The Harringay War memorial

By John Hinshelwood

In 2019 a new war memorial was unveiled in Harringay commemorating the local men of Hornsey, Tottenham and Wood Green, who had resisted fighting in the First World War. This memorial was commissioned by the Haringey First World War Peace Forum (HFWWPF) with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Haringey Council and the Harringay Traders Association. The unveiling ceremony took place on 15 May, Conscientious Objectors Day, outside the Salisbury Public House on Salisbury Corner on Green Lanes.

The Haringey War Memorial is not among seventeen war memorials listed by Haringey that commemorate soldiers, civilians, refugees and internees who suffered or died as a result of enemy action or in one or other, or both, of the two world Wars. It commemorates the men who suffered or died as a result of resisting the British Government’s enforcement of conscription and compulsory military service during the First World War.

Salisbury Corner was chosen as the site for the new memorial as it was central to the three local authorities at the time of the First World War. It was where the North London Herald League (NLHL), held its first anti-War meeting on Salisbury Corner in August 1914. At the other end of Grand Parade from Salisbury Corner, a flat above a florist’s shop at number 75 Grand Parade, was one of the organising centres of the NLHL. There were branches of the Herald League supporting Daily Herald, the only socialist newspaper, in Hackney, Hornsey, Islington and Tottenham and regular meetings were held in Finsbury Park, the Alison Road Church Hall and the Fairfax Hall in Portland Gardens.

Conscription was introduced by Act of Parliament in March 1916 and at first only single men aged between 18 and 41 were called up but in May 1916 a second Act extended conscription to married men as well. By the end of June 1916, the numbers who had appealed to local Tribunals against conscription nationally amounted to 748,587 men. Three further Acts were passed; one in 1917 to include home service Territorials and men who had left military service on account of wounds or ill-health; two others another in 1918, to quash all exemptions from military service on occupational grounds, and to extended conscription to men aged from 17 to 51 years. In total the numbers of conscientious objectors in England has been estimated by Cyril Pearce, author of Communities of Resistance, as nearly 20,000 men, but very few of them were granted exemption from some form of military service.

The NLHL was only one of several anti-conscription or anti-war organisations, based on personal, Christian or political beliefs. The No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF), founded by Fenner Brockway opposed conscription. Several religious bodies included the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) with the Rev. Richard Roberts, minister at the Presbyterian Church on Crouch Hill, consistently preaching against the War; the Society of Friends (Quakers) resisted the introduction of conscription and many of whose members volunteered for the Friends Ambulance Unit or the Friends War Victims Relief Committee; the Christadelphian church did not accept conscription but many members worked in the munitions factories accepting that it was allowable to “make the sword” but “wrong to use the sword”. The Christadelphians eventually secured an agreement that its members should all be granted non-combatant status. Political organisations such as the he Union of Democratic Control (UDC) opposed conscription and restrictions on civil liberties, imposed by the Defence of the Realm Act whilst calling for a full public examination of the war; the Independent Labour Party (ILP), organised by Keir Hardie, and a group of like-minded radical pacifists, opposed the war as did the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) with its secretary, Albert Inkpin, of Stapleton Hall Road, Stroud Green, In 1921, the Ministry of Health ordered that all records of individual cases of exemption, and Military Service Tribunals, should be destroyed as they were not of public interest. Exceptions were made for the records of two County Appeal Tribunals – Middlesex and Lothian – and the Central Appeal Tribunal. From the Middlesex records and research painstakingly compiled by Cyril Pearce, the Haringey First World War Peace Forum identified 350 men with some association to Hornsey, Tottenham and Wood Green who applied to the local Military Service Tribunals for exemption from conscription on conscientious grounds; 42 of them being associated with the present day Harringay Ward.

