“Conscientious Objection 100 years on” - Richard Durning Holt’s Diary

This week I attended a Reception at the Houses of Parliament arranged by Quakers in Britain to mark the 100th Anniversary of the Military Service Act. Rev Feargus O’Connor of the Unitarian Peace Fellowship was able to join me. We were reminded of the significance of the introduction of conscription and of the conscience clause in the Act providing for conscientious objection to military service which was a fundamental shift towards individual freedoms. Conscientious objection is now recognised as a universal human right but not yet implemented across the world. 

Richard Durning Holt (1868-1941) was prominent among those Liberals who tried without success to oppose the legislation. He was a member of a famous Liverpool Unitarian family and was Liberal MP for Hexham between 1907 and 1918 and prominent in Liverpool affairs and later nationally for the first three decades of the twentieth century. Another Unitarian opponent was H G Chancellor, MP for Haggerston.  Unitarians and World War 1 is a previous blog entry of mine.

Holt’s diary records his opposition and his disappointment at the outcome. It is held at Liverpool City library and an edition was published in 1988 by “The Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire” (Vol CXX1X) by David J. Dutton. With the title “Odyssey of an Edwardian Liberal: the political diary of Richard Durning Holt” it offers some interesting insights on the passage of conscription Bill in early 1916.

Dulton points out that Holt felt that” the War was demanding unacceptable measures of encroachment by the state” (page 41). He was committed to the late 19th Century Liberal, and indeed nonconformist approach, to support for peace and voluntaryism along with restricting the role of the State.

2 January “The years opens with a gale and every prospect of political disturbance for the Prime Minister has let it be known that he has adopted the policy of conscription towards which the Tories have been pressing him for the past twelve months.”

9 January “On Wednesday and Thursday we debated the Conscription Bill, Sir J. Simon, who resigned the Home Secretaryship on the question, leading the opposition. They was a good deal of excitement and I thought the opponents made out a case (I was one of them) but sentimentality and fear of defeating the Government carried the day and we were defeated by 403 to 105. I told for the minority and also spoke I had hoped for a better show but several of our friends failed us at the last moment including dear J.W. Wilson, Chas. Hobhouse who was very strong against conscription most unaccountably went back on us, made an inconclusive speech and abstained.”

16 January “Came home on Thursday. We debated the Conscription bill on Tuesday and Wednesday when the Irish deserted us and some others and the division was 431 to 39. I did not speak but voted of course.

4 February “The little group who had opposed conscription formed themselves into a permanent organisation – Sir J. Simon, chairman, Whitehouse, secretary, J.H. Thomas, the railway men’s representative, Leif Jones and R.D.H. committee.”

He records that on 25 February 1918 he had attended what Dutton calls an “important” meeting at Essex Hall to support Lord Lansdowne’s proposals for peace by negotiation (17 March 1918).

He paid the price. The public did not share his views and neither did his local party and he was “forced” to seek another seat at the forthcoming General Election. 

Throughout his life Holt was active in Unitarian affairs. In 1903 he spoke at the National Triennial Conference held in Liverpool proposing a resolution condemning the Education Act. In 1918 he records that he was elected President of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association “an office I always coveted for the childish reason that I was the first whose great-grandfather (Richard Potter, MP for Wigan) had held it” (11 June 1918).  

Out of Parliament, having been defeated in 1918, he chaired a public meeting of the Liverpool District Missionary Society with Dr Estlin Carpenter and Sir Alfred Booth speaking in support of the League of Nations idea at the Royal Institution (19 January 1919). He chaired a meeting at the Unitarian Memorial Hall in Manchester which passed a resolution demanding that the Versailles Treaty be referred to the League of Nations (6 February 1923). 

An early diary entry sets out his Unitarian beliefs. Reflecting on the year end (31 December 1900) he notes:

“I trust and believe that the future will show an increase in and a strengthening of our own views of simple Christianity which I believe to be the true basis on which to establish the community.  I know I have expressed my meaning badly: I don’t want any established church – Unitarian or otherwise. What I mean is that in the main it is the belief that what God wants of man is that he do right, i.e. love his neighbour, and not that he profess particular theological opinions or requires a consecrated place or an ordained priest, which will bring with it a great improvement in our social and political conditions”.

