British Military Service Tribunals, 1916-18: 'A Very Much Abused Body of Men'

263 Pages·2011·2.38 MB·English

by  James McDermott

British Military
Service Tribunals,
1916–1918
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British Military
Service Tribunals,
1916–1918
‘A very much abused body of men’
james mcdermott
Manchester University Press
Manchester and New York
distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan
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Copyright © James McDermott 2011
The right of James McDermott to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published by Manchester University Press
Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK
and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
Distributed exclusively in the USA by
Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York,
NY 10010, USA
Distributed exclusively in Canada by
UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall,
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
isbn 978 0 7190 8477 5 hardback
First published 2011
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external
or any third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee
that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Typeset in Warnock Pro with Myriad display by
Koinonia, Manchester
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
TJ International Ltd, Padstow
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Contents
Acknowledgements page vi
Note on the medical grading of enlisted men vii

1 Introduction 1
2 The Tribunal system: provenance, characteristics and issues 11
3 The matter of conscience 36
4 Boot and shoe 64
5 Agriculture 95
6 Directing heads, sole traders and the professions 131
7 Rank, deference and empathy 156
8 Fitness to serve 180
9 The Tribunals and the Volunteer Training Corps 198
10 Conclusion 218
Appendix 1: Appeals Tribunal files, minutes, register books
held at the Northamptonshire Record Office 232
Appendix 2: Central and Middlesex Appeals Tribunal files,
minute books, registers etc. held at the National Archives 234
References 239
Index 246
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Acknowledgements
The present work is developed from my (2009) PhD thesis, The Work of
the Military Service Tribunals in Northamptonshire, 1916–1918, and so my
first and deepest thanks are due to my supervisors, Dr Sally Sokoloff and
Professor Ian Beckett, for their invaluable guidance and unflagging efforts
to help me make coherent what I had fondly imagined to be so already.
My gratitude also to Professor Hew Strachan and Dr Matthew Seligman
for further suggestions, and to Barbara Russell for allowing me access to
her computer database of Northamptonshire exemption applications. The
staff of Northamptonshire Record Office have been unfailingly helpful, not
only in supplying a multitude of documents I knew to exist but in pointing
me towards other, unsuspected troves. Similarly, I have experienced much
kind and energetic assistance at the National Archives, National Library
of Wales, the Bedfordshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire
Record Offices, the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Bodleian Library,
Imperial War Museum, Friends’ House, Community (Earls Barton) and at
numerous local studies departments of public libraries.
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Note on the medical grading
of enlisted men
From January 1916 until November 1917, men who passed their army
medical examinations were placed into one of three categories: A, B and C
(the latter two with sub-divisions). An ‘A’ man was fit for general service:
that is, to serve in the front line. Men certified as B1 or C1 were regarded
as fit for support duties, respectively abroad or at home only; B2 and C2
men were allocated to garrison duties on the same basis; those classed as
B3 and C3 similarly to clerking or other sedentary work. From November
1917, following the radical reorganization of the examination system and
the replacement of military by civilian medical boards, newly enlisted men
were allocated levels of fitness as follows: Grade I (old Category A), II (B1,
C1), III (B2 and 3, C2 and 3), IV (failed).
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1
Introduction
There is this to be said about tribunals: They are a very much abused body
of men … 1
Military Service Tribunals were the product of legislation that, in venerable
British fashion, represented a decisive step taken tentatively. Conscription,
though not unprecedented in the nation’s history, was sufficiently novel in
1916 to require the expenditure of enormous political energy to introduce
in such a way as not to (or seem not to) traduce the principles for which,
ostensibly, Britons were fighting. The result was ambiguous: a compulsory
system of military enlistment that nevertheless provided a mechanism
allowing deferral of, and even release from, the obligation. That mecha-
nism’s human face – the Tribunals – comprised thousands of men (and the
occasional woman), the vast majority of whom had no judicial expertise, no
formal training for their role, no particular insight into Whitehall’s precise
expectations of their work, and who remained excluded from the slow,
tortuous process that sought to create a national manpower policy.
The Tribunals served two masters: one by legislative enactment, one by
default. Though part of a wider initiative intended to maintain and replenish
the enormously expanded establishment of the British Expeditionary Force
(BEF), the logic of their immediate role (almost certainly unintended by
conscription’s architects) demanded that they should also accommodate
the preoccupations of their local communities. The dichotomy ensured
that few who had cause to evaluate their work were uncritical. Castigated
either for being too sensitive to local concerns (by the War Office and
GHQ), or for acting as the unfeeling servants of a voracious war-machine
(by almost everyone else), Tribunals were unloved during their lifetimes
and unmourned following their demise. Government’s subsequent instruc-
tions to borough, district, metropolitan and county councils in England
and Wales to destroy all files, minute books and other records relating to
the Tribunals’ work was both a practical measure to expunge the legacy
of a politically troubled process and a symbolic repudiation of the process
itself.2
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