A Conscientious Objector A Local Man's Story
"My name is Ray Bellchambers. I was born in New Bradwell in 1919. I lived there most of my life but for a time I worked in Derby and lived there. I've been involved in local organisations most of my life.
I wasn't in the works during the war. The early days of the war I got sent up to Derby to work on locomotives, in 1940 I suppose. I worked up there on locomotives for a year and a half but I registered as a conscientious objector and so I worked on the land for the rest of the duration and a bit more beyond...
"I'd been involved with the Labour party and I'd been what one would have called an Internationalist Socialist. So you looked on things from an Internationalist point of view where the chap in Germany was your brother or the bloke in France was or from wherever. They didn't want to fight England anymore than England wanted to fight them. They were regarded as sort of brothers or sisters,we were in the same family so to speak. I took the view that it was a nonsense to go to war. There was no point in it. It would never achieve anything. I took a stand on that basis. I suppose in a way I was one of the rare ones that got away with it, that they accepted the argument, because most of them had to have a religious argument as a basis for objection.
When I registered I was the first one to register in this area anyway. When they were taking the register we had to leave the works and if I remember it rightly it was at The Crauford Arms, and they were taking your details there. … When I registered and I registered Conscientious Objector, they were a bit flummoxed. They didn't quite know what to do, they'd never come across this before."
Was this when you had to register for war work?
"Initially you just had to register and then they decided what you would do, whether you were in a reserved occupation and if it was not a reserved occupation they would perhaps send you somewhere else or make you go in the army or transfer you to another factory."
You were in a reserved occupation so why did you want to register as a conscientious objector?
"Because I didn't want to do the war work. As it happened I was on locomotives and would have been on locomotives all through, but I wasn't very happy with that situation, and so I decided to go and work on the land.
When you registered and before it was accepted, you had to go before a tribunal. In the early days it was very much a military style arrangement. They weren't military personnel sitting but they were in a good many cases retired military personnel and retired judges. They were always held in London, so we had to go to London.
At the first court I was rejected so I had to appeal. It was some time before the appeal went through. The difference between the first court and the appeal court was incredible because there'd been so many complaints about the way the early courts had operated that they'd revised the system and the personnel.
I remember when we went to the first one you thought it was a fairly free and easy arrangement.You were not up for trial or anything. I stood there answering the questions and I 'd got my hand in my pocket and the chap in charge of the tribunal instructed me in no uncertain terms, " Take your hand out of your pocket,"
That gives you some idea of the atmosphere in that court. By the time I went to the appeal it was a different story altogether. It was a different atmosphere."
How was the tribunal set out?
It was rather like a court room but there wasn't actually a dock but it was to all intents and purposes intended to be a dock. It was obvious that the people who were there didn't really know what they were doing or how they were supposed to work at all. It was very much a scratched up job. There were 10 or 20 of the public there, sitting at the back. My guess is that they were all supporters of the objectors, because if the chairman asked a question and you replied in what they considered to be a good answer, they clapped or you'd hear comments from the back. The chairman of the tribunal very much took the view that he was chairman of the bench.
It was a good six months between the two tribunals.
How did you feel before you went to the first tribunal?
"A bit apprehensive. I should think it took 20 minutes or half an hour. Even if they rejected your appeal they could send you into Red Cross work or work in hospitals. Later on when I was working on the land, the first job I was on, we had a team of about 5 or 10 of us, and they were practically all conscientious objectors, but 2 of those had been sent to work in hospitals before they went on the land"
Mr Bellchambers submitted a letter from Mr Albert Brown, who said he could prove the young man's views were sincere. The Reverend Cotman also wrote in support of the application.
This is a copy of the statement that Ray Bellchambers wrote to explain his opinion.
"In my opinion,
War is a form of mass murder so that for me to take part in it would mean that I should be a murderer.
This I refuse to do and I ought to refuse to help any murderers. If I killed a civilian I should be hung.
If I go to war and succeeded killing a large number of men then I am dubbed a hero.
The man I am asked to kill doesn't want to kill me when in a normal state of mind he would probably pay for my beer.
After a little insidious war propaganda and some incitement from the press he is prepared to tear me limb from limb if necessary.
Some of us who are a little cooler in the head refuse to be become so intoxicated.
War hinders all form of social progress and culture, without such things life is useless and so I refuse to be at all for the destruction of them.
I have no quarrel with any man if his home is in Berlin, Tanganyika or Neverwhallop,
so I refuse to fight him or yet bomb his Grandmother.
For the reasons I stated I feel it would be impossible for me to take part in the war machine whether it be offensive, defensive or civilian ambulance work. It all appears in the same light as far as concerned."
Replying to questions Mr Bellchambers said he was willing to undertake civilian work under civilian control, and was prepared to go on the land or do forestry. When it was pointed out that the railway work was really an essential part of the war machine now, he agreed and said it was difficult to reconcile the position with his conscience, but he was on the railway work before the war started.
" I never looked on the matter quite like that before," he added. Mr Bellchambers replied "Looking at it in the cold light of day I feel I should leave the job immediately."
The chairman announced that the majority of members of the tribunal were not satisfied that the applicant had a conscientious objection to military service and his name was removed from the register.
(Extract from the Tribunal proceedings)
Did people think you were a coward?
"No funny enough I was a bit surprised as there were very few people who were nasty about it. A lot of people did n't agree with it but a surprising number said ,"We don't agree with it but we admire you for it. That was a more general attitude rather than one of condemnation."
You could have gone to prison?
"Yes. Not many went to prison in the last war but some did."
"There was an organisation called The Peace Pledge Union, it was mainly religious and philosophical students who were in it. Quite a few well known characters were involved in that, Peter Peers the singer was."
Then Mr Bellchambers left the works to begin working on the land.
"In the beginning, the first 12 months, I suppose I was driving an excavator, draining the brooks and the ditches. There were 2 of us driving excavators and the others were chopping the trees. We worked on that over at Broughton for about a year.
Then that team was disbanded and I was put in charge of a gang of Jewish refugees, all youngsters. They worked round here for 2 or 3 years after that. They were in a hostel at Newport. I don't think any of them knew where their parents were. They were of all European nationalities, Polish, Austrian, Czechoslovakian, German and I was put in charge of them.
We were doing land drainage work and some hedging. I was left with them until they were able to supervise themselves. They were 20/25 years old. The same age as me.
When I see the state of Israel now and I think of the idealism that there was with those youngsters it's a different country. They were all Zionists and they were wanting to get a patch of land somewhere in Palestine or Israel which they could develop.
Eventually they had this farewell party the night before they were due to go and they invited me to the party. They showed me on the map where they were going and there was nothing there at all. They were literally carving a lump out of the desert and trying to make a living of it. Some years after I read about the kibbutz they had set up and that it had been successful."
"My brother in law was taken prisoner in Singapore and he was in Japanese hands all through the war. I had 2 brothers, one of them was in the Engineers and went in as Lieutenant and he spent some time in India and then was with the Burma campaign.
The other one, the oldest one was at Oxford and was called up whilst he was there. He went in as driver but then went into the Intelligence Corps and he spent most of his time in the Middle East."
"I don't remember them passing a comment because I didn't see them again until the end of the war. My father was a bit uncomfortable but he never tried to stop me. He felt," If that's the way you think, that's the way you think and that's it."
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