Two months later, by a small majority (thirty-three to twenty-nine), Power was ousted from the leadership of the SNP by Young, and at the same time MacCormick left the party with his supporters to establish the rival Scottish Convention. This marked the climax of a long-simmering row which had been triggered by a clash of rival political ideologies. MacCormick believed in consensus politics in which he sought to unite people of any political persuasion to support the common cause of home rule. Others, notably Arthur Donaldson and Dr Robert D. McIntyre, put their trust in the emergence of the SNP as an independent party fighting to gain an electoral mandate for home rule and the creation of a Scottish parliament. This latter view was supported by the majority of the younger members, and it was their support which provided the impetus for Young’s victory. Some idea of the animus created by this confrontation can be seen in an open letter written by Donaldson to MacCormick after the latter claimed that Young’s supporters had plotted against him in the offices of the pacifist Socialist Party in Burnside Street in Glasgow. This was denied by Donaldson: ‘It would seem in fact that, far from there having been a successful conspiracy to unseat you, the result was as big a shock (but more pleasant) to your opponents as it was to you. It would appear to have been due, first to a general realisation within the Scottish National Party that a continuation of your dominance, however disguised, meant an early demise of the Party; and, second, to the ineptitude, petulance and, latterly, vindictiveness shown by you at the Conference.’9
Although many members deplored this fatal tendency to schism, the split did determine the future direction of the SNP. McIntyre, a public health doctor from Hamilton, became secretary, and bent his considerable energies towards reforming the SNP’s strategies with the aim of making it electable. As for the new chairman, Young’s appeal failed when it was heard in the High Court in Edinburgh, and he spent the next nine months in Saughton Prison.
Alone of the British political parties the SNP made conscientious objection an issue for public debate, but there were a number of other groups which either opposed the war or established networks to help those who wished to object to conscription. The No-Conscription League had branches throughout Scotland, and on Sunday 19 November 1939 organised a packed meeting in St Andrew’s Halls Glasgow where one of the speakers was Guy Aldred, a leading pacifist from the previous conflict. During the course of the Second World War some 60,000 men and 1,000 women registered as conscientious objectors across the UK, and the figures were particularly high in Scotland. In Britain as a whole the average rate of refusal was 19 per cent, whereas the figures for Scotland were: South-West Scotland, 41 per cent; South-East Scotland, 34 per cent; North of Scotland, 50 per cent; and North-East Scotland, 22 per cent.10
Those whose objections were upheld were offered a variety of alternatives. As in the First World War, the tribunals had the power to allow full exemption from military service, without conditions; or exemption conditional on doing alternative civilian service; or exemption only from combatant duties in the army.11 Otherwise they could dismiss an application altogether and the applicant would have to do National Service or face prosecution. Under legislation provided by Emergency Powers (Defence) No. 93 there were four local tribunals in Scotland – South-Eastern (Edinburgh), South-Western (Glasgow), North-Eastern (Aberdeen) and Northern (Inverness). Each was chaired by a sheriff or sheriff-substitute, with four members appointed by the Ministry of Labour and four impartial members, at least two of whom were women. By July 1947 the tribunals in Edinburgh and Aberdeen had been wound up, with Glasgow remaining for the whole of Scotland to deal with young men who objected to being called up for post-w
ar National Service.12
Throughout the Second World War those who refused to serve in the armed forces but were not wholly opposed to participating in the conflict were usually offered the alternative of serving in the Non-Combatant Corps. This was another relic from the First World War which had been revived in August 1940, and permitted those who served in it to work on projects ‘not involving the handling of military material of an aggressive nature’. All told, 6,766 conscientious objectors took this course of action, and served with considerable courage as unarmed soldiers, mainly as medical orderlies with the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), while 465 men volunteered to serve as bomb-disposal operatives with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC). One of the Scots who took that route was Edwin Morgan from Glasgow, later to be a fine poet, who served as a non-combatant medic in North Africa with 42nd General Hospital, RAMC. Later in life he recorded some of his memories and impressions in his collection The New Divan.
