To Fight or not to Fight?

Pacifists, conscientious objectors and the anti-war committee within the Aberystwyth University student community 

During the course of the Second World War in Britain, conscientious objectors or those holding a pacifist or anti-war stance were more prevalent than during the First World War, with around 1.2 per cent of those conscripted registering as conscientious objectors. The Military Service Bill, passed in 1939, clearly recognised this limited growth of these feelings within some of the population, as it had a clause which provided exceptions within the law to object from active combat. How far therefore were these anti-war feelings present within the wartime student community of the University College of Wales (U.C.W.), Aberystwyth and the evacuated students from University College, London (U.C.L.)? If there were anti-war feelings present within the student community and anti-war committees established, how long did these last? Finally, how did different student societies independently display, outside the anti-war committee, their anti-war feelings? 

Anti-war feelings among the student community in Aberystwyth was not a new phenomenon. As during the First World War, students and staff of the University, such as Thomas Gwynn Jones, Thomas Parry-Williams and the editor, Ambrose Bebb, produced and contributed to 13 issues between 1913 and 1917 of Y Wawr, an anti-war journal. The regular production of an anti-war journal for a large part of the war implies that the anti-war feelings within the student community were well organised and long-lasting. This also no doubt played a large part in the decision by the university hierarchy to shut down its publication in 1917.

Amongst some of the university students during WWII, was a clear early impetus to establish an anti-war committee within the student community in an attempt to co-ordinate and organise anti-war feelings, no doubt in a similar fashion to the aforementioned Aberystwyth students of WWI. This initial impetus to establish a committee mainly came from the combined U.C.W., Aberystwyth, and U.C.L. Labour Club, who were described as an organisation which had been taken over by Communists and who were publicly seen as ‘campaigning against an “unjust war”’ in the memoir of the future 6th President of Israel, Chaim Herzog, an evacuated U.C.L. law student at the time. They also had the numerical support within their society to take on such a task, with 131 of their 216 members voting in support of a motion in January 1940, which called for the end of the war.

 At a meeting of the Labour Club held in their regular meeting place of Alexandra Hall on the 21st of January 1940, this anti-war support led to the first suggestion of an anti-war committee being established amongst the student community. It was recommended that the student societies of the Welsh Nationalists, the Peace Pledge Union (P.P.U.), the University Labour Federation, and the India Society be invited to join this committee. During their next meeting on the 28th of January 1940, it was officially agreed upon that the Welsh Nationalists, the P.P.U., and the India Society would appoint representatives to this committee and that they should meet as soon as possible.

The first meeting of the anti-war committee then took place on Saturday 10th of February 1940, with the Labour Club being represented by a student, referred to as Cde. Davies, who reported the progress of the committee back to the general Club membership. The meetings were a clear success in their efforts to unite and canvass the opinions of all the aforementioned student societies, as all the societies were well-represented at these meetings. This can be seen most clearly at a meeting held on St David’s Day in 1940, when each society was given 15 minutes to explain why their society was against the current war. However, it is important to note that this co-ordination and unity was not without its problems, as there were clear misunderstandings and early problems surrounding a difference of opinion in how things should operate, which arose within the relationship between the Welsh Nationalists and the Labour Club. 

 

Alexandra Hall from Constitution Hill Path, Aberystwyth. Taken by Godfrey Hill c. 1984. Used with the permission of Archifdy Ceredigion Archives.

Other than the partly successful organisation of anti-war feelings within the student community and the successful undertaking of a pamphlet campaign, the anti-war committee was ineffective. The failed anti-war demonstration, that was planned for the 4th of March 1940, which was banned without any reason being provided by the local Aberystwyth police, supposedly on the authorisation of the then Home Secretary, demonstrates this ineffectiveness perfectly. This claim that the then Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson, authorised this ban was ascertained by the Labour Club after they contacted the National Council of Civil Liberties for legal advice and appears to be one of the last actions on behalf of the anti-war committee. The aim of the Labour Club, set out by Thomas Henry ‘Harri’ Jones, the then Secretary of the Club, in the 1940 Lent Term edition of Y Ddraig (The Dragon) to ‘extend the anti-war movement in the College’ clearly failed and any possible potential attempt to reproduce the strong organisation and display of anti-war feelings that Aberystwyth students had during WWI were left very much wanting.

Labour Club, in the U.C.W., Aberystwyth student magazine, Y Ddraig, The Dragon, Lent 1940, p.45, photo used with the permission of Aberystwyth University Archives.

The anti-war committee in Aberystwyth was clearly short-lived, not lasting beyond the 1939-1940 academic year for numerous reasons. These ranged from the Labour Club having a membership whose anti-war stance was publicly waning as early as two days after the first meeting of the anti-war committee in February 1940, as noted in the Club minutes. Members of the Labour Club’s committee also clearly had a change of mind on their anti-war stances, with individuals such as Thomas Henry ‘Harri’ Jones, the Club’s Secretary - whose anti-war aims were clearly displayed in the 1940 Lent Term edition of Y Ddraig - joining the Royal Navy to fight in the war in 1941. In addition to this, on a national scale, by May 1940, the Labour Party had become a party of government having joined the Conservatives in a coalition which would last until May 1945. This changed the public opinion and stance of the Labour Club, as it would have no doubt been hard and would have made little sense to continue their anti-war rhetoric when your leader and the parliamentary wing of your party were now in official charge of the war effort.

It appears that the ending of the anti-war committee’s activities at the end of the 1939-1940 academic year, was also potentially also the end of the India Society’s outright involvement with anti-war beliefs, with no record of them independently organising any anti-war activities or events. The India Society’s primary function as a student society when they were reformed in Aberystwyth in 1939, having been at U.C.L. before their evacuation, was more focused on the aims of highlighting ‘Indian problems in the light of world events’ as well as bringing ‘together Indian and non-Indian students’, with their presence on the anti-war committee potentially coming from the open dialogue they maintained with other student societies, such as the Labour Club and the P.P.U.

