2. Late 1954: Conscience or what?

Until 1960, British 18-year-old boys were conscripted for two years National Service in the armed forces. Exceptions were made for those judged physically or mentally unfit, or engaged in other ‘essential' industries (mining, forestry, hospitals or merchant navy). There was also provision for ‘conscientious objectors’ to do some sort of alternative civilian work (mining, forestry or the merchant navy?). But first they had to convince a local tribunal that their objection was indeed conscientious, not cowardly, self-serving or daft. This seemed to me reasonable at the time. Later I realised that reason lies somewhere between the all or nothing positions then required: either we had to be against all wars, or to consent to whatever war our government dropped us in. Surely the reasonable man (and we were all men) might distinguish between wars of self-defence, aggression and colonial oppression.
But I was 17, not that reasonable nor quite a man. The issue of conscientious objection was only raised for me because my mother was a Quaker pacifist and because my parents had sent me to Quaker schools. Unlike most other boys of my age I was made aware that I had a choice to be or not to be a fighting man.
It wasn't that I wanted to be odd, I may have sought attention but still aspired to be a Man among men. Already at my prep-school, soon after war, I tried to have it all ways. My father had been in the wartime navy, and while girls drew horses and dancers, boys drew Spitfires (then Vampires and Gloucester Meteors) and speedway bikes. We may also have heard of Dr Albert Schweizer working wonders in Africa. When it came to saying what we wanted to be when we grew up, many other boys said naval officer or RAF pilot. Someone may then have said Doctor. I plumped for Doctor in the Fleet Air Arm – why choose when you can have the lot?
I liked to hold my own and wasn't against conflict or fighting as such. When it came to taking sides, between Cowboys and Indians, Roundheads and Cavaliers, I might have been more inclined than some to take the Indian or Roundhead side. But more important was to be included in the game, on the winning side if possible. That, to my amazement, was how it turned out in our school mock-elections in 1945. On the previous holiday I had helped my father canvas for Labour in North Kensington. 'Vote George Rogers’. Back at school - Frilsham House, now lost under the M4 – I found myself the only Labour voter, apart from an obligatory Labour candidate and Jeger, the son of an Italian race-horse owner. Perhaps he had an eye for outsiders, or felt like one himself. When Atlee beat Churchill, we were vindicated, but people still called me 'Labour Hard-Boiled Egg.' This was presumably to rhyme with Greg, though first names were rarely used at school, and when Martin came to join me there, I called him Wilkinson 2.).
In my immediate family, there was no tension over what I chose for national service. My father too had been a pacifist until war became unavoidable. Later, before he was called up, I remember helping assemble sten gun parts on our dining room table in Petts Wood. Once at Quaker school, though not religious or morally inclined, I couldn't help realising I had the choice, and quite liked an argument. As one of the youngest, and therefor smaller, members of my class, I found words served me better than force. I didn’t like seeing other people bullied, but dont remember sticking my neck out in their defence. A couple of times when I was picked on myself, I got satisfaction from hitting out, if only with the flat of my hand. When we learnt boxing, while still at prep-school, it seemed odd that we should be set up to hit each other in the face, then told not to lose our temper. Why else should you hit a fellow in the face? The next time I hit someone in the face with a fist it was as a grown up nearly 30 years later, because I did lose my temper.
If the choice to be a CO had not been presented to me, I would have gone for the easiest or most exciting option. Other people I knew found themselves in Cyprus, Kenya, or Malaysia, learned languages, drove tanks into historic buildings in Germany or boats into Suez.. At one point I considered the merchant navy, but soon found a Catch 22: for a seaman’s job you needed a union ticket, and for a seaman’s union ticket you needed a seaman’s job. There was one loophole, to become a waiter on a channel ferry, then blur the job description. I opted for the CO tribunal.