I dreaded stretcher-bearing,
my fingers would slip on the two sweat-soaked handles,
my muscles not used to the strain.
The easiest trip of all I don’t forget,
in the desert, that dead officer
drained of blood, wasted away,
leg amputated at the thigh,
wrapped in a rough sheet, light as a child,
rolling from side to side of the canvas,
with faint terrible sound
as our feet stumbled through the sand.13
After the war Morgan returned to teach at Glasgow University and emerged as a brilliantly innovative poet who became Scotland’s first ‘Makar’ or poet laureate in 2004.
Another reluctant Scottish soldier-poet in the Middle East was George Campbell Hay who had earlier expressed considerable diffidence about the possibility of a German invasion. In December 1938 he had joined the activist Wendy Wood’s Comunn airson Saorsa na h-Alba (League for the Independence of Scotland) which argued for a plebiscite on Scottish independence, and which led Hay to believe that at long last ‘Scotland is awakening’. At the outbreak of war he had started training as a teacher in Edinburgh with the aim of getting a position in the Highlands but in April 1940 he was eventually called up for National Service. His appeal failed, and when ordered to attend a medical examination he took himself off to hide in the Argyll hills rather than be conscripted. Predictably, he was quickly arrested, and after a brief period of imprisonment he joined the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and saw service in North Africa as part of Operation Torch at the end of 1942.
Other Scottish writers who also registered as conscientious objectors were the poet Norman MacCaig, the short story writer Fred Urquhart and the novelist and journalist Cliff Hanley. Another poet, James King (J. K.) Annand, also toyed with the idea of declaring his objections but when the time came to be conscripted he changed his mind ‘because I felt that I really ought to be involved in what was happening in Europe.’14 Annand had been taught in his native Edinburgh at Broughton School where one of his teachers had been George Ogilvie, an early influence on Hugh MacDiarmid, and other contemporaries or near contemporaries were fellow poets A. D. Mackie and Roderick Watson Kerr. Having graduated from Edinburgh University he was teaching when war broke out. When he was called up he volunteered to serve in the Royal Navy, and saw service on the Arctic convoys before being commissioned in 1943. Like Morgan, his war experiences influenced later poetry such as ‘Atlantic 1941’ which offers a bleak perspective of life on a convoy escort.
And little I thocht to be lockit in
A magazine like a jyle,
Or end my days in the choking clart
O a sea befylt wi ile.15
After the war Annand returned to teaching, as did his fellow Edinburgh poet Norman MacCaig, but there was a difference. Born in Edinburgh in 1910, MacCaig had decided quite early in his life that he was not going to do anything which involved using weapons: ‘I just refused to kill people; simple as that.’16 When war broke out he was working as a primary school teacher in Edinburgh, and his call-up papers arrived in the winter of 1941. At the tribunal he explained his reasons for objecting to military service, not on the grounds of religion or politics, but on the grounds of his refusal to wilfully take life. As a result he was sent to a Non-Combatant Corps company at Ilfracombe in Devon which was linked to the Royal Pioneer Corps. However MacCaig refused the order, and was arrested and held in the guardhouse at Edinburgh Castle where he was eventually sent under military escort to Ilfracombe. For a while it worked well enough, and MacCaig remembered being involved in fire-watching and basic farm work, but in 1944 his company was detailed to work in a tank depot and he refused because ‘if I’m working in a tank depot I might as well drive a tank’.17
As a result of his decision MacCaig faced trial by court-martial in Aldershot, and was sentenced to ninety-three days in prison, the time being spent in Winchester Prison and Wormwood Scrubs in London. On release he was sent back to Edinburgh where he worked as a jobbing gardener for the rest of the war. That should have been that, but there was an unfortunate corollary. MacCaig returned to teaching in the city but throughout his post-war career he was consistently refused any promotion, being turned down on ten occasions for the post of deputy headmaster. Later, at a civic reception, by which time he was a well-known poet, he met the Lord Provost who had chaired the Education Committee and asked him outright if it was true that his applications had been blocked because of his background as a conscientious objector. The Lord Provost admitted as much, and revealed that MacCaig’s applications had been resolutely opposed by a Church of Scotland minister sitting on the committee. On the other hand, noted MacCaig, throughout his war service there was ‘never a word of abuse from the armed forces – just the civilians’.18 That was a widely held perception, and it was generally the case that ‘conchies’, as they were disparagingly known, were better treated in the Second World War than they had been in the previous conflict. Even so, that judgmental term remained in regular use: when appointments were being made to appellate tribunals a scribbled note on a Scottish Home Department memorandum of 24 May 1940 read: ‘I believe that Lord Fleming is accepting the conchy post [as chair of an appellate tribunal].’19