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Unitarians and World War One

2014 will mark the hundredth anniversary of the start of World War One. A national commemoration will involve a transformation of the Imperial War Museum, a major programme of national commemorative events and an educational programme "to create an enduring legacy for generations to come". More than £50million has been allocated and the Heritage Lottery Fund has announced an additional £6million to enable young people working in their communities to conserve and share local heritage of WWI. There is support of all the major political parties for this initiative although as the New Year dawned there has been a politicalised debate about the significance of the War.

The Unitarian and Free Christian movement marked World War One by a “Tablet to the memory of fallen soldiers and sailors”, unveiled at Essex Hall by Mrs Sydney Martineau on 12 January 1921. Believed lost in the destruction of the building in 1944 during World War Two, it was designed by Ronald P. Jones, cast in bronze and made by the Guild of Handicraft, Birmingham. The Inquirer (15 January 1921) reported that Mrs Martineau, in an impressive address, spoke with great sympathy of those whose beloved were represented among the Thousand who did not return; that they might be comforted in the thought of a noble service rendered by the Dead; and might those dear ones who survived and came back “realize more and more the price paid for our liberties, and for an ever-enduring establishment of Right as the dominant factor in the lives of nations”.

She referred to 10,000 from “our little community” who served in the armed forces. A Memorial Roll of Honour was also compiled and unveiled in 1922 which actually contained 1700 names of those who died listed in alphabetical order, including congregation. This was also thought destroyed in 1944 but was later discovered by Rev Peter Godfrey at Essex Hall, and is now at Dr Williams’s Library. We are endeavouring to locate the Roll and then to place a digital copy on the web which would give congregations and individuals an opportunity to use it for research.

Many Unitarians treasure the Nightingale Centre, the Unitarian retreat and conference in Great Hucklow. The Inquirer (16 November 1918), just two months after the cessation of hostilities, carried an appeal for £10,000 for the "Florence Nightingale Home for Soldiers, Sailors and other men of our community” which had been established by the Sunday School Association as a Unitarian National War Memorial. This was designed to meet a present urgent need but no Government funding was forthcoming to erect a building, therefore Unitarians got to work.

In churches and chapels across the country will be found individual memorials to those lost. Congregations, of course, mark Remembrance Sunday in various ways. Finding out more about the individuals listed on memorial plaques could be a useful starting point to produce a local and more human story of the war.

Nationally, this will also be an opportunity to reflect upon how Unitarians and Free Christians, individually and collectively, responded to the War. Alan Ruston has written with feeling of how the nonconformist churches were forced to face large moral and spiritual issues for which they were apparently so ill prepared. This was felt particularly by liberal Christian Churches who emphasized a belief in “the goodness of man and his God”. His article on “Unitarian attitudes towards World War 1” in the Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society (April 1998) merits careful reading. He tellingly reveals that historians of Unitarianism had ignored the subject until he wrote in 1993 on two Unitarian ministers killed in action.

The denominational press shows that the majority of Unitarians supported the war effort, at least until mid-1917, with a notable minority taking a more critical stance. The views of some of the former are surprising; although we must be careful to assess the past in its own context not that of today. One legacy was the establishment of the Unitarian Peace Fellowship in 1916 (as the Liberal Christian Peace Fellowship) with its basis that “war and the preparation for war is unreconcilable with the teaching and spirit of Jesus”. The General Assembly in 2016 is an opportunity to remember their foundation and work for peace since then.

Alan also points out that his research found a quite different response to the war between Unitarian ministers and the laity, the latter being somewhat more sceptical including a few Unitarian MPs. Importantly, he suggests that World war One so seriously undermined the basis of the confidence of British Unitarianism that it “has not subsequently recovered its dynamism nor theological assurance”. 

Unitarians should mark this centenary. Nationally there has been concern that “2014 is being scheduled as another zenith of nationalist pride”, as Richard Seymour wrote in The Guardian (12 October 2012). I am sure that Unitarians will commemorate and remember with dignity drawing upon the best of what we are but guarding against the temptation to white wash the past.

This is an updated version of an article “How will we remember the fallen?” which appeared in The Inquirer on 19 January 2013 (Issue 7810).