Britain introduces conscription

On 27 January 1916 the Military Service Act received royal assent. Britain, the only great European power that had so far fought the war with an army made up solely of volunteers, introduced conscription. In the House of Lords the King’s assent to seven Acts at once was announced, and immediately afterwards the King’s Speech was read and Parliament was prorogued until 15 February. The Act passed through both Houses in less than a month and, as the Annual Register observed, with astonishing unanimity, although it represented one of the greatest changes in British opinion for many years.

Who was conscripted

The Act fulfilled the promise made by the Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, on 2 November 1915 that married men would not be called up before single men. It therefore covered only the unmarried. Every male British subject who on 15 August 1915, National Registration Day, was ordinarily resident in Great Britain, had reached the age of 18 but was not yet 41, and who on 2 November 1915 was a bachelor or a widower without dependent children, was to be deemed to have enlisted in the army for the duration of the war and to have been transferred at once to the reserve. All those who had not come forward under the Derby Scheme were treated in this way: as if they had attested themselves and were awaiting their call-up. Eighteen-year-olds were to be called up only on reaching 19.

The Act came into force on 10 February, and the day from which the men it covered became soldiers was 2 March 1916. They were called up in classes by year of birth. Call-ups were announced by proclamation, and anyone who failed to report faced arrest and punishment as a soldier absent without leave. A man called up no longer chose his regiment or arm of service, although one who preferred to serve in the navy could say so, and the Admiralty had first choice of him.

Exceptions, exemptions and tribunals

The Act did not apply to soldiers and sailors on active service, to residents of the dominions staying in the country only temporarily, to ministers of religion of all denominations, or to those previously discharged from the army on grounds of ill health or rejected when trying to enlist. The others could apply for a certificate of exemption on four grounds: if their work or training was more important in the national interest; if call-up would cause serious hardship owing to their domestic, financial or business position; on grounds of ill health; and on grounds of a conscientious objection to combatant service. Exemption could be absolute, conditional or temporary. Certificates could also be issued by government departments, including to whole groups of the people they employed.

Applications were heard by local tribunals of 5 to 25 members, sitting in every registration district, from which an appeal lay to appeal tribunals in the counties and, as a last resort, to the Central Tribunal in London. They were made up of local notables, usually unpaid. They were quickly swamped by hundreds of thousands of applications.

Conscientious objectors

Recognising conscientious objection as a ground for exemption was a novelty. Asquith cited precedents from Australia and South Africa, but in the House of Commons the provision provoked derision and anger. Conscientious objectors, among them many Quakers and socialists, in practice usually received from the tribunals only exemption from armed service, with assignment to non-combatant units, or exemption on condition of taking up work considered important to the state. Absolute exemptions were rare. The most uncompromising rejected any form of compulsion. The No-Conscription Fellowship, to which Bertrand Russell among others belonged, announced resistance. During the war about 16,000 men in all applied for exemption on grounds of conscience, and those who refused all service were brought before courts martial and sent to prison.

Without Ireland

The Act did not cover Ireland, although it was part of the United Kingdom. The government judged that an attempt to impose conscription there would cost more than it would bring, and the Irish nationalists withdrew their opposition in Parliament precisely because their country had been excluded. When in 1918 the government tried to extend conscription to Ireland, it provoked a severe crisis there.

Resistance in Britain was weaker than had been feared. The day before royal assent, the Labour Party conference in Bristol condemned conscription and the Act itself by a large majority, but by a narrow margin decided not to demand its repeal. The party remained in the coalition government.

A first step

The Act of 27 January did not give the army as many men as had been expected. Many of those called up obtained exemptions, and many failed to report. The Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, was still insisting in January that the single men and those attested under the Derby Scheme would suffice, but before the great battles of 1916 the army needed more and more recruits. As early as May 1916 a further Military Service Act extended conscription to married men.