The tribunal for conscientious objectors consisted of local notables - magistrate, clergyman, trade-unionist. I got some guidance from my house-master on the sort of questions they might ask and the sort of answers I might give, or not. To the question ‘What would you do if you found a German soldier attacking your grandmother?’ you might say ‘I’d try to find some other way than killing him’ or even ‘I don’t know.’ But not ‘You don’t know my grandmother’ or ‘How would it help to drop a bomb on his?'
I was not particularly clever and if I had been, the issue would probably not have arisen. I would have gone to a grammar school not Quaker private schools. As it was, I sat my 11-plus alone in the headmaster’s study because I was the first and only boy at Frilsham House to sit the state exam. 'Cocky' – our name for the head - was ashamed of himself and me when I failed the maths. If I'd gone to grammar school I would have saved my parents a lot of money and myself the option of refusing military service. For me, as for millions of other children, but in a rather different way, failing the 11-plus changed the course of my future life. I just wasn't clever enough. At Leighton Park a few years later, the headmaster once notched me down as unscholarly ( while Richard, my youngest brother and the only one us four siblings to make his name in academic and public life, was deemed unfit for any sort of higher education). With me, the head changed his tune a bit and sometimes read my essays out to his special English class. My aim there too was to have it both ways, to score with him and with the boys in the back row. I knew I'd got it right when some of them laughed in the right places and an essay came back 'Alpha/Delta, I don’t know.’
It’s lucky I faced the tribunal before going to Algeria, or I might have had to face the difference between so-called 'just' and 'unjust' wars, between, say, fighting Hitler and stamping out colonial rebellion. As it was, I could rest on Quaker credentials and simple injunctions: 'Love thine enemy... Thou shalt not kill.' That was what everyone bowed their head to in church. I may have been developing a nose for hypocrisy, and I couldn't quite envisage killing somebody in cold blood, or because I was told to..
When the tribunal time approached, it occurred to me, or someone pointed out, that I could do better than work in the nearest forest, hospital or coalmine. If the issue was war and/or peace, what might make wars less likely in future? Somebody told me about the work-camp organisation International Voluntary Service for Peace (IVSP, later just IVS) was the British branch of Service Civil International which was set up in the rubble of World War 1 to help reconcile old enemies and stop it happening again.
When I got to the tribunal in Reading, I had a letter from Michael Sorensen, the IVSP secretary in London, offering me two years of unpaid employment in work-camps, at home and abroad. With this offer, I was able to sidestep one standard option - non-combattant service in the forces – with the added objection that this might release someone else to do the dirty work. When the tribunal duly endorsed the work-camp option, I felt like Brer Rabbit released into the briar bush. Authority meant well, or Stupidity could be turned to advantage.
Not so lucky was the young Jehova’s Witness I met before the tribunal hearing. In his scripture, only God’s War was allowed, but how could you have every man Jack of us deciding which war is Armageddon. I dont know what happened to this witness, whether he caved in or went to prison. Later I heard a Swiss colonel justify this too as free choice: the army or jail, it's up to you.
For my part, I did not just two years in work-camps but three. Obviously I enjoyed it, as in 1962 I went back for another year in Algeria. That was at the end of the Algerian war of independence and my own three years at University. I dont know how much value this 'service' had for anyone else, but I'm sure it was good for me. Now I feel everyone should have the chance, not of a gap year for the few who can afford it, nor the more common experience of youth unemployment, but a more organised break for everyone between school and long term commitment to qualification and career. If that' too is not a thing of the past.
As I sailed through the tribunal, so I passed my driving test. I don’t remember which came first, but the examiner growled at me as he signed the form: ‘Now go out and learn to drive.’ A few weeks later, by mistake, I spun my parents’ Ford Prefect through 270 degrees on the wide road past my old school gate. Nothing was coming the other way, and I was able to steer round the remaining 90 degrees and continue as though nothing unusual had happened. On another occasion, on the same bit of road, I remember driving in a fog so thick that I had to lie across the passenger seat and follow the curb as it appeared beneath the open far-side door.
Getting older, I’ve got thinner skinned. Not exactly cautious or sensitive to consequences for self and others, more a case of survivor's guilt. How could I have been so lucky so often?