Scots' appeals against WWI conscription revealed to public for first time

Published on Wednesday 10 November 2010 13:02

FROM a future Secretary of State for Scotland to a mother who had lost three sons and was desperate to keep her fourth at home, they are the Scots who resisted the call-up to fight in World War One.

• Arthur Woodburn from Leith would go on to become a prominent politician

The stories of thousands of Scots who appealed against being called up to fight in the Great War are being made available to the public for the first time from today.

A previously hidden archive detailing more than 6,000 appeals against conscription has just been made available by the National Archives of Scotland.

The records, from the Lothians and Peebles Military Appeal Tribunal, feature cases of men who fought against conscription because they were conscientious objectors, for health reasons, because their work was important to the national interest or because sending them to war would cause hardship to them and their family.

The documents are almost all that still survive from the various local tribunals that handled the appeals after conscription was introduced in 1916, as most of the records were destroyed in 1921.

However, the cases from the Lothians and Peebles Military Appeal Tribunal were kept as a sample.

The National Archives of Scotland have just completed a two-year project to catalogue, repair and digitise the 6,300 applications, which date from March 1916 through to October 1918.

Among those who appealed their call-up on the grounds of conscientious objection was Arthur Woodburn from Edinburgh - who later went on to serve as Secretary of State for Scotland between 1947 and 1950.

At first, he supported the First World War but in 1916 he joined the Independent Labour Party and adopted a strong pacifist stance, telling the appeal tribunal: "I am conscientiously opposed to taking human life and to taking part in war. I also object on principle to the Government or any section of the people attempting to force me into such military service."

He was later arrested for making anti-war speeches and undertook hard labour for much of his imprisonment, which lasted until 1919.

• Will Fyffe listed his occupation as 'variety artist'

The records also show that variety artist Will Fyffe had appealed against his conscription, arguing that the entertainment he provided was "one of the best tonics for soldiers and sailors on leave from the front".

However, his appeal was dismissed and he went on to serve in the war. Mr Fyffe survived the conflict and in 1920 found fame with his song I Belong to Glasgow.

The appeals tribunal has the power to grant permanent, temporary or conditional exemptions to conscription, but most appeals were turned down.

However, the archives show that the authorities were sometimes sympathetic, with one man, Frank Hamilton Cowie, being granted an exemption on the grounds of hardship after his mother made an appeal.

Elsie Cowie pleaded for her youngest son to remain at home after four of her sons went off to war, with three of them killed in 1915.

George MacKenzie, Keeper of the Records of Scotland, said: "As we commemorate Armistice Day, these fascinating but little-known records help us remember and understand the impact of war at home.

"The stories of ordinary Scots and their families they contain are really remarkable: the documents reveal people's fears for their families' welfare, the pressure on businesses which were losing male workers and the conscientious objections that some expressed."

Staff from the National Archives of Scotland were helped by student volunteers from Edinburgh University in cataloguing, repairing and digitising the records.

Details from the documents were entered into online descriptions of the cases, which are available at www.nas.gov.uk.

Essential repairs were also carried out to the fragile documents and all the papers were digitised, preserving them for the future and making them more readily available to researchers in the National Archives of Scotland search rooms.