A Community of Consent: Conscientious Objectors on the North Yorkshire Moors and the North East Coast During the First World War

Abstract

From 1916 onwards, the Military Service Appeal Tribunals gave men in Britain a mechanism to appeal their conscription into the army. Though tribunals across the country heard appeals from tens of thousands of men, the work of the tribunals is now largely forgotten; an officially sanctioned process which began with the destruction of all the tribunal documents in 1921. Using the recently discovered papers for the North Riding County Appeal Tribunal, I have identified a concentration of Conscientious Objectors on the North Yorkshire Moors and specifically along the ironstone mining area of the coast. The high rate of conscientious objection in these areas is suggestive of an anti-war community, but I argue these men appealing at the North Riding Tribunal cannot always be seen as being anti-war. These communities supported the war effort but put limits upon that support. This paper builds upon Cyril Pearce’s ideas around communities accepting of resistance to the First World War, which could be found across Britain, but challenges what these communities and Conscientious Objectors were resisting. If similar patterns can be identified in other parts of the country, this would nuance the narrative of conscientious objection away from men not wanting to fight to men not wanting to be in the army and accepting other forms of war work.