Rebel country

The Liberal crisis
For Liberal anti-conscriptionists the Military Act cut two ways. Eligible young men had the same decision to face as that facing other opponents of the war, but for them and for other Liberals, there was a further difficulty. By supporting conscription, Asquith and the majority of the Liberal Party in Parliament stood accused of having abandoned yet another of the Liberal commitments to individual liberty, arguably at its most central and symbolic point, the individual's right to commit his own life according to his own beliefs. Radical Liberals has hitherto reluctantly tolerated much of the wartime erosion of basic principles on the grounds of the needs of the greater good, but for some, conscription pressed that tolerance too far. In Huddersfield a number of Liberals broke with the Party. None of them 'swarmed into the Labour Party' but the act of cutting through their old ties of loyalty gave them the freedom to attach themselves more firmly and more publicly to the anti-war cause and consequently to modify its otherwise sectarian appearance.

It is not possible accurately to quantify the scale of Liberal defections in Huddersfield over the conscription issue. The fact that none of the defectors joined the Labour party and that, contrary to national trends, Liberalism remained a coherent and powerful force in local politics throughout the inter-war years suggests that, whatever the real numbers, their effect was only slight. They were, nevertheless, significant in at least two ways: first, because of the prominence of the individuals involved and those elements in local Liberalism which they represented; and second, because of the way in which the local Liberals reacted to their defection.

The major local defectors were the Robson family. Head of the family, 85 year old Joshua Wheeler Robson (1831-1917) was the owner of Isaac Robson and Sons, a textile dyeworks in Moldgreen. A life-long Liberal, he had been a town councillor, School Board Chairman and member of the executive committee of the Huddersfield Liberal Association. With his wife Elizabeth (1839-1914), a member of the Rowntree family, he had also been active in Yorkshire Quakerism and especially in the Adult School movement. By 1916, Joshua was no longer as active as before, having left both the management of the dyeworks and the burden of his local political work to his eldest son, John Herbert (1875-1965) who was a Liberal councillor for the Moldgreen ward and a member of the Liberal Executive. He had also assumed his father's role at Paddock Friends Meeting and in the Huddersfield area Adult School movement.

Both men represented the high-principled wing of radical Liberalism. They were well-respected paternalist employers, prominent local philanthropists and social reformers. As Quakers and radicals, they had a long and shared opposition to war and militarism. Both had been involved in the campaign against the Boer War and in the pre-1914 agitation against militarism and the arms race. Two of Joshua's daughters, Julia (1870-1951) and Alice (1881-1975), were also active and prominent in local public life. Julia had left Huddersfield for Birmingham in 1898 to marry a lawyer, Henry Glaisyer, twenty years her senior. She returned six years later, a widow with two small children. Thereafter, with Alice, she shared their brother's work at the Paddock Meeting and with the Adult School. In their own right they were both active in the Huddersfield Women's Liberal Association and in the Huddersfield branch of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. Julia had been involved with the pre-war Huddersfield Committee Against Compulsory Military Service. The conscription crisis of 1915 drew them both into the anti-war movement. They were instrumental in persuading the Women's Liberal Association to pass anti-conscription resolutions. Julia was a foundation member of the local branch of the UDC and later the NCC. Joshua and John remained at a distance during 1915 but, early in 1916, John became associated with the UDC. Both broke with the Liberal Party over the Military Service Act.

With the Robsons' withdrawal Huddersfield Liberalism lost key contributors on its intellectual radical wing. It also lost important links with the women's movement. Local official Liberalism, in spite of its pre-war commitment to votes for women, by its support for the war increasingly posed questions of loyalty for its erstwhile women supporters. Some of them, like Florence Lockwood, were by 1916 beginning to think of feminism and pacifism as being 'hand-in-hand'.