By June 1916, the number of men who had appealed against conscription, under the seven grounds for exemption, was only slightly fewer than the 770,000 men who had joined up. After the war, official statistics showed that 779,936 men had held an exemption certificate; the 20,000 conscientious objectors amounted to 2.5 percent of these exemptions. The level of conscientious objectors amongst all men appealing against decisions by the Hornsey Tottenham and Wood Green Military Service Tribunals was much higher; 14 per cent in Hornsey;, 10 per cent in Tottenham and 11 per cent in Wood Green..

The men associated with the present day Harringay Ward together with men associated with present day Stroud Green, St Ann’s, Tottenham Green and Seven Sisters wards amounted to a concentration of 59.4 conscientious objectors per square mile; the highest concentration of conscientious objectors anywhere in England. The position of the war memorial at Salisbury Corner on Green Lanes not only pays tribute to the Haringey men but also to the fact that North London was a centre of ant-war activity.

There are many different stories of the 350 men who were associated with Haringey who resisted fighting in the First World War which are recorded, as an online memorial, on the website (https://hfwwpf.wordpress.com/). In addition to the detailed biographies of each of these men there is also a section on conscientious objection which shows how central Haringey was to the anti-war movement in north London.

Amongst the many stories of the Haringey men, one man’s experience serves to illustrate the processes that conscientious objectors had to go through. John Bonar Thompson, of 125 Seymour Road, was one of the few men who was granted an absolute exemption by the local Military Service Tribunal. In his later life he wrote his autobiography Hyde Park Orator which includes his account of his conscientious objection and its outcomes; recently republished by Trevor Blake. In his written application to Tottenham Military Service Tribunal he describes himself as a ‘Concert Artiste, Elocutionist and Orator’ who was a ‘conscientious, moral and political objection to war’. The Tottenham Military Service Tribunal, held in the Town Hall on Tottenham High Road, decided March in that he should be granted an exemption from all military service. The Military Representative, appointed to the Tribunal, had the right to appeal against the decision and he did so claiming that it was “extremely lenient…consequent upon [Bonar Thomson’s] socialistic and political views” and that Bonar Thompson had no conscience but only political grounds for his application.

The Middlesex Appeal Tribunal withdrew the certificate of absolute exemption in light of a decision of the High Court that the only correct interpretation of the conscience clause in the Act was that conscientious objectors were only entitled to exemption from combatant service. As this was not what the Government had intended the second Act also amended the clause so that conscientious objectors could be exempted from military service, like any other applicant to a Local Tribunal. Regardless of this second Act Bonar Thompson was enrolled into the Royal West Kent regiment in June as a non-combatant soldier. He then faced a Court Martial at Aldershot for ‘disobeying a lawful order given by a senior officer’ and was sentenced to 56 days Hard Labour and taken to Wormwood Scrubs.

Bonar Thompsons’s case came before the Central Appeals Tribunal, the final arbiter for all appeals, in August and found him to be a man who should undoubtedly be treated as having a conscientious objection to all military service. He was then sent to the Home Office Scheme for conscientious at Dyce Camp, Scotland, before it was closed down due to the appalling conditions that caused the death of another inmate. He was then moved to Wakefield Work Centre on the Home Office Scheme, from which he absented himself. In June 1917 he was arrested to to be sent tore-join the Royal West Kent regiment which he refused to do and was bought before the Clerkenwell Police Court in London for ‘Failure to report to the Recruiting Office’ and registered as a deserter. After the war he spent some time living quietly in Scotland and the North-East but returned to London in 1924.

The Harringay memorial on Green Lanes and its online counterpart to the men who resisted fighting in the First World War deserve a wider recognition alongside other memorials to conscientious objection. The Peace Pledge Union (PPU) has a wooden plaque to the 81 men who died as a result of their conviction to oppose the war. The conscientious objectors stone in Tavistock Squire commemorates the struggle of conscientious objectors past and present was unveiled by the PPU’s President in 1994. It is the focus for activities on International conscientious Objectors Day each year in May an event that could also be celebrated on Salisbury Corner.