SNP’s Young ‘no conscientious objector’

IN RESPONSE to Graham Day’s letter (“SNP war blunder”, 
27 September), I would like to clarify the wartime position of my father, Douglas Young, chairman of the SNP from 1942 to 1945. Mr Day wrote that he “preferred jail to being conscripted in the British Army to play his part in resisting Nazism”.

In fact Douglas, returning from a trip abroad in mid-September 1939, did call into the Clarendon buildings in Oxford where they were recruiting for various services. He asked if there was anything he could do, only to be told that, as he was over 25, he was in a reserved occupation and could not do anything.

Thus the war effort was 
deprived of the services of a brilliant polymath and 
master of several European languages.

In 1937, the SNP conference had considered the eventuality of another world war and had passed a strong resolution that members of military age should not serve in the British forces unless and until Scotland had her own government.

After war appeared likely following Hitler’s seizure of Prague in spring 1939, the question was raised in Nationalist circles as to whether conscription was constitutionally valid in its application to Scotland, having regard to the terms of the Treaty of Union of 1707.

The consensus was that it was not constitutionally lawful for the UK parliament to conscript Scots for foreign service. Douglas believed that Scotland should have dominion status within the British Commonwealth along with Canada, New Zealand, etc, including the right to enlist and control her own forces for any alliance she might join.

Douglas was never a “conscientious objector”, as he has often been described. He was certainly making a political point in not complying in 1942 with his call-up notice for medical examination for the forces.

In any case, he would doubtless have failed his medical, as he had a long-standing heart problem, which could have carried him off at any moment. The authorities knew he was delicate and, throughout his eight-month sojourn at Saughton prison, he actually slept in the governor’s house.

This fact I only recently learned from an old friend of his, now 97, who had visited him in jail. The authorities didn’t want to risk him dying and becoming an SNP martyr.

Clara Young

Tayport

Fife