Huddersfield's Liberals were, on the whole, tolerant of the Robsons' defection. More than that, it was even said that John Robson 'occupied a position they admired, but ... could not follow and they were ... reluctant to do anything that would give offence to him.' They had no such sympathy for their MP, Arthur Sherwell. His consistently critical stance had already stirred animosity in Huddersfield Liberalism. His opposition to the formation of the Coalition Government and his insistence on sitting in opposition as an Independent Liberal, had not endeared him to a considerable number of the Huddersfield members. He had campaigned against conscription and throughout the parliamentary preliminaries in the autumn of 1915 he had shown scant respect for Asquith or his Cabinet colleagues. In the eyes of some of Huddersfield's Liberals such public disloyalty was unforgivable. In February 1916 the Central Liberal Club, although anxious about dividing Liberal opinion, struck his name from its list of Honorary Vice-Presidents. He was accused of misrepresenting the borough, of failing to do his best for the war effort and of both disloyalty and lack of courtesy to the party leadership.

Sherwell was unrepentant. The party's local Executive invited him to re-consider his position but, while accusing the Examiner of failing to give his campaign in Parliament adequate coverage, he protested:

"Nothing is further from my wish than to embarrass the Executive, or to show any lack of consideration to the views of those who may differ from me. At the same time I can't go back on my convictions (upon which, by the way, I was elected), nor can I consent to be a 'machine' politician. I can do no good to Liberalism or to the country in that character. Liberalism is heading rapidly for the rocks, and there will be a rude awakening presently."

When asked to appear before the Liberal Association Sherwell refused. The Liberal Club decision had given a clear indication of the mood of at least one section of the local party and he was not inclined to confront it. Instead, he announced his decision to remain as MP but not 'to be a candidate for the support of the association at the next election'. The Executive, perhaps relieved at his reluctance to prolong the dispute, with a resolution expressing 'cordial thanks for the able and valuable services he has rendered to the Liberal Party and for the assiduous way in which he has worked for the interests of the Borough', set the machinery in motion to select his successor.

In the spring of 1916 the fissures opened up in Huddersfield Liberalism by the war and by Sherwell's position did not seem to be too deep. There was, however, evidence apart from the special case of the Robson family, hinting at a more significant critical pro-Sherwell faction than the Liberal Club resolution suggests. At that stage it was reluctant to show itself or, perhaps more correctly, the Examiner was reluctant to give it much coverage. Eleven members of the Liberal Club voted against Sherwell's name being struck off the list of Vice-Presidents and during the debate, although not uncritical of Sherwell, Councillor Arthur Sykes admitted:

"There were members of the club who regarded Mr. Sherwell as an unlikely man to represent Huddersfield prior to the war. Some of those members were stronger in his favour than they had been at any time during his career."

Nevertheless, for the moment, Sherwell's supporters acquiesced. The real divisions in local Liberalism did not appear until the selection of candidates for 1918's General Election.

CO support systems 1916-1918: the Huddersfield and District No-Conscription Council
While the Military Service Bill was still before Parliament the anti-war groups had begun to prepare their next moves. The knowledge that most of its young men would refuse military service led Huddersfield's BSP branch to be photographed together as a memento because the members had a good idea that they would never meet again in the same way. Others made more practical preparations. At the national level, the NCF 'fashioned itself into the most efficient instrument the British peace movement ever had, before or since.'

Three days before the Act came into force, the National Council against Conscription declared its intention to monitor the 'Work of the Tribunals and to establish advice and guidance centres for all those who might appear before them'. But in Huddersfield it was the Society of Friends who made the first moves. In January the Huddersfield Friends approached the Huddersfield Free Church Council to ask if they would 'support the members of their churches who will refuse military service on conscientious grounds.' The Free Church Council ducked the issue as 'not a matter for the Council but for each individual member'. In the meantime, however, the Quakers pressed on alone, organising a special meeting of 'Prayer for right guidance' and, in mid-February, opening their advice centre for potential COs of all kinds at Paddock Meeting House.

Existing accounts of this phase of resistance to conscription have stressed the role of the NCF, and there is no denying the energy and attention to detail which characterised its national efforts in recording the experience of COs, gathering statistics and generating anti-war propaganda. The system over which Catherine Marshall, NCF secretary, presided was indeed quite remarkable, and yet, whether for reasons of security or out of a preferred image of the CO as an individual, its work, in particular the bulletins of the CO Information Bureau, reveals very little of the local and collective efforts of the war's opponents. The NCF's success in recording the statistics of conscientious objection, although significant, has tended to overshadow and marginalise the more immediate and locally more important work of the wider CO support systems.

