House of Commons passes conscription

On 24 January 1916 the British House of Commons passed on third reading the Military Service Bill, which for the first time in this war introduced conscription in Great Britain. 383 members voted for the bill and 36 against. According to the Annual Register, the minority consisted of thirty Liberals, five Labour members and one Independent Irish Nationalist. The same day the bill went to the House of Lords, which gave it a first reading. The vote closed a stormy but surprisingly short parliamentary battle of less than three weeks.

Redeeming the Prime Minister’s pledge

The bill was the result of the failure of Lord Derby’s scheme. On 2 November 1915 the Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, had promised that married men who attested under the scheme would not be called up while a significant number of single men were avoiding service. Derby’s report, published in early January 1916, showed that of about 5 million men of military age over 2.1 million had neither attested nor been rejected, including more than a million unmarried men. After deducting workers indispensable to industry, about 650,000 single men remained. On 1 January the resignation of the Home Secretary, John Simon, was announced; he was the only member of the Cabinet who would not accept conscription.

Asquith introduced the bill on 5 January. He presented it solely as the keeping of his word: unmarried men who had not volunteered and had no grounds for exemption were to be treated as if they had attested under the Derby scheme. Simon, from then on the leader of a small group of opponents, argued that there were too few single men shirking service to justify compulsion, and that such a law ran counter to the best traditions of British liberty. On 6 January the first reading was carried by 403 votes to 105. The members of the Irish Parliamentary Party voted against, and according to the Annual Register so did 34 Liberals and 11 Labour members. Almost at the same time a conference of the trade unions and the Labour Party in London came out against the bill by a large majority.

Resistance weakens

The second reading, on 11 and 12 January, showed that the opposition was melting away. The leader of the Irish Nationalists, John Redmond, announced that, since Ireland had been excluded from the bill and the members from Great Britain had supported it by ten to one, his party would no longer oppose a purely British measure. Asquith argued that without this law Britain would not fulfil her part in the war, and gave assurances that it would not be used to introduce industrial compulsion, which the workers feared most. The Labour leader Arthur Henderson said that the choice was between compulsion and possible defeat. The second reading was carried by 431 votes to 39.

In committee of the whole House, from 17 to 20 January, the bill was handled by the Conservative Andrew Bonar Law. An amendment by the Ulster Unionists, who wanted conscription extended to Ireland, was rejected. Bonar Law explained that more would be lost than gained by it. The greatest passions were roused by conscientious objectors to military service, whom the bill allowed to be exempted from service in combatant units. The Conservative William Joynson-Hicks called this provision a “shirkers’ charter”, while the Labour member Philip Snowden defended their rights and warned that tens of thousands of people would resist the law even after it came into force. An amendment to extend conscription to the clergy was also withdrawn.

Third reading

In the debate on 24 January fears of “industrial compulsion” came up again, and the government once more gave assurances that the law would not be applied to civilian occupations. Simon repeated his objections and did not dissuade his supporters from voting against. The Labour member James Henry Thomas protested on behalf of the railwaymen. Bonar Law closed the debate by asking the opponents what would become of their ideals if Germany were not defeated. The result, 383 to 36, showed that resistance in the House had collapsed. The House of Lords passed the bill over the following days, the second reading even without a division, and on 27 January the Act received the royal assent.