'These Strange Criminals': An Anthology of Prison Memoirs by Conscientious Objectors from the Great War to the Cold War (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: ‘These Strange Criminals’: An Anthology of Prison Memoirs by Conscientious Objectors from the Great War to the Cold War Thomas P. Socknat (bio) Peter Brock, editor. ‘These Strange Criminals’: An Anthology of Prison Memoirs by Conscientious Objectors from the Great War to the Cold War University of Toronto Press 2004. xviii, 505. $75.00, $45.00 During the twentieth century numerous men and women, either for religious or moral reasons, have refused to fight in or support the military. These conscientious objectors to military service were often treated harshly by their own governments, usually with imprisonment. The stories of their wartime experiences, however, have not always been easily accessible and have certainly not been gathered together in one volume. Now that has been corrected as the voices of imprisoned conscientious objectors come alive once again in this important anthology by Peter Brock, the world's leading historian on pacifism. Brock has pulled together the prison memoirs of thirty conscientious objectors from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand that describe their jail experiences during the First and Second World Wars and the Cold War. Although the documents are limited in terms of gender, mainly because women were not conscripted into the military itself and therefore few were viewed as conscientious objectors in the eyes of the law, Brock has extended the definition of 'conscientious objection to military service' in order to include two women objectors in Second World War Britain: Kathleen Lonsdale, a prominent scientist jailed for refusing to perform firewatching duties under compulsion, and Kathleen Wigham, jailed for refusing to obey a direction under wartime industrial conscription (she refused to do work that would relieve anyone to do military service). As the book's title suggests, conscientious objectors were not typical criminals. In fact, their only crime was to remain true to their conscience and oppose military service. Moreover, most of them were well educated, politically aware individuals who were highly observant of prison conditions and often became inspired to fight for penal reform. Strange criminals indeed! The objectors range from well-known historical figures, such as the Briton Stephen Hobhouse and the American Alfred Hassler, to little-known individuals, such as Canadian John Evans and New Zealander Archibald Baxter. While their personal backgrounds and the wars they refused to fight vary, their stories are held together by the common thread of moral conviction and carceral experience. The physical hardships suffered by the objectors were obviously greatest during the First World War, when torture was commonly employed. Both Evans and Baxter recalled instances of routine beatings and rough treatment. The 'worst torture,' however, was not physical, but psychological, and all of the accounts recognize the 'debilitating effects of imprisonment upon the mental, spiritual, and social well-being of the prisoner.' Every entry is a tale of survival and all objectors describe how they refused [End Page 528] to allow the penal system to break their spirit. Rather than just a record of the treatment of imprisoned conscientious objectors, therefore, this book provides an important glimpse into life behind bars throughout the twentieth century and, as such, it will be a valuable addition to the study of criminology and penology as well as to that of conscientious objection. One of the most noteworthy of the accounts is that of Brock himself. Peter Brock was one of those 'strange criminals' who spent four months in two well-known London jails, Wandsworth Prison and Wormwood Scrubs Prison. A second-year history student at the University of Oxford in 1940, Brock was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for refusing non-combatant service (a third of his sentence was remitted for good conduct). His account of those days underlines the general unpleasantness of life behind bars mentioned by others – the boredom, the dreary daily routines, the loss of personal privacy, and the menacing prison atmosphere. Brock's entry would be important for no other reason than because, as he says, there are very few British co prison memoirs from the Second World War, era even though over forty-five thousand objectors were sent to jail. But, of course, his account is also important because it underscores the fact...