In Huddersfield the NCF was only one of a number of groups which made up the anti-war movement and the local CO support system. Its efforts, together with those of most of the rest, were co-ordinated through the Huddersfield and District No-Conscription Council (NCC). It was the NCC, not the NCF which built up the local CO advice service. Although the NCF was the prime mover here it was the more broad-based NCC which provided the staff and the long-term organisation. Lagging behind the Quakers but absorbing their efforts, by the beginning of March 1916 the NCF and the NCC had opened their own CO advice centre in Huddersfield's ILP rooms. Initially it was advertised to open every night for one week but it remained open during the first months of conscription and was still advertising its services in June.

Following the National Council's advice, the Huddersfield NCC appointed a committee of 'Advisers' to staff its advice centre and a bigger committee of 'Watchers' to monitor the work of the Tribunals. Together with the local NCF it set up a fund to help COs dependants. Much later it even provided hospitality and entertainment for COs from the Wakefield work centre visiting Huddersfield at the weekend, and at Christmas. The 'Watchers', in particular the Rev E. E. Lark, were much in evidence during the turbulent Tribunal meetings in March 1916, when Gardiner, Dawson and others were at the centre of noisy demonstrations. Rev Lark intervened more than once to protest at the conduct of the Tribunal and to help calm the crowd.

Away from the drama of the Tribunals the NCC managed a range of propaganda activities. Its members and affiliated groups were regularly involved in distributing leaflets door-to-door or in the streets, on major issues or at telling moments. On Christmas Eve 1916, for example, they distributed between ten and twelve thousand peace leaflets on the steps of 47 local churches and chapels.

In all of this work the NCC was able to achieve a striking measure of support from within the local radical community. Public meetings were regularly the products of close collaboration with the NCF and, more particularly, during late 1916 and 1917, with the ILP, BSP and Trades Council. In the summer of 1917 the NCC was represented at the Leeds Convention and agreed to work with the Trades Council and the Labour and Socialist Election Committee to set up a branch of the Workers' and Soldiers' Council. By October 1917, the ad hoc propaganda links with the left were replaced by a more formal Joint Propaganda Committee in which the NCC joined with the ILP and BSP's Socialist Propaganda Committee.

This ultimate organisational fusion with the left might be considered the logical outcome of the labour and socialist movement's domination of the local NCC (see Table 17). But, that would be to belittle the contribution of its non-socialist members and to argue against its broader appeal. Nevertheless, the breadth of its appeal was to be questioned in some ways because of the evidence of its rejection by potentially sympathetic groups. During the first months invitations to affiliate addressed to Adult Schools, church groups, the Labour and Socialist Election Committee and the Huddersfield Esperanto Society were all declined.

The Labour and Socialist Election Committee's apparent reluctance is misleading. This was not a rejection of the NCC and all it stood for - since the Trades Council and the local socialist groups ran the NCC - but more a constitutional preference that, since there were pro-war socialists and trades unionists within the local labour movement, affiliated bodies should determine their own positions. The reasons behind the Esperanto Society's failure to respond can only be guessed at.

However, where local churches and chapels were concerned there were basic divisions within them regarding the war. It was too divisive an issue to risk alienating sections of the congregation. The matter tended to be left, as the Free Church Council suggested, to the individual's conscience. For committed anti-war Christians this was unsatisfactory. Florence Lockwood's Diaries recorded her dismay at 'the failure of the Churches to speak any effective word on behalf of international peace'. Some of Huddersfield's churchmen made their own public commitment to the peace movement. Mention has already been made of Rev E. E. Lark of Paddock United Methodist Church, the NCC's first President. He was joined in NCC work by Rev R. A. Dickson of the Fitzwilliam Street Congregational Church and by Rev H. Lee and Rev T. B. Black. Occasionally, groups of churchmen broke their silence. As has been seen, the preachers of the Lindley United Methodist Circuit condemned the workings of the Military Service Tribunals. Much later, in the war-weariness of February 1918, the Huddersfield Evangelical Ministers' Union appealed to the government 'to consider whether an opportunity has not now arisen to seek an early and honourable peace.'

