Third Military Service Act

Late in the evening of 10 April 1918 the British House of Commons passed on second reading, by 323 votes to 100, a new Military Service Bill. The British chronology of the war records under this day the passing of the “third Military Service Act”, and under 18 April its coming into force. According to the parliamentary reports, however, 10 April was only one of the stages: the third reading took place on 16 April, and the Military Service (No. 2) Act, 1918 received the royal assent on 18 April. The act was a response to the defeat on the Somme, where the British army had suffered enormous losses since 21 March, and to the new German blow that had fallen on the Lys front the day before.

The government bill

The bill was introduced on 9 April by the prime minister, David Lloyd George. He recalled that the country had already called almost 6 million men into the army and navy and could not give the army all its men, because it still had to maintain the fleet, build ships and supply the Allies with coal and steel. He announced, however, that some 100,000 fit men had already been taken from the munitions factories that year and 50,000 from the mines, and that a further 50,000 would have to be taken. All fit men under 25 were to be called up from government offices, and the period for reporting after a call-up notice was cut from fourteen to seven days.

The most important change was raising the upper age limit for conscription. The first act of 1916 had covered bachelors, the second all men from 18 to 41. Now conscription was to cover men who had not yet reached 51, and in special cases, for example doctors, the government wanted to be able to call up even men of 55. The prime minister reassured the House that only about 7 per cent of the men of the older age groups would go into the army, mostly to rear services and home defence, to replace younger men. The act also allowed the King, by a proclamation of national emergency, to cancel whole classes of exemptions from service, and the government to reorganise the tribunals hearing appeals. The calling up of clergy for non-combatant service, on the other hand, was dropped from the original plan.

Ireland

The second clause of the act aroused the strongest feelings. It allowed the government to extend conscription by Order in Council to Ireland, which had been excluded from the previous acts. Lloyd George said that eighteen-year-olds and fathers of families in England, Scotland and Wales could not be asked to fight for the freedom of small nations while young Irishmen had no obligation at all. Irish battalions, thinned by losses, were already being filled largely with Englishmen. At the same time the government promised to introduce a new bill for Irish self-government (home rule). Irish members interrupted the prime minister with shouts. “You will not get a single man from Ireland by compulsion”, cried John Dillon, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, and William O’Brien called the announcement a declaration of war on Ireland.

On 10 April the second reading was opened by the Home Secretary, George Cave. The debate went on late into the night, until the Leader of the House of Commons, Andrew Bonar Law, moved the closure. The Irish members and some Liberals and Labour members voted against the bill. After the third reading on 16 April (301 votes for, 103 against), the members of the Irish Parliamentary Party left Westminster and returned home to organise resistance.

Into force

On 18 April, the day of the royal assent, a conference of representatives of all strands of Irish nationalism met in Dublin at the invitation of the Lord Mayor: Dillon, Éamon de Valera and Arthur Griffith of Sinn Féin, and trade unionists. The same day the Catholic bishops declared conscription an oppressive and unjust law. For 21 April the taking of an anti-conscription pledge outside churches throughout the country was planned, and on 23 April the trade unions called a one-day general strike, which, outside Belfast and part of Ulster, paralysed the railways, ports, factories and shops.

In Great Britain the act took effect at once and gave the army further age groups of recruits. In Ireland the government never issued the necessary Order in Council and nobody was called up there. The conscription issue, however, brought Sinn Féin enormous support at the expense of the Irish Parliamentary Party, as the elections of December 1918 showed.