Whereas for the P.P.U. and the Welsh Nationalist student societies, they both came out of organisations which held and continued to hold at their core, either pacifist views on any conflict, or a stance of neutrality in relation to WW2. The P.P.U. for instance which was set up by Canon Dick Sheppard in 1934 as the Sheppard Peace Movement, with its name being changed in 1936 to the P.P.U was, according to Yvonne Aleksandra Bennett, the ‘premier pacifist organisation during the years of WWII’, having a total membership of 130,000 people in 1939. In Aberystwyth, students from U.C.W., Aberystwyth, and U.C.L., such as E.C. Jones and Guy Beck, the Chairman and Secretary respectively of the society, formed a joint pacifist club to represent and further the aims of the P.P.U. 

During the 1939-1940 academic year, the society had 90 members of which 62 were planning to register as conscientious objectors, a decision that around 60,000 people in Britain and 2,920 people in Wales made during the course of the war. In an effort to help their members, the society ran a mock tribunal so that their members who were planning to register as conscientious objectors were prepared for the tribunal which would follow in one of the two places in Wales set up by the government to hold these tribunals. The society also shared, educated and further spread their pacifist views through selling and being a distributor of the Peace News, which was the main pacifist publication of the P.P.U. and was judged in a Home Policy committee meeting in May 1940 as the ‘most important pacifist publication’. The copies of the issues of this publication the students of the P.P.U. in Aberystwyth sold and distributed amongst the students and potentially the wider population, would have contributed to the impressive 36,000 copies across Britain which were sold and/or distributed every week at the time.

Further to mock tribunals and the distribution and selling of the Peace News, the P.P.U. also ran a series of talks for their members, from people who were either known pacifists or who had dedicated themselves to peace causes. These speakers ranged from the American Universalist minister, Rev. Jeffery Worthington Campbell, who was a graduate and the first black student at the theology school of St Lawrence University in New York. Rev. Campbell was in England further studying theology when WWII broke out and he decided for safety reasons to stay for the duration of the war. Around this time, he also officially declared himself a conscientious objector, having held pacifist views for many years. 

Other religious men were amongst those who were invited to be speakers for the P.P.U. in Aberystwyth, such as the former Welsh Baptist, Rev. Herbert Morgan, who was a pacifist whose views were not supported widely when he stood in the 1918 British General Election. By the time he gave a talk for the P.P.U, he was the Director of Extra-Mural Studies at U.C.W., Aberystwyth, having held this role since 1920.

Rev. Herbert Morgan (1875-1946), photo taken c. 1900,  held at the National Library of Wales (NLW), https://bit.ly/3JG6b6Z

Gwilym Davies, also a former and then retired Welsh Baptist reverend, who lived at 8 Marine Terrace, Aberystwyth, was also invited to give a talk to the society. He had dedicated his entire life to peace causes since 1922, having been the Director of the Welsh Council of the League of Nations based in Aberystwyth from 1922 to 1945. The difference between Gwilym and the rest of the speakers mentioned was that he and the League of Nations, which was formed in 1918, took a more nuanced position, putting more focus on collective security and ways that peace could be preserved, with force being viewed as an option and legitimate course of action as a final resort. 

Gwilym Davies (1879-1955), photo taken c.1940 by H.J. Whitlock & Sons, held at NLW, https://bit.ly/3JHvOoa

Another instance of anti-war and pacifist student societies aligning and supporting each other, can be seen with Saunders Lewis, the then President of Welsh Nationalists and a teacher of Welsh at St Mary’s College, the Catholic Seminary in Aberystwyth, being invited to talk to the P.P.U. Lewis was a pacifist, who held along with his party a position of neutrality in response to the conflict of WWII. The student society of the Welsh Nationalists, held much the same position as their political party, that the war was an English one and that it had been forced on the Welsh. The Welsh Nationalists at university in Aberystwyth, clearly held these anti-war views throughout the course of the war, as in the Labour Club minutes from December 1943, there were concerns raised for the danger and damage that the Welsh Nationalists’ anti-war propaganda was doing to the safety and security of Britain. However, it’s important to note that the Welsh Nationalists' wider memberships' response and attitude to the war was much more nuanced than their party’s official neutrality stance. Each nationalist made their own personal decision, such as the aforementioned, Ambrose Bebb, a former student of U.C.W., Aberystwyth, editor of Y Wawr as well as one of the founders of the Welsh Nationalists, who supported the war due to his admiration and concern for the damage it would have to French culture.

Anti-war views, pacifism or taking a stance of conscientious objection it is clear therefore did not encompass the whole of the university student community, with these stances coming from a limited group of student societies, mostly those which were politically orientated or those which had at their core a pacifist viewpoint. The attempts to organise, unify and co-ordinate these anti-war feelings across various student societies was ultimately a failure, as the anti-war committee did not last beyond the first academic year of the war. Individual student societies who had held an anti-war stance, mostly changed their opinions of the war as it progressed, with only those societies who were associated with wider organisations that held anti-war and pacifists’ stances maintaining these viewpoints within the student community. It is not clear from the evidence available what the opinion of the individual and “typical” student was, but what is clear is that by the 1940-1941 academic year, that any anti-war and pacifist views, or students taking a stance of conscientious objection, was slowly moving more and more to the peripheries of the student community and any efforts to turn this tide of opinion was unsuccessful. Students quite clearly grappled with the question of “to fight or not to fight”, with some taking up arms and others either putting their hands together to pray for an end to the conflict or opening their mouths to object and call for peace.

Blog by Conor Brockbank 

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