In other ways some churches and chapels maintained at least the appearance of Christian tolerance by allowing anti-war meetings in their halls and schoolrooms. The NCC and the NCF were both able to use rooms in Fitzwilliam Street provided by the Methodists there or their Congregationalist neighbours. Throughout the war the Fitzwilliam Street Social Union helped to keep the radical intellectual traditions of local Nonconformity alive.

The local Adult Schools' reluctance to affiliate to the NCC, like the churches, seems to indicate anxieties about the effects of such a move on serious differences of opinion within their membership. Huddersfield Adult School Union's pre-war opposition to militarism was not strong enough to survive the pressures of wartime. Their Christian and humanitarian principles compelled the schools into all kinds of relief work among Belgian refugees, wounded servicemen and internees and their dependants, but their young men were almost as susceptible as the rest to the pressures of patriotism. However, if the Paddock school's membership is any guide, they were marginally more committed to non-combatant service than other recruits: of the 13 Paddock members who had enlisted before 1916, four served in the RAMC and one was a driver in the Army Service Corps. On the other hand, there were individual Adult School members who were firmly opposed to the war. Currie Martin writes of 40 or 50 Adult School COs who held regular Sunday morning services while on Dartmoor.

Huddersfield's only Friends Adult School was the one at Paddock. Although never affiliated to the NCC it shared rooms with the Friends, was managed by the Robsons and was closely bound up with the anti-war effort. The other schools were not so closely connected either to the Friends or to the anti-war movement. Any pre-disposition to sympathy with the anti-war cause, such as Currie Martin suggests, was not manifest in organisational terms and remained at the level of the individual. In fact, as Arnold Hall maintains, 'Some schools were deeply divided over the issue of conscientious objection once conscription was introduced.' For that reason, as with the churches, the resort to individual conscience was the only real option. Although there was sympathy and support for individual COs from within the Adult School movement, there was a general reluctance to identify too strongly or too closely with the wider anti-war position.

The divisions and timidity of the ethical community in the matter of the war left the NCC in the hands of the labour and socialist movement. Its dominance there was only partly balanced by the non-socialist representatives of the Quakers, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the NCF. They were partly supported by individual non-socialists from elsewhere in the wider radical community. It is not clear what part was played in this by the representatives of the Co-operative Women's Guild but its leading figure and NCC delegate, Mrs L. B. Thomas, was a socialist and a feminist and, therefore, of the anti-war mainstream rather than the Liberal ethical tributary.

This being so, the NCC with great regularity and apparent enthusiasm appointed its non-socialist middle-class members to its major official position. Julia Glaisyer succeeded the first President, the Rev E. E. Lark, when he had to leave the district in August 1916. She remained President until the end of the war supported, as Vice-President, by Arthur Barratt, another Quaker delegate and Adult School worker. The 'Watchers' committee convened by Julia Glaisyer, contained, as well as six representatives of the labour and socialist movement, nine non-socialists (Rev E. E. Lark, Robert Hopkinson, Alice Robson, Cllr J. H. Robson, E. J. Woodhead, Rev R. A. Dickson, Rev H. Lee, Rev Black and Miss Edgehill). The 'Advisory' committee was similarly weighted with non-socialists.

This is not to say that the left did not play its full part. Second Vice-President was the Trades Council's Alfred Shaw; Secretary was Wilfrid Whiteley and Treasurer, Ben Riley. Nevertheless, the non-socialists played a role out of all proportion to their membership. There may have been a number of reasons for this. First, as its public representatives, the middle-class non-socialists could help dispel the image of the NCC as a purely labour and socialist organisation. Second, as for the most part mature men and women of independent means and some education they were in a good position to commit their energies and talents to the NCC. Its young men had their personal battles to fight with conscription and the older men on the left had jobs to do and commitments to meet elsewhere in the labour and socialist movement.

The NCC, therefore, allowed an organisational fusion between the left and elements of the labour movement and the traditional anti-war radicalism of the local Society of Friends and detached parts of the Nonconformist Liberal community. Beyond this the bigger process of broadening the anti-war movement, and with it the further consolidation of the left's new unity was strengthened, as before, by a campaign which drew on a range of wartime issues which went beyond conscription.

