A Flourishing Peace Movement

'I renounce war, and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or support another'

Peace Pledge Union

When Fred Vahey was a young boy of about five or six, he was puzzled by the sight of what he later described as 'a lot of ill people all over the town in pale blue soft clothes – many on crutches or with bandages, or missing limbs. There seemed to be a strange air about it all ... these sick wrecks had survived ... from some outrageous thing that I did not understand.'

Later Fred came to understand that the 'outrageous thing' was the First World War, and the 'sick wrecks' were casualties. He never forgot the sight. Born in Ireland in 1910 the experience caused him to question the whole purpose and value of war – not just the First World War but of all wars. In 1940, arguing that war 'is a crime against humanity' and conscription 'a denial of human liberty', Fred registered as a conscientious objector and refused to take any part in the war effort. He spent the war years working on his smallholding and until his death in 1996 remained steadfastly opposed to war, never doubting his decision to take a conscientious stand against it.

Fred Vahey was not the only person to renounce war during what Robert Graves called 'The Long Weekend' – the brief space between 1919–1939 that separated the two world wars. Thousands of others also did so. The First World War had caused unprecedented devastation and loss of life. Some ten million young men had died in the trenches, more than twice that number had been wounded and about six million civilians had been killed. Families in all the warring countries mourned the loss of husbands, fiancés, brothers, uncles, friends and lovers. In Britain, France and Germany virtually an entire generation of young men had been wiped out. Announcing the end of fighting to the House of Commons on 11 November 1918, the then British Prime Minister David Lloyd George described the First World War as 'the cruellest and most terrible war that has ever scourged mankind'; years later in 1934 the Hastings Peace Group estimated that it would have taken three months for 'the vast army who died as a direct or indirect result of the war ... marching day and night at the rate of four per second' to have passed the doors of the White Rock Pavilion on Hastings seafront.

Widespread revulsion

Exhaustion, relief and victory parades marked the arrival of peace, and memorials to the 'glorious dead' were erected in towns and villages throughout Britain. In 1921 the first Armistice Day Remembrance Ceremony was held at the Cenotaph in London's Whitehall. According to The Times, a 'countless multitude' attended the ceremony, which was intended not just to commemorate 'the sacrifice and suffering of war' but also the 'winning of victory and the dawn of peace'. Interestingly, that same day some 200 delegates from Britain's leading women's organisations met at 8.30pm in Central Hall, Westminster, to demonstrate their support for a reduction in armaments. Key speakers included Lady Astor MP, trade unionist Margaret Bondfield and suffragist Maude Royden.

Given the scale of death and destruction it was hardly surprising that when the postwar dust finally settled, there was a widespread revulsion against war and militarism. This manifested in various ways, not least in a large and unprecedented peace movement that flourished during the inter-war period. It is difficult to estimate the numbers actively involved, but while most people in Britain just hoped that war would not happen again, tens of thousands, many of whom described themselves as pacifists, joined anti-war or pacifist organisations and campaigned in one way or another for peace. Then as now, pacifists, or those who thought they were pacifists, were a minority of the population, but they were certainly a sizeable minority. Their numbers were sufficiently significant by the mid to late 1930s for some people to accuse pacifists of helping Hitler's war aims.

The inter-war peace movement attracted a whole range of people. They included scientists, artists, musicians, politicians, clerks, students, activists and thinkers. There were high-profile figures who spearheaded the movement, such as Sir George Lansbury, leader of the Labour Party between 1932–35, the poet Siegfried Sassoon, Labour politician Arthur Ponsonby, the Reverend Donald Soper, writer Aldous Huxley, feminist Vera Brittain and the Reverend Dick Sheppard, many of whom were involved in more than one peace organisation. There were former First World War conscientious objectors, such as Harold Bing, Herbert Runham Brown and Fenner Brockway to say nothing of the thousands of younger men and women who came into the peace movement because of what they had seen, heard or read about the horrors of war.

Some involved themselves in the movement because they came from pacifist families, while others were the sons or daughters of men who had been conscientious objectors during the First World War and were brought up to believe that war was wrong. Kathleen Wigham was born in Blackburn, Lancashire in 1919, one of eight children. Her parents were members of the Spiritualist Church and of the Independent Labour Party (ILP). They were convinced pacifists and had assisted First World War conscientious objectors: 'We were certainly against war. My mother and father wouldn't allow war toys in the home and I can remember my mother being appalled when my youngest brother exchanged one of his Christmas toys for a sort of dagger, which was harmless really because the blade part disappeared into the handle when you struck somebody, but the idea of putting your hand up to strike somebody was so abhorrent to my parents that he had go back and get his Christmas toy back.' Kathleen too became a pacifist and was involved with the Quakers. Believing that 'war is wrong and also futile because it doesn't solve the problem, it doesn't bring about the peace that we want', she gravitated to the peace movement during the 1930s. Kathleen joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR) and ultimately went to prison for making a conscientious objection against being drafted into civilian war work.

Many who became peace campaigners were horrified by what they had seen of the impact of war and were determined to do what they could to prevent another. Some had lost fathers or family members in the war or had fathers return injured or shell-shocked. Even those whose families had supported war and continued to do so found the reality of war impossible to accept. Some were drawn into the peace movement by powerful anti-war literature or inspirational speakers such as Dick Sheppard, founder of the Peace Pledge Union. Sheppard and the Reverend Donald Soper, whose speeches denouncing war were delivered in the open air at...