Memorandum from the Peace Pledge Union
CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION
Executive Summary
This submission reviews the history of, and
present provision for, discharge from any of the regular or reserve
armed forces on the ground of having developed, since enlistment
or commissioning, a conscientious objection to further military
service. It argues that the present provision, although important
and worthwhile, is shrouded in secrecy by the armed forces, and
therefore little known. It recommends a specific amendment to
the Armed Forces Bill to provide for a statutory instrument relating
to discharge on the grounds of conscientious objection.
BACKGROUND
1. The Peace Pledge Union, an independent
secular pacifist organisation, is formally recognised by the Ministry
of Defence as having an interest in sittings of the Advisory Committee
on Conscientious Objectors to hear applications by any member
of the Armed Forces, of all ranks and rates, regulars and reserves,
for discharge on the grounds of having developed, since enlistment
or commissioning, a conscientious objection to further service.
2. The principle for creating such a procedure
was established during the Second World War, when it became clear
that, apart from those men and women who claimed conscientious
exemption from military service ab initio, there were others
who originally accepted call-up but then changed their minds on
conscientious grounds, and others again who had enlisted as regulars—in
one case so far back as 1931—who also felt unable conscientiously
to continue. For these two latter groups the Appellate Tribunal,
set up to hear cases of people in the first group who were aggrieved
by the decision of their Local Tribunal, was empowered to sit
as an Advisory Tribunal to hear applications for discharge on
conscientious grounds and tender advice to the Admiralty, War
Office or Air Ministry, as the case might be, whether a particular
applicant should be discharged or not. It became an established
convention that the advice would always be accepted, and, if a
discharge were recommended, it would follow as quickly as ordinary
protocols would allow.
3. This procedure continued after the Second
World War until the abolition of National Service in the early
1960s, when the Appellate Tribunal was wound up. An unsatisfactory
period followed, during which there was no clear procedure for
dealing with cases of conscientious objection by regulars. In
1970, however, after representations by bodies such as the Peace
Pledge Union and the National Council for Civil Liberties, the
Ministry of Defence established a new procedure, albeit modelled
on the old.
4. An application by any member of the armed
forces for a discharge on conscientious grounds is in the first
instance to be submitted in writing to the person's commanding
officer, who forwards it with relevant observations to the Personnel
department of the Ministry. If the Ministry accepts the application,
the person is discharged forthwith. If the application is rejected,
the applicant is informed of the right to appeal to the Advisory
Committee on Conscientious Objectors (ACCO).
5. ACCO was therefore set up in 1970, comprising
a Chairperson and Reserve Chair, both QCs, and four lay members,
the whole appointed by the Lord Chancellor. For any hearing, a
panel comprising one of the Chairpersons and two lay members sits.
Hearings are held in public on premises away from any MoD property.
There the applicant is invited to present, and answer questions
on, his/her case in a relatively informal way, and to bring witnesses
and be supported by a friend or legal representative if desired.
The Committee's conclusions are presented in the form of advice
to the Secretary of State for Defence, and if the advice is for
a discharge, that follows as expeditiously as possible.
6. During the Second World War and the post-war
conscription period the Ministry of Labour and the armed forces
recognised the Central Board for Conscientious Objectors (CBCO)
as having a legitimate interest in the topic and an expectation
to be informed of developments and procedures. That recognition
was continued, so far as ACCO was concerned, until CBCO was wound
up in 1988, when the Peace Pledge Union was recognised by the
Ministry of Defence as the successor body for that purpose.
THE PROBLEM
7. Members of the Select Committee may feel,
having read so far, that the procedure is a wise, if unusually
generous, provision, and wonder why any further representations
should be made about it. There is, nevertheless, a problem. Very
few people, even within the armed forces, are aware that the procedure
exists.
8. The procedure is set out in Queen's
Regulations for the Army (Volume 5, Instruction No 6 (Retirement
or Discharge on the Grounds of Conscience), but it is marked "RESTRICTED,
IN CONFIDENCE". There used to be a passing reference in QRs
for the RAF to an obscure leaflet on the topic, but even that
has disappeared from recent editions. I have never been able to
discover any reference to conscientious objection in QRs
for the RN, or in any other accessible RN documentation.
9. There is, indeed, the Kafkaesque situation,
whereby, although, as the person nominated within the Peace Pledge
Union to be the channel for its monitoring role vis a vis ACCO,
I was sent a very helpful, but informal, memorandum on the procedure
by the MoD in 1991, when I asked whether I could have reference
numbers of relevant Defence Council Instructions, I was informed
in a letter dated 3 October 1991 from Personnel and Logistics
(Legal Services), MoD, "I am unable to provide you with the
serial numbers of classified documents".
10. The word "classified", of
course, relates to the Official Secrets Acts, and, for all I know,
I may have breached them by citing the Army QRs reference
in paragraph 8 above. It is small wonder that when in 1991 L/Cpl
Victor Williams, Royal Artillery, felt conscientiously unable
to report for deployment to Saudi Arabia to participate in the
Gulf War he was unaware of any procedure for seeking a discharge
on such grounds. As he said in a statement read at his court-martial,
RA Barracks, Woolwich, September 1991, "Had I known or been
informed of a procedure for stating my reservations about this,
I would have not felt the need to go absent without leave".
For the want of public disclosure of conscientious objection provisions
Victor Williams was sentenced to 14 months imprisonment, and the
army was put to the trouble and expense of prosecuting him.
11. Although the evidence I have cited is
15 years old, the position has not changed. The army provisions
are still "restricted"; the RN and RAF provisions are
nowhere in the public domain.
RECOMMENDATION
12. The Peace Pledge Union urgently recommends,
therefore, that in Clause 328 of the Bill, there be inserted in
subsection (2) (a), after the word: "discharge", the
words ", including on the grounds of having developed a conscientious
objection to further service,".
13. It would follow from Clause 363 (2)
that regulations would be made concerning conscientious objection,
which, as statutory instruments, would be in the public domain
and openly and clearly accessible.
14. Such a recommendation takes advantage
of the welcome attempt by the Bill at consolidation and unified
codification of the law concerning many aspects of armed forces
discipline and procedure; also, for the first time it would, if
implemented, bring into the public and statutory arena the well-established,
but also almost entirely concealed, provision for conscientious
objection by volunteer armed forces personnel.
15. The United Kingdom can justly lay claim
to the honoured position of having first made provision for conscientious
objection to part-time military service so far back as the Militia
Act 1757, and being the first country to legislate, in the Military
Service Act 1916, for conscientious objection simultaneously with
full-time conscription. In the new era of open government and
enshrinement of humans rights within domestic law it is time to
bring conscientious objection to continued regular or reserve
service out of the shadow of obscure military documentation and
into the daylight of the statute book. Ninety years after the
Military Service Act 1916, it is time for a new beginning in a
new millennium.
January 2006
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