Rebel society
From 1916 until the end of the war, Huddersfield's 'Rebel' community adapted successfully to changing circumstances and, in the process, extended and strengthened both its formal and informal networks. The part played by clubs and societies and by labour and socialist families was important, but, equally if not more important, was the role of women and, despite the national drift into repression, of Huddersfield's continued tolerance of radical anti-war views.

Since the beginning Huddersfield's socialist and labour movement had been augmented and sustained by clubs and societies which expressed a broader and less formal subculture. As wartime dramatised and intensified the issues facing it, the movement's need for the warmth and support of that subculture was greater than ever.

Many clubs suffered a decline in their male membership. Volunteers, conscripts and COs all left them, but only Cliffe End Socialist Club at Longwood had to close. In contrast, other clubs survived and made new contributions. Paddock Socialist Club emerged as something of a centre for radical resistance to the Military Service Acts. Huddersfield Central ILP Club extended its premises and increased its range of services to members and non-members alike. Early in March 1916 it announced a 'Cafe open for light refreshments ... rooms open every evening ... Billiards and other games. Reading and Smoking rooms'. A week later it was advertising its light refreshments as 'Special today: Sausage and Mash, ready 8.45 p.m. Record crowds from all over the Borough congregate every Saturday evening'. The billiards and mash strategy seems to have been successful. By September 1916 the Central ILP was claiming a big increase in membership. At its Annual General Meeting in January 1918 membership was still growing while, at the National ILP conference that year Ramsay MacDonald claimed a 90% increase in membership since the outbreak of war.

Conscription and the COs had a particular effect on the programme of talks and public meetings offered by the clubs and societies. A number of the left's local leaders remained, but, with the exception of Fred Shaw and Jess Townend, they tended to be older and more representative of the ILP and Trades Council old guard. The energetic and controversial young men of the ILP and the BSP were elsewhere. This meant that bazaars, whist drives and socials became more frequent to raise money to help support the COs and their families. Those left behind had to work harder. Filling local speaking engagements became more problematic and more speakers had to be brought in from outside the town. The members and activists left behind rose to the challenge with style and some flair. The Huddersfield ILP and Socialist Choir and the Milnsbridge Socialist Brass Band survived well enough to guarantee music at socials and a band for every procession.

On the fringes of the labour and socialist movement, the war dealt less kindly with the Huddersfield and County Forum. Apparently weakened by the debate on the war and unable to retain its neutrality in the face of the ascendancy of the anti-war left, it closed its doors as an independent members club. In April 1917 it reappeared as the 'Propaganda Group', some of its members now joined to the ILP, meeting at the Central Club and advising former associates to 'come and join'.

Another of the strengths of the local labour and socialist subculture on which wartime conditions made extra demands was the family networks. By 1914 the movement had within it a number of families whose members were, to a greater or lesser degree, active. In the BSP there were at least four interconnected families (Littlewoods, Townends, Shaws, Rayners) with at least twelve active members between them of which three (Ernest Littlewood, William Shaw, Arthur Rayner) were COs. Mary (Polly) Shaw's future husband Arthur, also a Shaw, was a CO. The ILP had fewer active families but among them were Edith and Frederick Key. They were both active in the ILP, UDC and NCC and their two sons were both COs. These family connections and those of close friends and sweethearts reinforced the ideological bonds. They also meant that some family members, relatively inactive before the war, were motivated to step up their level of political work, especially when their relations went as COs. This generally led to a greater involvement of women.

The BSP was particularly affected in this respect. It lost most of its principal figures as COs and, as a consequence, by 1917, for the first time two women had been elected to the branch committee: Mary (Polly) Shaw and Ada Scott. Within the ILP, and the left generally, women activists had a higher profile during 1916-1918 than they had had before. Examples were Mrs L. B. Thomas, Edith Key, Grace Tavener. It is also probably true that a higher proportion of speakers visiting the town were women.