In addition to sending men to the Non-Combatant Corps, tribunals could also enforce essential civilian work in areas such as agriculture or forestry, hospitals and social service. Inevitably, this was seen by many civilians as a soft option, hence the abuse which was frequently heaped on conscientious objectors. For that reason tribunals often recommended that applicants should be posted to other areas of the country to work away from home so that in some small measure they were making similar sacrifices to those serving in the armed forces. Female applicants were given the choice between the women’s military services (provided that weapons were not involved), civil defence, or work in industry, often in armaments factories. For an unhappy few who either refused point blank to accept any kind of service or fell foul of the military authorities, there was no option but a custodial sentence. By the end of the war, about 5,000 men and 500 women had been charged with offences to do with conscientious objection, and most of them were sent to prison. A further 1,000 or more were court-martialled and given prison sentences for refusing to obey military orders. At least 10 per cent of those involved would have been Scots.
Looking back at the cases involving Scottish writers who were also conscientious objectors it is hard to avoid the impression that there was a fair degree of official spite involved in the actions against them. This seems to have been the case with Douglas Young. Having been released from Saughton where, by his own account he had been treated reasonably well – he continued work on a commentary on the Greek poet Theognis and was allowed to possess the relevant texts – he was soon in trouble again after bring released. In February 1944 the SNP contested a by-election in Kirkcaldy Burghs with Young as their candidate and, thanks largely to McIntyre’s efforts, he came close to causing a major upset, polling 42 per cent of the vo
tes, as opposed to the government candidate’s 52 per cent. What is more, not only was he known as a conscientious objector but the main plank in his campaign was a promise to introduce a bill to give Scotland Dominion status similar to the British North America Act of 1867 which established the Dominion of Canada. Even an establishment newspaper like the Scotsman was forced to concede that Young and the SNP could not be dismissed as a flash in the pan: ‘There is here something which the Government and the Scottish Office must take note of. Mr Douglas Young is a fervid Scottish nationalist who refused from conviction to obey the law of a Government whose authority to conscribe Scotsmen he denied. Kirkcaldy Burgh electors, instead of ridiculing his constitutional claim, went to the polls and voted for him in very large numbers.’20
Instead, the authorities took a different tack, and in the summer Young was conscripted once more, this time by the Ministry of Labour to undertake non-military service. Once again he was forced to appear before an appellate tribunal where he was sentenced to a statutory three months in prison. Once again he appealed, this time on the grounds that conscription was a violation of Clause XVIII of the Act of Union of 1707 which seemed to safeguard Scots from being sent abroad by a Westminster government. This stood or fell on the interpretation of the wording that ‘no alteration be made to laws which concern private right, except for evident utility of the subjects within Scotland’ and it was doomed to fail. Young received a good deal of public sympathy and support but he was sent back to Saughton for a second term where the prison authorities again allowed him to continue his academic work. Even so, he continued to stand up for his rights and requested provision of additional electric light and the use of a typewriter. His fellow prisoners were not forgotten, and in one complaint he claimed that inmates at Saughton were not receiving their allotted rations, for example criticising the ‘duffs’ (steamed or boiled flour puddings) which ‘have their raisins few and far between & are soggy & unpalatable’.21