The increased level of women's activity in the radical and anti-war groups after 1916 is indisputable, but there is little evidence to suggest that Huddersfield's women's anti-war groups drew support from the full range of the social and political spectrum in the way that the NCF, UDC and NCC did. On the contrary, the formation of the local branch of the Women's International League, in June 1917, was a decidedly middle-class affair at a town centre cafe. It was chaired by Julia Glaisyer, supported by Florence Lockwood and Mrs E. H. Beaumont. The extent of its working class membership is not known although probably minimal. The Women's Peace Crusade, on the other hand, appealed to a different audience when it met in the Central ILP rooms in September 1917, although the outcome in terms of members is not known for certain.

Tolerance
The vitality of this diverse subculture was neither diminished nor was it forced into the role of martyr by the kind of repression and intolerance which faced anti-war groups elsewhere. Huddersfield did have its jingoes and pro-war rowdies but, whether in the Council chamber or on the streets, they seldom had their own way for long.

The anti-war groups continued to hold their meetings throughout the town, in the open air and indoors, without significant interference. In August 1917 J. Bruce Glasier 'congratulated Huddersfield upon its admirable record since the war began in maintaining freedom of speech, and in sustaining public meetings'. Open-air meetings were occasionally attended by what the Examiner described as 'lively scenes'. Speakers were heckled and interrupted by soldiers or pro-war civilians, but there was only one recorded case of an attempt to break up an anti-war meeting.

In January 1917 about twenty young men, half a dozen of them in the uniform of the Royal Flying Corps, tried to disrupt a meeting in the Victoria Hall at which the principal speaker was Philip Snowden. The badly organised and poorly supported effort turned into a rout. The RFC men, fleeing, had to be protected from the 'pacifists' who 'belaboured them with walking sticks' before ejecting them from the hall 'to the sound of triumphant cheering'.

Huddersfield was also substantially free from the sort of violence which was directed at the war's opponents in other towns. Local COs and those visiting on weekend passes from Wakefield work centre were spared the assaults suffered by COs in Plymouth, Dartmoor and other parts of the country. George Thomas would have it that such violence was a particularly southern phenomenon but, in May 1917, even he had to report anti-CO rioting in Wakefield. By February 1918, Northern Command intelligence officers reported that, 'No pacifist dare address any meeting at the corner of the streets in Leeds.'

Huddersfield's freedom from this kind of violence and intimidation can be explained in a number of ways. The strength of the anti-war position within local organised labour was probably a major factor, but just as important were the attitudes and actions of the police, the press and the Town Council.

In other parts of the country the local police were often accused of helping the jingo elements attack anti-war meetings. In Huddersfield, however, even The Worker admitted, 'the local police ... have shown no sign of infection by the Prussian spirit, and at all times carry out their difficult duties with tact and impartiality'.

The same, with some modifications, might also have been said for the local press. Until its demise in 1916, the Conservative Huddersfield Chronicle was the only local newspaper likely, because of its firmly pro-war views, to join what George Thomas described as the 'shrieking brotherhood of armchair patriots' in encouraging direct action against the war's opponents. That it did not is a reflection of the strength of the consensus for tolerance within the local elite.

At the centre of that consensus, and a reluctant supporter of the war, was the Huddersfield Examiner. Although it much preferred to ignore rather than to report their activities, it steadily refrained from any efforts to incite hatred or violence against the war's opponents.

This preference for tolerance rather than persecution was expressed in a number of other ways. Town Council policy was one of them. There, on a number of occasions, a persistent pro-war lobby of mainly Conservative councillors led by Alderman Ernest Beaumont, pressed Liberal, Labour and less rabid Conservative councillors to a defence of freedom of speech and conscience.

One major issue here was that of public meetings. In a number of other West Riding towns - Leeds, Brighouse, Dewsbury, Halifax - the local authorities, for various reasons, and from time to time, banned anti-war meetings in public places. In Huddersfield such meetings were tolerated without restrictions throughout the war.

That is not to say that the Council's line was uniformly liberal and tolerant. On less immediate and more distant matters it did take the patriotic, or even the xenophobic line. In April 1916, for example, it supported a resolution from Manchester City Council calling on all municipal bodies to agree not to enter into any contracts with companies with German or Austrian connection - however remote - or with 'any persons of German or Austrian nationality'. Two months later, in June 1916 and again in August 1918, it urged the Government 'to at once intern and keep interned ... all enemy alien subjects resident in this country on account of their being a menace and a danger whilst at liberty'.

On matters closer to home and concerning local people, the Council, even under pressure from Alderman Beaumont's patriotic group, was more inclined to stick to its liberal principles. In 1916 its policy towards CO schoolteachers became the point at issue. Schoolteachers were in the same position as other local government employees over the matter of military service. Before 1916 those who enlisted had been given various inducements to do so, chief among them being the promise of reinstatement in their former jobs after the war. With the introduction of conscription the inducements to recruiting were no longer necessary but the promise of reinstatement tended to persist. The appearance of COs in local government service generally, and in teaching in particular, created problems for this policy to which different local authorities responded in different ways.

Leeds City Council, for example, refused to employ known COs as teachers and, by December 1916, had dismissed three of them and a school caretaker for good measure. Liverpool, at the same time, decided in future only to employ male teachers who had served their country. For Huddersfield the matter came to a head in October 1916 when two CO teachers - Harold Armitage and Albert Sutcliffe - directed to work of national importance away from the town by the Military Service Tribunal, asked the Education Committee whether they would be able to return to their Huddersfield jobs after the war.

The debate in the Education Committee proved to be a set-piece confrontation between pro-war patriotism and the liberal radical consensus. It also re-opened the debate on the education of children in which pre-war conflicts over patriotism and militarism in the younger generation had focused on the Boy Scouts and Boys' Brigades, Empire Day and school drill. Schoolteachers were seen to have a crucial role in transmitting the national culture. Inevitably, therefore, differences of view on what that ought to be were expressed in attitudes to CO teachers.

Liverpool councillors were very clear that 'it would not be right to trust the training of the city's children to conscientious objectors'. The patriotic group on Huddersfield's Education Committee were no less clear. Alderman Ernest Beaumont had been the principal advocate of the patriotic element in local schooling since before the war. In 1911 he had proposed that Huddersfield schools celebrate Empire Day and was deeply offended when, in 1914, it became Empire and Peace Day. A former member of the Duke of Wellington's (West Riding) Volunteer Regiment, he was also a keen supporter of the Boy Scout movement. For him there was no question of post-war reinstatement of Armitage and Sutcliffe because 'Boys taught by cowards compare unfavourably with boys taught by patriotic men'. He also spoke of 'purging the state of dangerous elements detrimental to the future of education'.

Beaumont was supported in the debate by a number of his Conservative colleagues, by the co-opted Catholic priest, Fr McCarthy, and by the Committee's Liberal Chairman, George Thomson. Against him were ranged Labour members Topping and Taylor, Julia Glaisyer, a co-opted member, and the elder statesmen of Huddersfield Liberalism, including John Robson, Carmi Smith, and William Willans. Most surprising among Beaumont's opponents was Canon Rolt, Huddersfield's Anglican vicar and chaplain to the local 5th battalion of the West Riding Regiment.

Beaumont's proposal that the men should not be reinstated was defeated by 13 votes to 9 and a further resolution to review the position at the end of the war was carried. At the subsequent full Council meeting on 18 October, Beaumont tried again but without success. His 'silent army of reaction' numbered 19 (all Conservative) while their opponents raised 30: 24 Liberals, 4 Labour and 2 Conservatives of which one was the Mayor, Alderman Blamires. This decisive dismissal of the extreme patriotic line owed much to the character of its supporters. Beaumont was a maverick even within his own party and his close identification with what the Liberal consensus recognised as 'militarism' and 'Prussianism' was guaranteed to raise that consensus to opposition. The intemperate nature of the language which he directed against two respected teachers, both Quaker attenders, Adult School workers and, therefore, ethical and religious COs, damaged his cause and probably alienated potential pro-war Liberal supporters such as George Thomson, who switched sides in the vote at full Council. More important, however, was the demonstration that, after two years of war, the traditional Liberal radical constituency was still in place as the dominant force in local politics. It was still capable of resisting the excesses of wartime passion on a matter of principle and remained sufficiently influential to affect the quality of Huddersfield's political environment. The sympathy for the claims of individual conscience on this occasion was of a piece with the more widespread tolerance of the anti-war position.